Did you know that almost 80% of perceptual input in sports is visual? Vision therapy used to be referred to as the Bates Method, but Bates is extremely outdated. New methods focus solely on the eye muscles and retrain the way the brain processes visual imagery.
20/20 vision only means athletes can see an object clearly. It doesn’t mean they can tell where the object is in space, how fast it’s traveling or whether it’s changing direction. With sports vision therapy you can train your eye muscles like you would train your biceps. The difference between eye muscles and arm muscles is the eye muscles are tiny, so it only takes about a week before you see drastic improvements.
Finding The Right Sports Vision Therapist
Many eye doctors will give you a referral if you ask for one. It’s also not a bad idea to ask your coaches if they use a specific eye doctor to treat the team. Most sports vision specialists are optometrists but some are opthalmologists, either way you want to make sure that your eye doctor has a little more understanding as to what the athlete needs.
An optometrist with expertise in sports vision can not only help your unique visual system and recommend proper eye wear, but they can also design a vision therapy program to increase your visual skills you need for your sport.
Members of SVS, or Sports Vision Sections receive a great deal of training and focus mainly on vision of people involved with sports. Plus, they are also members of the AOA, or the American Optometric Association.
The College of Optometrists in Vision Development, or COVD are dedicated to study the vision development in children. They also provide sports vision therapy to adults, however their main focus is on correcting childhood vision problems.
What Vision Therapists Offer
Sports Vision Therapists offer evaluations that are individually designed to improve sports vision skills. These evaluations go above and beyond the normal eye exam. They help to improve your eye-hand coordination, visual reaction time, focusing, eye teaming, peripheral awareness, tracking and visualization skills. Certain locations offer programs that are designed to evaluate, train and enhance the visual skills of all types of athletes.
Some of these tests may or may not include:
A holographic light projection, displaying images in 3-D.
Computerized tests to measure your reactions.
Slides seen through a special viewer.
Actual on-field measuring of your reactions to various sports situations, meaning they might attend your games to evaluate your vision performance first hand.
Agape Optometry Center offers a program called the Sports Vision Enhancement Program and includes protective eyewear, sport specific sunglasses, specialized contact lenses and sports vision enhancement therapy. Here’s a brief description of each section:
Protective Eyewear- This is for athletes who wear glasses outside of sports. Goggles are given that are unique and customized to the individual.
Sport Specific Sunglasses- A lot of sports are played indoors or at night, but most are played outdoors during the day when the sun is shining. This new product includes specific tints based on which sport you play. For example, yellow tint is for low light situations and is great for biking, fishing and tennis.
Specialized Contact Lenses- This too is a new product and the contacts purposely have a larger design that drapes over the eye to provide a more stable lens. They can also be customized with tint. Specific lenses include SportSight GP and Ciba ProSoft.
Sports Vision Enhancement Therapy- This improves visual functions like depth perception, speed of reaction and visualization abilities.
Ortho-k is another great option sports vision therapists might choose for you. With Ortho-k you wear the corrective contact lenses at night. The eye shaping lenses allow you to live contact lens and eyeglass free during the day. Plus they give you stable vision correction with unrestricted peripheral vision.
LASIK eye surgery is a procedure that uses a laser to correct nearsightedness, farsightedness, and/or astigmatism. For athletes who suffer from more serious eye conditions, this might be very beneficial to them while playing sports.
Who Vision Therapists Treat
It doesn’t matter if you're an adult or a child, or how many healthy eye exams you receive yearly. Sports vision therapists treat any athlete who wants to improve their visual skills to above average, especially players who struggle to concentrate, who are inconsistent in their performance, and who are affected by fatigue or game stress.
Also, athletes that play baseball, basketball, football, golf, mountain biking, soccer, tennis, hockey, handball, racquetball, billiards and volleyball benefit the most. Athletes who are involved in water sports usually don’t go to vision therapists, nor do athletes involved in running. However, running does require some knowledge of depth perception, so you might want to at least consult with your normal eye doctor about it before looking into a sports vision therapist.
