Sports and Vision: Are Your Eyes Helping or Hurting Performance?

                We love our sports in Georgia and the warm weather can bring many opportunities to participate in new athletic endeavors.  While our love for sports will often lead us to buy the latest and greatest golf driver or baseball bat to help us hit a ball farther; we often may neglect our most important piece of equipment; our eyes.    

Having the correct eyeglasses/contact lenses prescription is paramount in this effort and prescription eyewear must be kept up to date in order to properly see during any athletic activity.  It is also important to know which eye is your dominant eye to determine how to line up objects in your field of vision. The dominant eye processes information faster and often sees more clearly than the non-dominant eye as well.  About 80% of the population is same side dominant; for example Right Handed and Right Eye Dominant while approximately 20% of the population is cross dominant (i.e. Right Handed and Left Eye Dominant). 

Knowing your ocular dominance is particularly helpful in side on sports such as baseball and golf where the athlete stands to the side of the ball as they hit it.  In this situation, an athlete who is cross dominant such as a left eye dominant right-handed batter/golfer is thought to have an advantage because the dominant eye is closer to the action and able to better visualize the ball as they setup and swing. 

                One simple test to find out your dominant eye is to focus on an object across the room such as a light switch. Then make a circle of space between your hands just large enough to see the light switch through your hands from a distance of about 12 feet.  Once you have the light switch in focus between your hands with both eyes open, close one eye and then the other.  The eye that can still see the light switch within the circle made by your hands is your dominant eye. 

After determining your dominant eye, this information can aid your ability to perform in your sport.  In baseball a right-handed batter that is right eye dominant may need to better position his head in order to get his right eye around and better see the ball out of the pitcher’s hand.  There are many applications to this knowledge and a good place to start is a comprehensive eye exam with your eye care professional.