Did you see this interview with last year's NBA MVP, point guard Stephen Curry?  Curry is not only one of the NBA's best shooters, but his ball handling skills make him an elite passer and give him the ability to create his own shot (which is probably going in, let's face it).  One of the key aspects to Curry's off-court training is his sports vision/vision therapy program.  Check out his flashing light drill where Curry has to respond to different colored lights on a screen while dribbling a ball.

via

The degree of difficulty of Curry's sports vision training is astonishing.  While dribbling he responds to different cues from colored lights.  One color of light tells him to switch his handle and he has to reach out and touch the trigger with his opposite hand, all while maintaining his dribble of course.  A different color might signal a crossover dribble, or a pass to someone standing to his side.  Sometimes this same person standing off to the side in Curry's peripheral vision is holding up different numbers of fingers that Curry must call out correctly, yes, all while dribbling and still responding to the flashlights.  These peripheral players may even toss him back a pass from time to time that he needs to catch between his flashlight responses.  Sound overwhelming?  Many vision therapy specialists support the idea that these skills are difficult but trainable -- visual awareness, reaction time, hand/eye coordination, peripheral visual processing, etc.  Some of us might be innately better than others, but all of us can improve if we practice and "build" these skills.  And the great thing about sports vision training is that it can be completely customized to your sport, your position, and your personal strengths and weaknesses.  Just search vision therapy or sports vision specialist optometrists in your area and you can find a doctor who can help you develop your skills too -- be it for better classroom performance, on-the-field performance, or both.

How good is good enough?  This is a question that many athletes find themselves wondering when it comes to eyesight.  Today's optometrists and ophthalmologists are investigating the challenges and demands of sports vision -- what advantages does perfect eyesight give to the world's best athletes, and how much of eyesight or visual performance is trainable?  With a ton of new research being produced, we may be able to maximize athlete's innate ocular abilities to give them the best chance to succeed in their field.

Correcting Vision to it's Maximum Potential

Pelli Robson Low Contrast chart--another measurement of vision performance.  Sometimes your eye's ability to detect contrast is poor, but your eyesight with the normal Snellen chart (that 20/20 measurement we all get with routine eye exams) is quite good.  Sports Vision specialists look at all areas of visual peformance, not just letters on one type of chart!  via

We all know that perfect vision is 20/20, but what if you could see better than that?  Many professional athletes see 20/15, 20/10 and even a shocking 20/8 (the best vision ever recorded by a human).  If you naturally are so genetically blessed to have 20/20 vision without needing glasses or contact lenses, but could get help to see 20/10, would it matter  in making you into a professional athlete?  Dr. Mike Peter's excellent book, See to Play discusses the disproportionately better vision that professional sports athletes have to the rest of the population.  So if you want to have your best chance of athletic success, correcting your eyes to their maximum potential may help get you there.

Depending on your sport, contact lenses, tinted sports goggles (especially great in baseball where a tint can help enhance the appearance of a white ball against blue sky or green field), or even LASIK or refractive surgery correction can help your eyes overcome any uncorrected prescription.  Contact lenses have often given athletes issues -- poor comfort, falling out during games.  Today's new generation of daily lenses are so thin that comfort is less of a problem than ever, and lenses like Ciba's Dailies Total 1 are a great option for someone needing high moisture content, but a lens that likes to stay on the eye (sometimes it is even hard for people to remove on purpose).  Maybe with a bit of help you can see that 20/10 or even 20/8 line.  What does that mean to you?  You are seeing a ball, a player, or any other target that much sooner than someone with 'perfect' 20/20 vision standing beside you.  This level of clarity is going to enable you to react faster, because you are seeing things much sooner than anyone else on the field!

Dr. Terry Kim of Duke (I am so lucky to have mutual patients with him in the Raleigh/Durham area!) was the doctor who brought Parker back to perfect vision by convincing him, yes contact lenses can help on and off the court!

A great recent example of how much vision matters on the basketball court is Duke's Jabari Parker.  Parker is nearsighted, but refused to wear his glasses or contact lenses growing up.  When he got to Duke, his vision was an atrocious 20/50 in the right eye, and 20/150 in the left.  In case you are wondering, no that is not legal driving vision.  But he had been successful enough to get recruited by Duke to play basketball with blurry vision, so how much of a difference did wearing his contact lenses make to his game?  Interviews with Duke coaches and staff suggest that Parker is now seeing cues from the sidelines without having to walk over to the bench during the game, able to read his teammates facial expressions for better on court interactions, and of course, able to perform better in the classroom where there has been a significant improvement in the ease with which he is able to study and perform classwork without headaches.  Did I mention he could now legally get a driver's license and operate a motor vehicle again?

But are there some advantages to blurry vision too?

That's an argument that might seem counter intuitive, but blurry may have some unrealized perks.  Take for example Olympic ice skater Jason Brown who ditches his glasses on the ice so that his blurry vision can let him focus on his own skating, instead of the crowd or judges.  A surprising result was also found in a study of basketball players with poor vision performed by optometrist Dr. Raymond Applegate.  He found a slight improvement in free throw percentage in players with 20/20 vision versus 20/40 (but statistically too small to be significant), but really no difference in made free throw success with vision of 20/40 to 20/250.  At a certain point, blurry was blurry and the amount of blur no longer mattered.

Imagine trying to focus on the rim with this circus in the background. Blurring that peripheral mess out is a skill that sports vision optometrists can help train!  via

Why did blurry vision have so little apparent affect on free throw shooting?  Perhaps it harkens to a sports vision training skill known as "the quiet eye".  Imagine shooting a free throw in game -- all those yelling fans, floating heads, balloons, and other shenanigans.  The "quiet eye" technique has players focus on just 1 point of the rim, and purposefully "blur out" the rest of their visual field.  In free throw shots, focus on just the one target is what matters, and the ability to ignore all else is actually helpful. Players with uncorrected vision didn't have to practice this technique; they could only focus on one point clearly anyway!  But if Dr. Applegate's study had had other measurables, wouldn't clear vision have been helpful on spotting that perfect entry pass, or reading someone's eyes for that steal?  Of course.  The best line of action is to make your vision perfect, and then train your eyes to focus on what you need.  That's the beauty of sports vision therapy!  Maximize the eyesight you have, and then train you on how to get your eyes to process the world depending on that particular moment's needs.

In future posts I hope to feature more sports vision topics and how optometrists and eye care specialists are helping future athletes achieve their dreams.  If you are interested in learning more, please head over to Dr. Mike Peter's blog about sports vision, and pick up his book See to Play for a more in depth understanding of how today's science can maximize the vision of tomorrow's sports stars.

Growing up, I always just thought that my vision was what it was.  I'm sure most of you felt the same way:  I needed glasses so I had "bad" eyes.  But with glasses (or eventually contact lenses) I could see 20/20 again, so I was "artificially" perfect again.  Everything seemed that simple.  You read the 20/20 line, you pass the test.

Photo via wikipedia.  Without glasses, vision for people with one, two, or three units of near sightedness get's markedly blurry.  With glasses, even people with near sightedness (or myopia) will see the clarity of the chart on the far left.  Even with the best prescription, most people will not be able to see any lines under the red line, which denotes perfect vision.  20/20 is considered "perfect" vision, but some people can see things even smaller than this!

But imagine if you could see even better than "perfect".  Fellow optometrist, Dr. Mike Peters, explores just that in his new article with Men's Health detailing the relationship between visual performance and athletic performance. Some humans actually have the ability to see far beyond perfect 20/20-- in fact the best recorded human visual acuity is 20/8.  Imagine how much faster you would read the exit sign on the highway, or see a ball coming your direction from across the field.  Not surprisingly, the best professional athletes tend to have superb visual acuity, not to mention phenomenal depth perception and  reaction times.

So the best athletes tend to have excellent vision, but were they just born with these supernatural gifts?  Even just a few years ago, many clinicians would have answered yes, at least in part, to this question.  In the past few decades, great advances have been made in the field of vision therapy, and we are finding that your vision and visual abilities can be trained and developed just like any other skill set.  As a child, every day you are learning to use your eyes and gaining better control.  We don't start out seeing 20/20 (typically it is more like 20/80 by 1 year of age); our brain, our eyes, everything must grow to work together.  You don't just see because you have eyes; you have to learn vision just like your learn how to walk.  We used to think development of vision occurred only in childhood, but we are learning that this process doesn't just stop in elementary school.  We can continue to help train the brain and eyes to improve visual function and performance.  You won't train yourself out of needing glasses, but you can train your eyes to focus faster, have better depth perception, and process the images that you see much more quickly.  This is vision therapy.

Sound interesting?  Talk with your eye care provider to see if they offer vision therapy or sports vision services.  More and more optometrists are specializing in this field, so even if your doctor doesn't offer vision therapy, they will be able to refer you to someone who does.   Visit covd.org for more information!