Vision Therapy for Sports Performance
Sports Performance and Vision Disorders
Whether you are looking for something to give you that edge over your competition or just want to improve your game, optometric vision therapy may be just what you need. The first step would be a full visual skills evaluation to determine if any of the necessary visual skills are deficient or if you would benefit from enhancing your visual skills specifically for your sport.
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Sometimes sports professionals reach a ceiling in their performance and they want that extra edge to out-perform their competition. Depending on their visual skills, sometimes vision therapy is able to help them get that extra edge by improving their visual skills. For example, Arizona All-Pro Wide Receiver Larry Fitzgerald attributes his ability to catch the ball with his eyes closed to having received vision therapy as a child.
Kids & Sports
Our visual skills play a vital role in our ability to play sports. Many of our patients find that their sports performance improves, even though they came to us for help with their difficulty with reading. The same types of vision disorders which can make reading and learning difficult can often interfere with sports performance.
For example, we have seen children who do well with T-ball, fall apart when it comes to baseball because the size of the ball is significantly smaller and harder for them to see. Once their vision problem is corrected, baseball becomes much easier.
Vision problems that impact sports performance can occur in children and/or adults. Therefore it becomes important that you know the signs to watch for.
Signs a vision problem may be interfering with your sports performance:
- Eye-hand coordination seems to decrease throughout the game
- Visual judgment (such as depth perception) seems to be less accurate after you get tired and have played for a while
- You tend to drift in and out of “the zone”
- Double vision, blurred vision, excessive blinking or watery eyes occur periodically throughout the game
- You find it harder to follow a moving object than your teammates
- Your squint a lot more often for near or far visual tasks
- During a game, you turn your head to use one eye rather than the other
- More practice doesn’t improve performance
- Sports which require the ability to aim at a target are harder
- You perform better in sports with larger balls, no balls or hockey pucks at all
If your child displays any of these symptoms, an undetected, underlying but treatable vision problem may be contributing to the problem.
WJZ-TV Healthwatch on How Vision Therapy helped our patient who was labeled as “Lazy” 
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Our patient's reviews and successes!
"My son has been receiving vision therapy for approximately 4 weeks and we are seeing improvements in his reading/decoding abilities. The office staff are so welcoming and accommodating. Dr. Kotlicky was very thorough and explained results in great detail".
"Finally I understand what's happening with my child when she says she's struggling with reading. Friendly receptionist, comfortable visit. The doctor made my daughter feel very comfortable throughout."
"Kind, patient, caring man, who really listened to my daughter and me. At age 5, we did our initial visit and exam, since as her Mom, I had convergence issues. The results implied we should come back at age 8 to re-examine since some "issues" came up. Well we returned at age 8, and her exam revealed no need for vision therapy! That proves an honest doctor to me. He could have easily steered the ship another direction if he weren't honest."
"After years of trying other band aid approaches to clarifying my son's learning issues, we have found the root of the problem."
“Has fewer headaches, less double vision and wants to read!” 8 year old
“8 weeks of vision therapy has done more than all 3 years of tutoring. Since Harry started therapy he has had more confidence in himself. After 12 visits, he started reading out loud to us, which he hated to do before. According to Harry, the words have stopped moving around and they don’t go upside down anymore. He writes neater and is enthusiastic about participating in class.” 10 year old
“His reading is much more fluid – he can read longer before losing his place or becoming fatigued. He is also beginning to improve in his comprehension of math problems – even doing some independently, which never happened prior to VT.” 8 year old
