Vision plays an extremely important role in sports and athletic activities. It is thought that visual performance is one of the critical factors in the complex equation that defines sports performance ability. In any sport, reflexes must be fast and the eyes accurate. Olympic athletes receive training not only in the physical and mental skills needed for their particular sport, but also in visual skills. The Visual Fitness Institute at the University of Utah has developed vision testing and training protocol for Olympic athletes with the goal of improving their competitive performance levels. This protocol is based on the data gathered from the Olympic Vision Centers established at the Albertville, Barcelona, and Lillehammer Olympic games. The athletes and coaches involved in the program who were at first skeptics have now seen the effectiveness and benefit to athletic performance.
In humans, vision provides 80% of our sensory perception, the other 20% comes from hearing, smelling, taste and touch. Vision skills used by athletes include dynamic visual acuity, eye tracking, eye/body coordination, depth perception, visual reaction time, peripheral vision, focus flexibility and visual memory. It is believed by many that optimizing these visual processing skills gives an athlete an added advantage in sports performance.
Here's what those components are and how they work.
Visual Acuity is how we measure the resolution of what an eye can see. Most people are able to obtain 20/20 or better, with or without corrective lenses. Visual acuity is typically measured static. This means stationary, like sitting in a chair in your eye Dr.'s office. Dynamic visual acuity is how well the eye sees either while the athlete is moving or the object is moving. Often times, both are moving.
In order to see a moving object, it is also important to be good at eye tracking. Eye Tracking describes how the eye, controlled by the mechanisms of the brain, can follow or track a moving object. Eye tracking helps maintain better balance and lets the athlete react to the situation more quickly.
Depth Perception is how visual information or cues in the field of view allows a person to judge the distance things are from them.
Eye/Body Coordination is how the body reacts to information gathered through the eyes. This coordination affects timing and body control. Without this, an athlete couldn't really perform.
Visual Reaction Time is the speed at which the athlete interprets and reacts to visual input. This happens constantly in sports.
Peripheral Vision is also very important as it allows a person to be aware of objects or movement not directly in front of them but to the side of what they are looking at.
Focus Flexibility is the eye's ability to change focus from near to far, and far to near. This must be done quickly and efficiently.
Lastly, Visual Memory processes and stores all visual information. The information is a complex picture of people and things. This information will be used over and over again during performance. An athlete with good visual memory always seems to be in the right place at the right time.
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