Bull's-eye!

By Tamela Thomas, Wellness Manager

What do you know about the function your vision plays in sports performance? Most of our thinking centers around whether to wear contacts, glasses or even prescription safety glasses. We are not too sophisticated on the subject beyond making sure we get the right prescription and clear sight lines for the sport we are playing.

If you are a golf fan you might have started hearing a bit more on the subject. No one can argue that Tiger Woods has been a top competitor since he joined the tour. Yet, after his corrective eye surgery, he made golf history in tying Hogan's record of six consecutive tournament victories. Tiger is not the only one. Cowboys quarterback Troy Aikman, Atlanta Braves all-star Greg Maddux and LPGA star Se Ri Pak have all had some type of vision intervention.

Perhaps your tennis or golf game is being compromised by a visual skill. Would your life-long enjoyment of a sport improve if your performance improved? Or maybe you have a son or daughter that is very serious about a high school or college sport. Could their sports performance be enhanced? Dr. Christopher Clark, OD, writes this month's article on the subject of vision training, and it's packed with good information for us not-so-famous athletes.

Put on your spectacles; it's worth a read.

Are You Visually Fit?

Why 20/20 is not enough

By Dr. Chris Clark, OD

Think of your favorite sport. Whether it's shooting a few hoops, sinking that long putt or accelerating down your favorite hill in skiing, vision plays a very important role in your performance. Most people think of vision as seeing 20/20 on the eye chart. While good visual acuity is important for most sports, it doesn't tell you anything about how far away the ball is, how fast it is moving or whether it is changing direction. Visual processing gives that information. Today, similar to athletic strength conditioning, athletic visual skills can be measured, developed and enhanced.

Coordination, concentration, balance and accuracy are just a few of the visually related abilities you use during a sporting event. Consistently under-performing a certain skill in a sport, such as always hitting the front of the rim in basketball or overshooting the hole on the green, may be a result of your eyes and not your athletic skill. If certain visual skills are not up to par, you may unconsciously compensate for them and weak spots might develop in your game. These weak spots become obvious to your opponent who, depending on the level of competition, may play on them. The receiver who drops the pass, the batter who strikes out and the unsuccessful free-throw shooter all may have 20/20 eyesight, but chances are they lack in one or more critical skill areas that may reduce their performance.

In the past, it was assumed an athlete either had good visual skills or not, and other than corrective lenses, nothing could be done to improve that natural ability. However, in the last decade, studies have shown that superior visual skills correlate with superior performance. If the visual information is inaccurate, it can throw off the body's timing and cause the performance level to drop. However, visual skills—like all physical skills—can be taught, trained, practiced and perfected.

Visual processing is a set of skills of which visual acuity is only one. Other skills important for the athlete include:

Dynamic visual acuity—the ability to see objects clearly while you and/or the target are in motion. This is the single most important skill an athlete needs to have the competitive edge. Hitting a baseball is said to be the most difficult feat in sports. A pitch comes at 80 to 100 miles per hour. If it is thrown at 80 mph, it will take 4/10 of a second for the ball to reach home plate. It takes 2/10 of a second to just swing the bat, which leaves the batter less than that amount of time to decide whether to swing at the ball. Ted Williams said he could see the spin on the ball from the time it left the pitcher's hand: only great dynamic acuity would allow him to do that.

Eye Tracking—the ability to "keep your eye on the ball," no matter how fast it may be traveling. The longer you can see the ball to the point of contact, the better and more consistent a hitter you will be. If you take your eyes off the ball before impact with the bat or racquet, the eyes will lead the head, body and hands out of position.

Eye Focusing—the ability to change focus quickly and accurately from one distance to another. Unless the skier can see and shift visual focus rapidly and smoothly from near to far and back again while simultaneously detecting changes in the terrain and snow condition, he or she will be unable to react in an appropriate time frame.

Depth Perception—quickly and accurately judging the distance and speed of objects. This skill is crucial in golf. When trained properly, depth perception acts as a valuable aid in estimating yardage and in selecting the proper club.

Fusion Flexibility and Stamina—the ability to keep both eyes working together even under high speed, physically stressful situations. If your eyes are not pointed precisely at the distance the ball is, your brain perceives the ball at a different distance. If you perceive the ball closer, you will swing early or throw the ball short. If you perceive the ball farther away, you will swing late or throw the ball long.

Eye/Hand/Body Coordination—these skills are critical in any fast-moving sport. The speed and accuracy of eye-hand coordination and body movements in response to visual information in a competition can be the difference between winning and losing.

Peripheral Vision—the awareness of seeing people and objects "out of the corner of your eye" while concentrating on a fixed point. This is more than just seeing a wide field of vision. It is being aware of the objects and people in the periphery while maintaining concentration on the action in front of you. The best athletes seem to always know what's going on around them and where their teammates and opponents are, while also being able to concentrate on the goal ahead of them.

Problems with any of these skills may result in the athlete trying harder than necessary, which often reduces the athlete's attention, comprehension and general sports performance.

Improvement You Can See

Professional athletes have been getting game-improving results with visual training. Here are some examples:

Professional golfer Val Skinner visited her optometrist complaining of "perceptual problems." After an intensive program with visual training and lenses she had several successful seasons and went on to be regarded as one of the top golfers on the LPGA tour.

NBA player Kiki Vandeweghe suffered with an eye-coordination problem from childhood. After treatment with visual training and prescription lenses, he averaged 26.9 points per game in the 1986-87 season to become one of the top shooters in the league.

Several Members of the U.S. Olympic volleyball team were given visual training. Players Steve Salmons and Rich Duwelius experienced a subsequent 25-30% increase in their hitting averages.

Getting started

You may experience a variety of symptoms if you have a vision problem. These include headaches, poor eye-hand coordination, inconsistent performance, making unusual errors, better performance on one side or in one direction than the other and early fatigue. To discover if visual training could improve such symptoms, a sports vision evaluation may be the first step.

More involved than a standard eye examination, a sports vision evaluation usually takes 1-2 hours and can cost $150 to $350. This comprehensive evaluation provides a performance profile in such areas as eye-hand coordination, reaction time, visual concentration, peripheral awareness and depth perception. Following the evaluation, the doctor will be able to tell you about your visual strengths and weaknesses. The doctor can then design a personal vision-training plan. This plan looks at your strengths and weaknesses, relates them to your sport and develops specific visual exercises that isolate and strengthen your weaker areas. The program probably will also include some tasks aimed at fine-tuning your stronger visual skills and then integrating all of the improved skills for better visual performance.

Although no two programs are alike, expect to spend at least 8-10 sessions of once-per-week visits to your optometrist. Each session will last from 20-45 minutes and will be tailored to your sport and visual needs. You should also anticipate visual exercises to be done at home between sessions.

Athletes of all levels have found that vision can play a very important part in sports performance. It may be the one thing that keeps a good athlete from being an exceptional one. It also can be the all-important factor that pushes a good athlete into a category of excellence.

For more information or referrals, please contact Tamela Thomas, Wellness Manager, at 206.464.4639.