Vision Therapy for Improved Sports Performance
Sometimes sports professionals reach a ceiling in their performance and they want that extra edge to out-perform their competition. Depending on their visual skills, sometimes vision therapy is able to help them get that extra edge by improving their visual skills. For example, Arizona All-Pro Wide Receiver Larry Fitzgerald attributes his ability to catch the ball with his eyes closed to having received vision therapy as a child.
Whether you are looking for something to give you that edge over your competition or just want to improve your game, optometric vision therapy may be just what you need. The first step would be a full visual skills evaluation to determine if any of the necessary visual skills are deficient or if you would benefit from enhancing your visual skills specifically for your sport.
Kids & Sports
Our visual skills play a vital role in our ability to play sports. Many of our patients find that their sports performance improves, even though they came to us for help with their difficulty with academics. The same types of vision disorders which can make reading and learning difficult can often interfere with sports performance.
For example, we have seen children who do well with T-ball, fall apart when it comes to baseball because the size of the ball is significantly smaller and harder for them to see. Once their vision problem is corrected, baseball becomes much easier.
Vision problems that impact sports performance can occur in children and adults. Therefore it becomes important that you know the signs to watch for.
Signs a vision problem may be interfering with your sports performance:
- Eye-hand coordination seems to be off
- Visual judgment (such as depth perception) seems to be less accurate than expected
- You tend to drift in and out of “the zone”
- Double vision, blurred vision, excessive blinking or watery eyes occur periodically throughout play
- You find it harder to follow a moving object than your teammates
- You squint a lot more often for near or far visual tasks
- During a game, you turn your head to use one eye rather than the other
- More practice doesn’t improve performance
- Sports which require the ability to aim at a target are harder
- You perform better in sports that don't require a ball or hockey puck
- You feel like your game or your timing is off
- Trouble seeing the ball
- Difficulty seeing the space where the goal is or where the players are
- You are finding your anticipation is off
- Trouble visualizing the play in advance
