Doctors estimate that up to 80 percent of the information we take in during sports comes from our eyes. But, according to Dr. Erickson, who has studied the impact of vision on sports performance and has worked with hundreds of athletes to maximize their vision for individual sports and lifestyle, different sports require different vision skills, such as visual clarity, good peripheral vision, central vision, depth perception, and visual motor processing. And in a sport like football, there are even different visual demands for each position.
“If you think of a lineman, peripheral vision and their ability to pick up and react to movement defines their success on the field beyond their strength and size,” he tells Dr. Val. “Quarterbacks and receivers need to have excellent distance vision and depth perception to pass or receive the ball, while running backs need a mix of central and peripheral vision to see the hole developing so that they can run through it.”
In addition to offering advice on how to keep eyes healthy for better performance, Dr. Erickson also shares some simple exercises that professional athletes, weekend warriors, and young competitors can do at home to get their attention more focused on their visual system.
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SOURCE VISTAKON(R) Division of Johnson and Johnson Vision Care, Inc.