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Sports Vision Training

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It Takes Way More Than Strength and Speed to Be at the Top of Your Game!

Whether you play basketball, football, soccer, tennis, or any other sport, the difference between winning and losing can often come down to how quickly and accurately you react to a situation in real-time. Making the right decision in a fraction of a second is what sets the elites apart from the rest.

Great basketball players can find the holes in a defense, cut to the basket and slam the ball through the hoop, all in the blink of an eye. The best gymnasts have exquisite hand-eye coordination, allowing them to do incredible feats on the balance beam or during floor exercises. Elite soccer and hockey players can see their teammates and make lightning-fast passes to get behind the goalkeeper and put the puck or ball in the back of the net.

All of these rely on visual skills that can be practiced and honed with the right kind of training. Fortunately, our EyeCare Associates eye care team specializes in sports vision training, to give you the edge you need to play your best game, no matter your sport of choice.

Even athletes with 20/20 vision can improve their visual skills, making their vision more accurate and cutting down on reaction time to gain a decisive advantage.

To learn more about sports vision training and to find out how it can help you or your child succeed in sports, contact us today!

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Sports Vision Training Gives You An Edge Over Your Competition

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Sports vision training will improve performance by strengthening the connection between your eyes, brain, and body. This should help you optimize your ability to react to visual signals, improving a range of skills including:

  • Balance – the ability to stay upright or in control of body movement without falling over or stumbling.
  • Contrast Sensitivity – the ability to distinguish between an object and its background, like a white ball against the sky.
  • Depth Perception – the ability to quickly and accurately judge the distance and speed of objects.
  • Eye Tracking – the ability to smoothly and accurately follow an object as it moves through space. This is “keeping your eye on the ball.”
  • Focusing – the ability to rapidly change focus from one object to another without having your vision go blurry.
  • Hand-Eye or Body-Eye Coordination – the ability to coordinate what you see with your eyes and the movements you make with your hands and body to successfully grab or hit a ball, make a successful tackle, etc.
  • Peripheral Awareness – the ability to see things out of the corner of your eye.
  • Reaction Time – how quickly you can perceive an event (a pitched or passed ball, for instance) and react to it with a specific action in response.

Evaluating and strengthening each of the visual skills listed above can help increase your chances of playing your sport like a pro.

At EyeCare Associates, We Help You Be the Athlete You Know You Can Be!

Visual abilities such as focusing, tracking fast-moving objects, and reacting quickly to the situation on the field can not only make the difference between winning and losing, but also between safety and injury. Even the smallest improvement in the way you process or react during the game can give you the edge on the field, court, or rink, and keep you safe while you’re out there.

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How Does Sports Vision Training Work?

Sports vision training is a personalized form of vision therapy aimed at developing specific visual skills in athletes. The exercises in a sports vision program train the brain to effectively interact with the eyes and improve visual functioning.

The sports vision training program consists of weekly in-office appointments and assigned daily exercises, and can range from several weeks to several months. Depending on the sport in question, our sports vision team may prescribe some of the following exercises to be done in-office or at-home:

Near and Far

Stand on one leg, holding a fingertip out in front of you. Switch your visual focus every 10 seconds between your fingertip, and something further away while still standing on one leg. After a few minutes, change legs. This helps improve depth perception, eye tracking, and balance.

Brock String Exercises

The Brock string is a roughly 10-foot long string with three colored beads attached. Tie the end of the string to a fixed point, or have a friend hold the string straight, with the beads spaced at various distances. Stand and hold the other end of the string between your eyes at the tip of your nose. Using both eyes, look at the bead closest to your nose and try your hardest to keep it in focus for 10 seconds. Then move to the next bead and hold that in focus for 10 seconds. Rotate from bead to bead every 10 seconds for a few minutes.

This works on eye teaming, convergence/divergence, depth perception, and visual fixation skills.

Tennis Ball Exercise

This exercise is easy to do at-home or at our eye clinic. Face the wall with a partner standing behind you. Your partner will then throw a tennis ball over one of your shoulders, and you should try to catch the ball as it bounce off the wall, back to you. The closer you are to the wall, the faster you need to react in order to catch the ball successfully. This exercise hones your visual tracking, reaction time, and peripheral awareness.

No matter what type of program you are given, motivation and consistency are the keys to getting the maximum benefit.

Sports Vision Training | FAQ

Whether you’re playing at your local community center, competing at a highschool or college level, or trying to make it in a professional league, you can benefit from what sports vision training has to offer. To learn more about how sports vision training can help you reach your goals, contact us at EyeCare Associates today!

medical-plus medical-plus I Have 20/20 Vision, How Can Sports Vision Training Improve My Game?

Many people think that 20/20 vision means you can see perfectly. Though it does mean that you have excellent visual acuity, it doesn’t necessarily mean that your eyes are working together perfectly, or that you’re processing the things you see efficiently. Sports vision training can help you hone these and other skills.

medical-plus medical-plus Who Can Benefit from Sports Vision Training?

Anyone can benefit from sports vision training. Adults and children, amateurs and professionals all need the same set of visual skills, depending on the sports they play. There’s no such thing as “perfect vision,” and you can always stand to see a little clearer or react a little faster, to get just that little bit more of an advantage while out on the field, court, or rink.

medical-plus medical-plus How Do You Evaluate Sports Vision?

Your eye doctor will perform a variety of specialized tests to precisely evaluate your visual skills before, during, and after treatment. These include tests that check for visual acuity, contrast sensitivity, eye tracking, and depth perception, among others.

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