Athletes must use several training regimens targeting different aspects to improve their performance. They use various training methods like healthy diets, weightlifting, and trying out different strategies. Another aspect of athletic training that is key is sports vision training.
Over the past few years, sports vision training has become an essential part of training for many athletes. It is a great way to improve your performance as an athlete. Sports vision training can improve athletic aspects like reaction time with the proper techniques and equipment.
Improve Vision And Boost Performance
About 80 percent of all sensory input in an athlete comes from the eyes. Good eyesight is a great advantage; however, you need other visual skills to help you perceive better. For instance, you need specific training to determine the speed of a ball going through the air. You also need the training to spot things quickly in the peripheral.
Sports vision training improves specific aspects of vision to boost the performance and abilities of an athlete. Sports vision training works on the following visual skills:
- Hand-eye Coordination: It determines the coordination of the athlete’s arms and what they see. It directly impacts grasping, reaching, hitting, and passing in any sport using balls.
- Dynamic Visual Acuity: This skill helps the athlete spot moving objects and track them as they move through the air.
- Peripheral Vision: Peripheral vision is the ability to see out of the side of the eye. It is an important skill when you are in a big field. It helps widen the field of an athlete’s vision.
- Eye Focusing: It is a skill that improves the accuracy, strength, and flexibility of the eye’s focusing ability. It is essential to keep your eyes focused on an object and change focus quickly when playing.
- Visual Reaction Time: It refers to the time it takes for an athlete to respond to visual stimuli. Improving this skill will boost the speed of reaction to things the athlete sees when playing.
- Visual Tracking: It is the visual ability to move your eyes while maintaining focus on a single object. It is a skill that impacts reaction time, fluidity, and speed when playing.
Sports Vision Training Exercises
There are several exercises that an athlete can engage in to improve their visual abilities. Here are some of those exercises:
Focus Flexibility
It is an exercise that engages your ability to shift your focus between objects at varying distances. You do not need any special equipment to do this exercise. You only need to use your environment to train.
Peripheral Awareness
You can practice this skill at home or outside without special software. You can try to observe different scenes at the park or on the field using the right or left side of your face. Software is used to help improve sports vision through specific exercises. The software used by professional sports vision trainers yields excellent results for athletes.
For more on sports vision training, visit Village Optical at our New Hyde Park, New York office. Call (516) 352-2316 to schedule an appointment today.
