Interesting, recently I'm playing squash more often and I'm improving. One of my observations, or mental notes, is that the ball is slow. I have all the time to look at it, see where it's going and decide what's the best moment to hit it back. I thought this observation was the result of being more calm and focused, but maybe it's my brain that's getting faster at this precise task.

Relevant kurzgesagt-video on how brains predict the future to "slow things down": https://youtu.be/wo_e0EvEZn8

This is also very noticeable in Video Games. I remember the first time I played One Step From Eden, I thought I would never be able to keep up with it's frantic pace, but the more practice and understanding I had the more the game "slowed down". To a point of course, it's still a fast game but it feels orders of magnitude slower than initially.

Same with e.g. the Souls games, whose bosses are often designed to be visually and audibly overwhelming when you first encounter them. But after a while, when you get better, come back to a fight later, or watch someone else playing, you'll see it very differently from playing yourself, to the point where a lot of things just feel painfully slow and/or clearly telegraphed.

Doesn't make it much easier though as the window for when you should hit that dodge button is still narrow.

I fly fighter jets in a simulator called DCS. When you get task saturated you can feel the time speed up and then slow down. Hearing the RWR scream "missile missile missile" at you slows down the seconds to a crawl as you yank the stick and pray you turned in time to out run it. Then time speeds up to a frantic rush when you are trying to operate the radar and not hit a mountain at the same time.

Human time sense is just so weird when you pay attention to it a little.

The brain stores a memory of what the body does. I learned some juggling. It's is very repetitive. It's catching falling objects, drilled into memory.

And now, when there's an accidental falling object, often my hand just moves to the exact correct position to catch it.

The other day my friend bounced a ball off the ceiling and we tried to catch it. It's surprisingly frustrating, not expecting the speed from the rebound plus gravity acceleration.

> When you get better at juggling, objects really start falling down in slow motion

One tangental optical note effect I only recently noticed is that I shift my eyes quickly to a spinning ceiling fan there is a moment where the fan blade(s) appear to be effectively stationary -- and then transition to the blur that one normally sees.

I think what you’re describing is different than the slow motion fall. (Though it may be the same, or similar type of processing….)

The fan, I believe is similar to a clock ticking and a type of saccadic masking. (1)

Related to the optokinetic response. (2)

I’m sure someone with much more knowledge than I could better clarify however.

(1)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saccadic_masking

(2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optokinetic_response