Within the world of professional sports, sports vision has become an increasingly popular method to getting the ‘edge’ over the competition. Strength, speed and endurance are required of any athlete if he or she wishes to be successful in a sport, but visual skills such as reaction speed and tracking are what separate high-performance athletes from the rest. These athletes can make split-second and game-changing decisions that will lead their team to victory time and time again.
Your vision is extremely important when it comes to athletics. If you want to ensure you are performing at your very best, you should consider seeing an optometrist who specializes in sports vision, even if you have 20/20 vision. Many people aren’t aware of how much your level of play can improve by training your eyes, but your performance will significantly advance by undergoing an individualized sports vision training program.
What is sports vision training?
Sports vision training has little to do with eyesight and visual clarity. Instead it focuses more on your visual processing and performance. The same way an athlete enhances his physical ability by training, your visual skills can also be strengthened through a range of conditioning techniques in which we call sports vision training.
A few skills that sports vision seeks to improve are:
- Peripheral awareness is what allows you to see what is going on around you without having to turn your head.
- Dynamical visual acuity is the ability to have a clear sustained focus on objects that move
- Depth perception or binocular vision gauges the spatial judgment of objects informing you how far away they may be.
- Hand-eye coordination refers to the balance of combining visual and motor skills for better performance.
How does it work?
Training is not a one-size fits all approach; the training will vary depending on the demand of the sport and condition of the client. A comprehensive eye exam and other eye tests conducted by a sports vision optometrist will evaluate how well you see while moving and how you interact with other objects and players.
Following your eye exam, questions will be asked about your playing and further tests may be performed to better judge your sport-related needs. Vision specialists will likely attend games or study films to get a better grasp of your performance ability before training.
From there, we will produce an individual profile based on your results and create an individual training program for your needs and goals based on sport and position. The program is conducted one-on-one with professional trainers and overseen by a sports vision optometrist and possibly other specialists to improve not only areas where you may be lacking, but also strengthen areas where you excel.
Your training program may include the use of 3D computer simulations to measure your reaction time as well as visual imagery, and other tactics to get athletes to imagine performing at peak levels during their training.
Vision is the primary sense used by athletes and accounts for over half of the sensory processing demands during any given activity. Enhanced situational awareness, focused flexibility, reading of human movement cues, and tracking within dynamic scenes are crucial abilities that set you above the rest. Sports vision is ideal for anyone who desires to perform at their personal best, regardless of age or level of play. Contact us at See Clear Associates, LLC today for more information.