Vision Therapy For Sports Person
Play is an essential part in the emotional as well as physical development of a child and it encourages motor skills such as climbing, jumping, walking, catching and facilities such as hand-eye, eye-foot coordination. Vision provides the signal that is require directing the muscles of the body to respond. The legendary football coach Blanton Collier once credited that ‘the eye leads the body’ .Vision provides the athlete with the regarding where and when to perform. Superior size, strength, speed and agility cannot completely make up for inefficient processing of visual information.
Vision therapy is highly effective non-surgical treatment for many common visual problems such as lazy eye, crossed eyes, double vision, convergence insufficiency and some learning and reading disabilities. Steps in vision therapy programs for sport person
- Sport vision task analysis
- Visual skills
- Sports vision which includes
- Visual spatial perception
- Visual processing speed
- Visual reaction and response speed
- Eye hand coordination
- Eye body coordination
- Peripheral vision.
Along with the vision therapy, assessment of the following aspects is also important
- Proper history
- Visual acuity
- Refraction
- Squint assessment
- Functional vision (contrast sensitivity, Color vision)
- Body balance
- Glare recovery
- Eye dominance, cross dominance.
About the game
Snooker is a cue sport that is played on large baized-covered table with pockets in each of the four corners and in the middle of each of the long side cushions. A regulation table of 12×6 feet is used. It is played using a cue, one whit ball (a cue ball), 15 red balls (worth 1 point each), and 6 balls of different colors (worth 2-7 points each). A player wins a frame of snooker by scoring more points than a opponent, using a cue ball to pot the red and colored balls. A match consists of previously agreed number of frames.
At the start of the frame the balls are positioned, and player take it in turns to hit a shot, their aim being to pot one of the red balls and score a point. If they do pot a red ball, that red ball remains in the pocket and they are allowed another shot- this time the aim being to pot one of the colored balls. If unsuccessful, the must try to pot another red ball. This process continues until they fail to pot desired ball, at which point their opponent arrives back to the table to play the next shot. The game continues in this manner until all reds are potted and only colored balls are left on the table. Finally, all the colored balls are potted, and the frame is over. The player with maximum points wins. Thus, the main action of the game is repetitive and spread over a span of time. It is therefore a controlled sport, requires a lot of patience.
Snooker is highly dependent sport requiring almost equal levels of aiming and depth perception and with a particular consideration of eye dominance. When viewing the entire playing surface, the player generally steps back from the table to assess their next shot. One they address their shot at table, the visual need is similar to sighting down rifle barrel. The player focuses at the end of the cue stick, the cue ball and aims the ball at which he is shooting. Then he again anticipates the distance of the ball from the hole where he intends to pot into. In this respect aiming predominates the anticipation, although anticipation is very important.
The outline of other elements of visual needs is as under:
- Visual Acuity- requires good dynamic and static visual acuity and good contrast sensitivity
- Fusion and Stereopsis
- Eye-hand-body coordination
- Accommodative facility
- Fusion vergence demand
- Oculomotor skills (saccades and pursuits).
- Dynamic visual acuity
In snooker, a stationary ball is at rest and propel towards a stationary target. Static visual acuity is more important than dynamic visual acuity. Any uncorrected refractive error may affect the performance as this is highly a visually demanding sport where aiming an anticipation both are important. The game is usually played on table with the green base and red ball, white ball, black balls.
There is a good contrast between the object and the object and their background. Color identification of balls is important to score points in this sport which establishes the implications of color vision in snooker. Assessment and visual resolution training can be done by rotating PEG board.
Fusion and stereopsis
Binocular vision is predisposing factor for the peak performance in snooker. Binocular vision facilitates aiming and depth perception which are very critical in snooker. It also provides vision and reduces ocular fatigue in a day long match. Wider field of vision is another attribute to binocular vision.
Depth perception, probably the most important visual skill in snooker, provides valuable aid in estimating the distance between the object ball and the hole. If the player does not estimate the distance correctly, the player will have a tendency to either hit the ball too short or too hard and possibly too much to the left or right of the hole.
Eye-hand-body coordination
The player while playing snooker usually stands with his left foot slightly advanced, his left arm extended and resting on the table to form a bridge, and his body, not facing the table squarely, but forming an acute angle with the sides at which he stands.
All muscles of his limbs into their usual and most natural posture- as rigidity of the body Is all time awkward and ungraceful, and seriously interferes with the play. The cue, though allows to rest loosely in the hand at the time of drawing back, should be held firmly at the moment of contact with the ball; and in all strokes, except the “jump” and “perpendicular force”, the direction of the cue is maintained as much as possible in horizontal the striking motion should be confirmed to the arm, and chiefly to the lower division of it.
All these require huge amount of eye-hand-body coordination. Rock like stability of the body, firm fixation of the eyes with trombone like arm swinging are the grade essentials of success in snooker.
PEG board rotator can be used to improve eye-hand coordination and also for visual tactile training. Balance board can be used for therapy and assessment of eye body coordination.
Accommodative facility
The predominance of aiming requires good convergence and divergence facility in snooker and ability to shift focus from near to intermediate distance effectively is particularly linked with potting the ball.
The viewing distance in the snooker game varies with range of playing surface length, playing surface width and within the viewing distance is mostly confined within the distance from the shooting position to end of the cue stick.
The player viewing the ball, therefore, needs to accommodate somewhere between 0.25D to 1.50D. During the potting the player needs to converge constantly onto the cue stick, cue ball and then to object with an eye on the hole, which means long sustain vergence facility is also very critical in snooker.
Fusional vergence demand
The first goal of the therapy, therefore, is to teach the concept and feeling of converging. The person should be able to voluntarily converge and diverge to any distance from 5 cm (2in.) to 6 m (20ft.). Because in snooker player tries to shot any ball to pot, he has to look at that ball as well as to that pot to take the judgments to shot.
Oculomotor skills
The snooker player must be able to maintain steady fixation while hitting the cue. Any disruption in the fixation ability will severely affect the performance. The ability to focus properly on the cue ball and target is very essential in making good contact with the cue stick and the cue ball. Fine focusing techniques can help both in hitting the sweet shot and sliding the smoother hit into the pocket.
Vision therapy for oculomotor skills is carried out with 3 phases. Computers are ideally suited for created stimuli and variability necessary for vision therapy techniques. During this first phase, random eye movements and large angle eye movements from Computer aided vision therapy software or pursuits and saccades from the Computer orthoptic vision therapy software.
