During a 90-minute race, a Formula 1 driver’s body meets many challenges. Controlling a vehicle that may reach speeds of over 200 miles per hour requires not only the highest level of fitness but also the ability to react — literally — in the blink of an eye.

Without top-notch visual skills, drivers aren’t able to respond effectively to the constantly changing conditions on the race track. Sports vision training can help race car drivers and other athletes hone their visual skills to improve their performance.

What is Sports Vision Training?

Sports vision training is a tailored program that enhances neural communication between your eyes, brain, and body, and is specifically tailored to your specific activity. Athletes who receive sports vision training can absorb information faster and react more precisely to what they see on the field or track.

The training entails a specific set of strategies and exercises that teach the brain and body to respond to the environment around them more quickly and effectively. Visual skills such as hand-eye coordination, depth perception, dynamic visual acuity and peripheral awareness are all [emphasized] during the training.

Visional Skills Needed for F1 Drivers

F1 drivers need to have excellent peripheral vision and reaction time to succeed on the race track.

Peripheral Vision

Peripheral vision is the ability to see things where you are not directly looking, but can see “out of the corner of your eye.” Well-developed peripheral awareness enables drivers to see other cars or obstacles at the edge of their visual field and to process the race’s rapidly shifting dynamics.

Reaction Time

When it comes to racing at high speeds, every second counts. Even a slight lag in reaction time can be disastrous.

The reaction speed of F1 drivers is typically 3x faster than that of other individuals.

Sports vision training exercises hone the brain’s ability to respond to visual stimuli, and to transmit the necessary information the body needs to respond. Speeding up their brain’s synaptic reaction time allows drivers to pivot more quickly on the racetrack in the face of unexpected situations.

Exercises for Peripheral Awareness and Reaction Time

To improve peripheral awareness, drivers use many different exercises and tools. Here are two that we recommend.

Lightboard Exercise

A lightboard is a device that flashes a succession of lights, powered by electricity. Touch receptors are incorporated into many of them, providing an element of engagement that can improve the driver’s peripheral awareness and reaction time.

Here’s how it works: A person stands in front of the board and concentrates on a single location. Then, in their side view (peripheral vision) lights flash in random positions. The patient is required to recognize and then rapidly and efficiently touch those lights.

Seeing such lights can help drivers boost their ability to process information and make quick decisions. Simply touching the lights can significantly boost their hand-eye coordination.

Tennis Ball Drill

A basic tennis ball drill is an easy way to increase reaction times. Drivers face a wall and position themselves close to it. Then, from behind them, an instructor or a training partner tosses balls at the wall.

The task of the driver is to respond quickly and collect the ball as it bounces off the wall. The unpredictable nature of this practice keeps their minds sharp. Because of their near proximity to the wall, they must rely on their fast reaction speed and peripheral vision to succeed.

Becoming an F1 driver isn’t just about improving speed on the track. It’s about training the mind, body and eyes to work together as a team. Contact Omni Vision & Learning Center to learn more about sports vision training and become the driver you wish to be.

Omni Vision & Learning Center serves patients from Monticello, Maple Grove, St Cloud, and , Minnesota and surrounding communities.

Q: Why is sports vision so important for athletes?

• A: Athletes with excellent visual skills have an advantage in their field. Sports requiring great eye teaming, depth perception, and concentration skills include motor racing, skiing, football, basketball, hockey, baseball, tennis and soccer. In some sports, focusing, judging distances and tracking moving objects might mean the difference between life and death on the field or race track.

Q: Who can benefit from sports vision training?

• A: Sports vision training is intended for athletes of all ages and abilities, including youth and adult athletes, no matter the sport they participate in.

Between 1.7 million to 3 million sports and recreation-related concussions occur each year in the United States alone. 70-80% percent of those surveyed have vision issues.

So what can you do to avoid a concussion? Consider sports vision training. It can help you perform better and protect your head and brain from injury.

Sports Vision Training and Sport-Related Head Injuries

Concussions are among the most prevalent injuries sustained in sports.

When your visual abilities aren’t up to par, you may underestimate the distance between yourself and the ball or between yourself and other players. Due to limited peripheral vision, miscalculating the velocity of a ball or the location of competing players may result in significant head or other injuries.

This is why, like exercising your muscles, it’s important to train your eyes to communicate more efficiently with your brain and body.

Sports Vision Exercises to Prevent Concussions

If you’re looking to improve your game by improving your visual skills, visit today. our optometrists will prescribe a sports vision training program based on your sport and the visual abilities you need to develop.

Until then, here are some very basic exercises you can do at home. (Keep in mind that there is no alternative for a specialized sports vision assessment and training tailored to your individual visual strengths and deficiencies.)

Depth Perception

Depth perception is crucial for a variety of sports. Baseball players require it to hit the ball as it crosses the plate, while football players need it to judge where the ball will land. Even swimmers use depth perception when doing a flip-turn near the pool’s edge during a race.

You can practice this skill by holding a drinking straw at arm’s length and trying to drop a tiny pebble or balled-up piece of paper through the straw with your free hand.

Peripheral Awareness

Peripheral awareness is crucial for succeeding in sports, as athletes must be able to sense the world around them without turning their heads. By honing this visual skill, they can drastically improve their game.

One thing you can do to improve peripheral awareness is to stand at a junction and look straight ahead at the road in front of you. Practice seeing cars pass horizontally from left to right without moving your head—simply perceive them through the edges of your visual field.

Focus Flexibility

The ability to shift your concentration from far away to nearby objects is referred to as focus flexibility.

Focus on an object close to you, then adjust your focus to an object behind the first one in the same line of sight to improve your focus flexibility. A bowl on a table in front of you, for example, and then a painting on the wall in the distance.

Switch between focusing on the bowl and the painting. This is also a good exercise for those who spend a lot of time at their computers. It will not only improve your focus flexibility but will also ease eye strain caused by prolonged screen use.

If you’re looking to improve sports performance, contact today. Sports vision training will help you up your game whether you’re a competitive athlete or simply enjoy playing on the weekends.

Q: What is Sports Vision Training?

• A: Sports vision training is a customized program that uses a series of techniques and exercises to teach your brain and body to respond more accurately and efficiently to a fastball or hockey puck rapidly coming toward you. The training focuses on improving visual skills, such as hand-eye coordination, eye tracking, depth perception, focusing and peripheral vision.

Q: Can sports vision training lead to a decrease in sport-related injuries?

• A: According to a study done by the University of Cincinnati Division of Sports Medicine, football players who had undergone sports vision training to improve their peripheral vision had fewer concussions than those who did not do it.
• This is because sports vision training helps the eyes and brain react more quickly to changes in the environment, resulting in more successes and fewer accidents.
• Omni Vision & Learning Center serves patients from Monticello, Maple Grove, St Cloud, and , Minnesota and surrounding communities.

Hitting a baseball out of the park is widely regarded as one of the most difficult sporting challenges. In Major League Baseball (MLB), batters have less than half a second to meet a 90-mph fastball with the sweet spot of their bat. There is almost no other specialized action in any sport that puts a player’s visual system under such strain.

So why don’t coaches and managers ask their players to utilize sports vision training to boost their performance on the field?

That’s because the value of sports vision training is underappreciated. Many athletes, parents, and coaches don’t realize the central role that visual skills play in athletic ability, and are ignorant of the numerous ways to develop them.

Recognizing A Pitch

There are many kinds of pitches: fastballs, curveballs, screwballs and more.

Batters have only a fraction of a second to identify the type of pitch and react accordingly. Keeping an eye on the ball and assessing speed, motion and direction are highly demanding for a player’s neuro-visual system.

5 Essential Visual Skills for Keeping Eyes on the Ball

• Convergence – Perfect convergence of both eyes is needed to follow a ball as it flies towards you.
• Depth perception – In order to assess the distance, speed, and direction of a fast-moving ball, accurate depth perception is needed.
• Peripheral vision – Is required to stop a base-stealer and achieve that double-play.
• Eye teaming – To keep track of a flying ball, the eyes must be perfectly synchronized.
• Speed of focus – Your eyes must constantly refocus when a ball is racing toward you at 70 to over 90 miles per hour.
• Visual processing speed – It’s critical for the brain to be able to quickly process all of the visual information sent to it.

Sports Vision Training for Baseball

Just as intense physical exercise helps baseball players boost their physical endurance, strength, speed and fine motor skills, sports vision training helps them improve their depth perception, focusing and visual processing speed.

A sports vision training program is customized for each player based on an evaluation of their visual skills with a specific focus on baseball requirements.

To start boosting your visual skills and performance, contact our optometrists at Omni Vision & Learning Center today.

We train athletes from Monticello, Maple Grove, St Cloud, and , Minnesota and surrounding communities.

Q: What is sports vision training?

• A: Sports vision training is a custom-made program that improves coordination between your eyes, body and brain while playing sports. It involves exercises and techniques that help athletes process the information their eyes are sending the brain more quickly and accurately.

Q: Who can benefit from sports vision training?

• A: Whether you’re pitching or up at bat, sports vision training is perfect for anyone of any age and ability seeking to take their performance to the next level.

As an athlete, it’s important to be aware of your surroundings and be able to gauge distances. This is where sports vision training comes into play. Sports vision is about training people to process what their eyes see, better and faster. It’s an effective way to boost the visual skills you need to excel at your chosen sport and stay safe while doing it.

3 Ways Sports Vision Training Can Improve Your Game

Having strong, well-developed visual skills enhances your ability to catch, throw, and hit a ball, allowing you to thrive in sports like baseball, basketball and tennis. By sharpening your peripheral awareness, depth perception, and eye-tracking and focusing abilities, you will be able to better gauge the distance between a tennis ball and the net, or the proximity of another player as you sprint across the field.

1. Enhanced Convergence and Accommodation

Convergence is the ability to keep both eyes working in tandem as they track objects or people, such as a player passing a ball. Accommodation, also known as focus flexibility, is the eyes’ ability to immediately change focus.

Improving your eye-focusing abilities will help you concentrate better, and swiftly and precisely refocus your vision. This makes it easier to quickly process moving objects.

2. Enhanced Depth Perception

Depth perception is the ability to judge the distance between you and people or objects, and allows you to see in three dimensions. Individuals with good depth perception have an easier time recognizing an object as it approaches because they can see where it is in space. When a baseball player makes a spectacular catch or steals a base, depth perception is one of the visual skills they most rely on.

3. Enhanced Peripheral Awareness

Peripheral awareness, also known as peripheral vision, enables us to detect and see things that aren’t directly in front of us while looking straight ahead. A well-developed peripheral field helps soccer players, tennis players and cyclists see people and objects at the edge of their visual field and sense the flow of the game or traffic as it constantly changes.

The sharper your visual skills are, the better you will be at whatever sport you participate in. Your eye doctor will assess your vision in specific areas to identify weak areas that need strengthening. After that, you’ll be prescribed a customized sports vision training program that will include a series of personalized eye exercises and assessments to measure your progress.

To learn more about how sports vision training can help you become a better athlete, contact Omni Vision & Learning Center today!

 

Q: What is sports vision training?

• A: Sports vision training is a personalized program that improves the communication between your eyes, body and brain while playing sports. Enhanced communication between your eyes and brain leads to improved visual skills, allowing an athlete to unlock their fullest potential. Sports vision training uses a customized series of techniques and exercises, resulting in the brain and body learning to respond more efficiently and accurately to what the eyes are seeing.

Q: Who can benefit from sports vision training?

• A: Whether you’re a golfer, play hockey or ski, sports vision training is perfect for anyone of any age who wants to take their performance to the next level.

Omni Vision & Learning Center serves patients from Monticello, Maple Grove, St Cloud, and , all throughout Minnesota.

It’s finally summer—and there’s no better time to play outdoor sports! But if you’re like many of us, you may be a little rusty from the long winter months. While physical training is important to get back into gear, sports vision training can take you a step further by helping you hone the visual skills you need to excel at your chosen sport.

Sports vision training is a personalized program that helps professional and amateur athletes improve the way their eyes, brain and body interact. The quicker the brain processes the messages the eyes send, the better the performance.

Benefits of Sports Vision Training

Strong, well-developed visual skills can help you improve your ability to hit a tennis ball or perform the perfect dive in the swimming pool.

Sharpening your tracking, depth perception, focusing and peripheral awareness skills will help determine the proximity of the water from the diving board or the distance between a baseball and your bat. It should come as no surprise that vision training helps athletes improve their performance in just about any sport.

Sports vision training helps develop the following visual skills:

• Balance – the ability to stay in control of body movement. A surfer, for example, must be able to stand on the board without falling off, all while riding a wave.
• Eye Tracking – the ability to “keep your eye on the ball.”
• Focusing – the ability to rapidly change focus from one object to another efficiently and quickly. For example, in baseball, a player needs to be able to focus on the ball while running.
• Eye-Hand or Eye-Body Coordination – the ability to use your eyes to direct the movements of your hands and body. In tennis, for instance, a player must be able to move his or her body and hands while tracking the ball.
• Peripheral Awareness – seeing things or people, such as opposing players, out of the corner of your eye.
• Depth Perception – the capacity to evaluate an object’s speed and distance accurately and quickly. For example, a diver must accurately evaluate the distance from the edge of the pool in order to dive safely.
• Contrast Sensitivity – the ability to distinguish between an object and its background, such as a baseball against the sky.
• Dynamic Visual Acuity – the ability to clearly see objects in motion.
• Reaction Time – the faster you see it, the faster you react and the faster you move.

During a comprehensive eye exam, your eye doctor will assess your visual skills in various areas to determine which ones need to be improved. Once assessed, you’ll receive a personalized program to boost and expand your visual skills in those areas.

To learn more about sports vision training, contact Omni Vision & Learning Center today!

Omni Vision & Learning Center serves patients from Monticello, Maple Grove, St Cloud and , all throughout Minnesota.

Q: What is sports vision training?

• A: Sports vision training is a customized program that improves coordination between your eyes, brain, and body when playing sports. Sports vision training helps athletes process information and then react faster and more accurately to what they see on the field or in the water.

Q: Who can benefit from sports vision training?

• A: Whether for surfing, playing baseball, or biking, sports vision training benefits people of any age or level seeking to take their performance to the next level.

When riding an electric scooter, you need to be able to focus on the road, while avoiding cars, pedestrians, and other potential obstacles. It may sound simple, but not everyone has the visual skills needed to focus, scan the surroundings and react in a split-second to an oncoming car or a child who’s run into the street.

At Omni Vision & Learning Center, we offer sports vision training, which helps improve visual skills by training the brain to process and respond quickly and efficiently to visual input. This can, in turn, prevent you from getting into an accident.

E-Scooter Riders Need Top-Notch Visual Skills

To stay safe on the road, drivers, motorcyclists, and e-scooter drivers need to have remarkable visual skills, where the ability to focus, track fast-moving objects and react quickly can mean the difference between staying safe and incurring an injury.

Even the smallest increase in processing ability, reaction time and resilience can help prevent injury to yourself and others.

The Visual Skills Needed to Safely Ride an E-Scooter

Improve critical vision skills, such as peripheral awareness, depth perception and eye focusing, with sports vision training, a customized program that improves the communication between your eyes, brain, and body.

1. Peripheral Awareness

Peripheral vision, also known as peripheral awareness, enables us to detect and see things that aren’t right in front of us when looking straight ahead. A well-developed peripheral field helps riders spot people and objects and sense the flow of the road as it changes.

2. Depth Perception

Depth perception is the ability to see in three dimensions and judge the distance between objects or people and yourself.

Those with good depth perception have an easier time accurately tracking any object as it approaches because they can perfectly see where it is in space. This enables one to make split-second decisions about when to swerve or stop to avoid coming in contact with everything from a car to a trash can.

3. Accommodation and Convergence

Accommodation, also known as focus flexibility, is the eyes’ ability to change focus immediately. Convergence is the ability to keep both eyes working in unison as they track people or objects, such as a bus on the road.

Enhancing these eye-focusing skills can boost your ability to concentrate and refocus your vision quickly and more accurately so that you process moving objects quickly.

Want to strengthen your visual skills? Contact our optometrists today!

Omni Vision & Learning Center serves patients from Monticello, Maple Grove, St Cloud, and , all throughout Minnesota.

Q: What is sports vision training?

• A: Sports vision training is made of individually prescribed and monitored exercises aimed at developing specific visual skills and processing. These various customized activities and exercises retrain the brain to effectively interact with the eyes and improve vision functioning. This therapy consists of weekly in-office appointments and assigned daily exercises, ranging from several weeks to several months. The training involves close monitoring and follow-up appointments to ensure steady improvements in the patient’s visual functions.

Q: Who can benefit from sports vision training?

• A: Whether you play hockey or baseball or ride an e-scooter, sports vision training is perfect for anyone of any age and ability seeking to take their performance to the next level.

Sporting goods stores are full of gear that protects wrists, knees, heads and shins from the impact of a fast-moving ball or a spill from a skateboard.

Unfortunately, many athletes forget that their eyes are just as vulnerable to sports injuries.

Approximately 40,000 sports-related eye injuries occur every year, and many result in permanent vision loss.

The good news is that up to 90% of sports-related eye injuries are preventable if an athlete wears the correct protective eyewear.

At Omni Vision & Learning Center we can help you minimize your risk of incurring an eye injury by helping you choose the proper protective eyewear and improving your visual skills.

What is Protective Eyewear?

Protective eyewear is made of ultra-strong polycarbonate, which is very impact-resistant and also protects eyes from UV rays.

There are a variety of different types of protective eyewear for sports: face guards or masks, safety goggles and special eyewear designed for specific sports.

Your optometrist can provide protective eyewear with your prescription, or safety goggles that can be worn over your regular prescription glasses or contacts.

When Do I Need To Use Protective Eyewear?

Everyone, kids included, needs to use protective eyewear whenever practicing or playing a sport that comes with a risk of eye injury.

Some sports with a high risk of eye injury include:

• Basketball
• Boxing
• Wrestling
• Martial arts
• Fencing
• Hockey
• Baseball and softball
• Squash
• Shooting
• Archery

Other sports with a moderate risk of eye injury include:

• Golf
• Soccer
• Tennis
• Gymnastics
• Skiing

All sports, whether they put your eyes at high or low risk of injury, require some type of protective eyewear.

Preventing Sports Injuries with Sports Vision Training

Another effective way to prevent sports-related injuries — and not just eye injuries — is sports vision training. A customized program of eye exercises, sports vision training hones the visual skills needed to play a specific sport. This program teaches the eyes and brain to work together more efficiently and process information faster during a game or race, preventing injuries as a result.

Take peripheral vision as an example. Subpar peripheral vision makes it difficult for athletes to see players or a ball coming toward them from the side. Good peripheral vision lowers the risk of collisions and reduces the likelihood of injury while improving athletic performance.

Whether you play basketball, baseball or tennis, peripheral vision provides athletes with a wide view of the people and objects around them, beyond their central vision.

Studies have shown that football players who participated in a sports vision program sustained fewer concussions. Vision therapy can also help athletes improve their reaction time, processing speed and hand-eye coordination.

At Omni Vision & Learning Center, we offer safety eyewear and sports vision training to reduce your risk of injury and improve your vision. We treat any vision-related conditions you may have, so contact us to schedule an evaluation.

Omni Vision & Learning Center serves patients from Monticello, Maple Grove, St Cloud, and , all throughout Minnesota.

Q&A

 

Q: What is sports vision training?

• A: Sports vision training is an individualized program that consists of a variety of exercises designed to improve and treat visual function.

Q: Should I or my child wear protective eyewear even if we don’t wear prescription glasses?

• A: Yes! The American Academy of Ophthalmology recommends wearing protective eyewear for any sport where eye injuries can occur, even for athletes who don’t wear glasses or contacts. Studies show that protective eyewear does not affect a player’s sight and that some athletes play better because they are less afraid of suffering a serious eye injury.

Binocular vision is the ability to create a single image with both eyes while maintaining visual focus on an object. Sometimes our eyes fail to integrate visual information into one coherent image. This integration is important, as it allows athletes to perceive three-dimensional depth and relationships between people or objects, such as another player or a ball.

Since each eye is in a different position relative to any object, the eyes convey slightly different spatial information and send these varying images to the brain. The brain then uses the differences between the signals from the two eyes to accurately judge depth, speed, and distance.

When binocular vision isn’t operating at peak capacity, it impacts an athlete’s reaction time and the speed and accuracy of their movements.

Reduced binocular vision doesn’t mean that athletes are constantly falling over or fumbling. What it does mean, however, is that they may misjudge the velocity or direction of a ball, or collide more with other players.

How Does Reduced Binocular Vision Affect Athletes?

When our brain and eyes don’t work efficiently as a team, especially while playing sports, it can affect timing, depth perception, reactions, accuracy, and speed.

Visual deficits hinder how an athlete responds to what they see. If there is an issue with a player’s vision, there will most likely be an issue with their balance and body awareness.

Visual Skills Needed For Sports

There are many visual skills athletes need to perform their best during a game.

Accommodation – is the eyes’ ability to change their focus from distant to near objects and vice versa. For example, when a football player looks at other players coming toward them, then shifts focus to the ball on the field.

Binocular Vision – is the ability to maintain visual focus on an object, creating a single visual image with both eyes. Without binocular vision athletes cannot accurately measure distance and depth.

Depth Perception – is the ability to distinguish the distance to, or between, objects. This is important for athletes when they need to hit or interact with moving objects.

Dynamic Visual Acuity – the ability to see a moving object when a player is stationary, or when the object is still and the athlete is in motion. It’s the eyes’ ability to visually discern detail in a moving object, such as a player’s number on a jersey.

Peripheral Vision – is the ability to see objects and movement outside of your direct line of vision. This is important for athletes, especially when they need to run down a field and be able to see other players coming at them from all directions.

Saccades – quick, rapid, simultaneous eye movements between two or more stationary objects in the same direction. For athletes it’s important to be able to see stationary objects, such as a hoop at the end of the court.

Smooth Pursuits – reflexive eye movements that are required when tracking an object through an environment, such as a flying ball. Instead of the eye moving in jumps, it moves smoothly.

Sports Vision Training

Sports vision training can improve all the visual skills an athlete needs to succeed at their game. Even if an athlete has ‘20/20 eyesight’ they may still have reduced binocular vision, and sports vision can help improve any lagging visual skills. Sports vision is an individualized training program that focus on improving visual skills so that athletes can improve their performance.

The ability to enhance an athlete’s sports vision skills is a proven way to improve performance. To learn more about how sports vision training can help you reach your goals, contact us at Omni Vision & Learning Center today.

Omni Vision & Learning Center serves patients from Monticello, Maple Grove, St Cloud, and , all throughout Minnesota.

 

Q: What is sports vision training?

• A: Sports vision training is a customized program that improves the communication between your brain, eyes, and body. It helps athletes process information more accurately and react faster to what they see on the field.

Q: Why is sports vision training important?

• A: Athletes in visually demanding sports need to have exceptional visual skills. This is true for all sports, where the ability to focus, react quickly, and move fast can mean the difference not only between winning and losing, but between incurring an injury and staying safe.