A Guide to Sports Vision Training for Improved Performance

Whether you participate in sports as an amateur or you are a professional athlete, you’ll want to be able to do your best every time. However, this doesn’t only mean keeping your heart and lungs healthy and your muscles strong. Many sports rely just as heavily on exceptional visual skills for success.

It doesn’t matter what your preferred sport is. Sports involve movement. Whether you are participating in a solo sport such as running, cycling, climbing, or golf, or you are involved in a team game like baseball, basketball, or lacrosse, you’ll be moving or objects around you will be. However, to be able to move around quickly and safely, you need to have outstanding vision. Similarly, you need to be able to focus clearly, track objects, and react to them. This requires a certain degree of visual skill and that’s where sports vision training comes in.

What is Sports Vision Training?

Sports vision training is a specialist type of training that is designed to improve and enhance the visual skills that are particularly important for sports. However, since every patient is unique and the sports that they take part in vary, the exact format of this training will be bespoke, and based on their individual needs.

Sports vision training usually takes the form of manual exercises. For example, you may be asked to perform certain eye movements over and over to make the muscles around your eyes stronger, or to extend your peripheral vision. Sometimes technology is also used to help work on specific visual skills. What will happen in your training program will be explained to you by your sports vision training specialist.

What Visual Skills can Sports Vision Training Help with?

Sports vision training can be used to improve, enhance and sharpen a range of visual skills that are crucial to many different sporting activities. These skills can drastically improve your performance in your chosen sport and ensure that you are always at the very top of your game.

Dynamic visual acuity: the ability to see objects that are in motion clearly and accurately.

Focusing: being able to change focus between different objects rapidly while maintaining clear vision.

Depth perception: the ability to determine the speed and distance of objects, which enables you to react accordingly.

Eye tracking: the phrase ‘keep your eye on the ball’ was made for this skill, which sees you track an object moving at any sort of speed across your field of vision!

Hand-eye or body-eye coordination: using your eyes to decide how your hands/body should react within your chosen sport or activity, for example when catching a ball.

Reaction time: this refers to how quickly you can perceive and react to a stimulus, such as catching a ball that has been thrown to you or jumping over an object you are running towards.

Contrast sensitivity: the ability to tell the difference between an object and its background.

Balance: vision and balance are intrinsically linked, and if you have problems with your vision, your balance may not be as good as it could be. Sports vision training can resolve misalignment issues that may be affecting your vision, and subsequently, your balance.

If you’d like more information about sports vision training, or to schedule an appointment for sports vision training, call Eye Care Associates in San Bernardino at (909) 316-2100 today.