Proper eyesight improves athletic performance

June 18, 2010

There can be a lot of factors that go into being a successful athlete. While hard work and natural talent are certainly important, one of the biggest reasons for success, or failure, can be eyesight.

According to the American Optometric Association (AOA) performance in nearly every sport can be improved by better vision and each sport requires different vision skills such as hand-eye coordination and peripheral sight.

A study cited by AllAboutVision.com highlights the importance of eyesight in performance. The study found that tennis players who wore vision blurring goggles returned 62 percent more balls off-target than normal indicating it was vision - not technique - that made the difference.

"Until now, we believed that [an athlete's] mental ability to predict, say, the trajectory of a ball, is more important than whether the ball is slightly blurred," British Optometrist Geraint Griffiths told the source.

Although some might think a quick fix would be to wear normal glasses, that would be a big mistake, says the news source. Specially made sports eyeglasses offer the necessary protection that ordinary glasses do not.