Contacts and Glasses That Enhance Performance

Sports vision specialists don't prescribe one type of eyewear for all athletes. Some people are better off with glasses, others with soft or rigid contact lenses.

What sports vision specialists do agree on is that corrective eyewear can have a profound effect on athletic performance. This is despite that "until now, we believed that the mental ability to predict, say, the trajectory of a ball, is more important than whether the ball is slightly blurred," says Geraint Griffiths MSc. Optom. A British optometrist, Griffiths was the lead researcher in a 2003 study* that had Wimbledon tennis players and U.K. national clay pigeon shooting champions artificially blur their vision with special goggles. The tennis players were then asked to return a ball at an archery target, while the marksmen had to shoot clay pigeons.

The lenses in this golf eyewear by 535s Sport Optics filter out red and blue light but let green light in. The result is more contrast and visual acuity in the green part of the spectrum, so objects on the course, such as the flag stick, stand out more. Click on photo for close-up.

With slightly blurred vision the tennis players returned 62 percent more balls off-target than normal, with 47 percent fewer bulls-eyes. Overall, the tennis players and marksmen showed a 25 percent worsening of performance.

Below are some pros and cons of different types of eyewear as used in sports.

In the United States, 38,000 sports-related eye injuries are reported each year, according to the Consumer Product Safety Commission. Many could have been prevented if the athletes had been wearing protective eyewear, such as safety goggles with polycarbonate lenses. Ski goggles are a must, and so are face shields (either "cages" or clear polycarbonate shields) for baseball or softball catchers, and hockey, football and paintball players.

Kids don't always like to wear safety eyewear, but parents and coaches should insist. All reputable paintball arenas require continuous wear of polycarbonate shields; they remove players who take them off, even for a second. And safety eyewear is a requirement for participation in Little League.

Never use "dress" eyeglasses during sports. Glasses made for street or office wear are not made to the same standard as safety eyewear and will probably not hold up under impact. Not only could they shatter or bend, but pieces of the lens or frame can cause eye or face injury.

Another danger during outdoor sports, even in winter, is ultraviolet light from the sun. UV light contributes to diseases such as cataracts and ocular tumors. You can also get a "sunburn" on your eye (called keratitis), which is very painful and can cause long-term damage to the cornea.

Skiers should always wear tinted goggles or sports sunglasses, since UV bounces off snow even on cloudy days; sailors, too, need protection from UV reflected off the water.

Some contact lenses offer extra UV blocking. When wearing them, also wear sunglasses, since these contacts cover only the center part of the eye and can't do anything for uncovered areas. Hats help, too, because they cover the top opening between sunglasses and your face.
 

Some tinted sports sunglasses enhance particular colors, such as yellow, by filtering other colors out. Specially tinted contact lenses, such as yellow-enhancing soft contacts and tinted RGPs, can do the same thing. (Don't confuse these light-filtering lenses with regular color contacts, which are tinted in order to change the color of your eyes, but don't affect the colors you see in the environment.)

Nike Hyperion III frames include two polycarbonate lens options, for sunny and flat light conditions. Also available with a golf tint lens option. Click on photo for close-up.

Yellow enhancement is particularly desirable in tennis, where balls are usually yellow. Other contact lenses enhance certain colors for golfers, skiers, trap-shooters and more; for example, the ones for golfers are tinted so that it's easier to distinguish between the various green colors on a golf course.

Some professional baseball players have used amber-tinted contact lenses to help filter out the blue light that reduces their ability to see the baseball clearly.

Amber or rose ski goggle lenses enhance the soft grays that mark shadows on a ski slope. Since these shadows indicate ridges or bumps in the surface, skiers "read" them to decide when to turn, so they won't catch an edge and fall.

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