Many people still consider sports eyewear to be just another accessory. But professional and Olympic athletes know the advantages of finding the right kind of eye protection. Eye injury is easily prevented. So use these tips to make sure you are buying the best kind of eyewear for your best performance ever!
Sports eyewear: not just a fashion accessory!
What do tennis star John McEnroe, Tour de France winner Jan Ullrich, Canadian Olympic gold-medal snowboarding champion Ross Rebagliati, skateboarding superstar Mike Fraser and surfing sensation Tom Curran all have in common? They all wear protective sports eyewear in both training and competition to maximize their performance. And so should you!
Serious athletes know how important their eyesight is. Every day they train, they know they must work to enhance their eye-hand-body coordination. Good coordination starts with good vision. Eye-hand-body coordination is the way your hands, feet, body and muscles react to the information gathered by your eyes. Your eyes determine speed, timing and mind-body control. When split seconds can make all the difference in performance and safety, speed of reaction is crucial. The ability to discern details and obstacles in a competitive environment makes all the difference. The technology behind sports eyewear and eye protection has been designed with today’s athletes in mind and with their expert participation. Manufacturers of sports eyewear now use materials proven to meet exacting specifications of weight, and resistance to temperature, wind, light and impact. And they have created some very hot colors and designs to choose from!
Unfortunately, many people view sports eyewear as just another sports fashion accessory. Perhaps the most unfortunate fact is that young people who play sports often do not wear any form of protection. But safety awareness should start young, so that it becomes second nature by the time you get to the big leagues. In fact, many professional and Olympic athletes will tell you that protective eyewear may just be your ticket to the big leagues!
Whether it is a finger, an elbow or any other object you don’t see coming, being prepared for the worst will help you play your best. Consider this: a child learning to play squash can strike a ball at 80 mph. A professional baseball player throws balls at 95 mph. A badminton shuttlecock can travel at up to 140 mph. And did you know there is more energy behind a squash ball than in a .22 caliber bullet because the weight of a squash ball gives it extra momentum? Sports eyewear can save your eyes.
Aren’t eye injuries a one-in-a-million thing?
Eye injuries are one of the most frequently reported injuries in hospital emergency wards. And some 90% of injuries sustained from sports are entirely preventable. Yet, many athletes have been forced to give up their careers because of eye injuries. Unlike other parts of our body, damage to the eye is very often permanent. A seemingly minor eye injury can cause retinal detachment, legal or total blindness. Bleeding (hyphema) can occur inside the eye and may lead to glaucoma in later years. This kind of condition has to be checked every year by an eyecare specialist for the rest of the life of the patient. Many other things can happen to our eyes. But you get the idea! Our eyes are truly fragile organs and must be properly protected.
But I already have polycarbonate lenses!
You only get one pair of eyes, but you may need more than one pair of glasses to protect them! Polycarbonate lenses are 7.6 times more shock resistant than regular plastic lenses and are the best-known material for resisting impact. That means your everyday glasses will probably last you a good long time. But glasses used for everyday correction may be ground very thin in the center and will not protect you from the kind of high impact that many sports involve. Sports eyewear is made thicker and more resistant to impact and adverse conditions.
There are three main categories of protection in sports eyewear:
1. protection from impact;
2. protection from UV radiation and glare;
3. protection from other environmental irritants.
The current market categories of sports eyewear include the following:
- sturdy frames with polycarbonate lenses for non-contact sports
- sports frames that may include features such as padded or rubber bridges, a face-fitted shape that provides a wider field of view, and deep grooves in the frame to ensure that lenses remain in the frame if they are hit hard
- all-in-one frames with prescription or non-prescription polycarbonate lenses for sports with projectiles (usually balls)
- protective goggles appropriate for swimming, waterskiing, snow skiing, scuba diving and skydiving
- eye-face guards that can be worn over glasses for football, hockey, lacrosse and other high-risk sports and that should be designed to dissipate any impact
Eyewear that fits and works!
Prescription sports eyewear must fit perfectly and should be readjusted right away if there is any problem. Make sure your eye doctor checks to see that the lens is close enough to your eye to provide adequate vision correction. Whether you get glasses or goggles, a strap should secure the frame to your head and should also be fitted by a qualified professional. In many cases, a chin strap can be added to provide optimal protection.
If your current eye protector is damaged or yellowed with age, it may have become weakened. Show it to your eye doctor, and ask what kind of protection is best for you and your particular sport.
Overall, contacts give athletes better peripheral vision and depth perception than glasses. Large-diameter lenses are used by professional baseball players and are excellent for scanning field and keeping everything in focus within a wide range. In fact, baseball superstar Mark McGuire uses an impressive variety of lenses to achieve optimal vision at the plate — with results that speak for themselves!
But contact lenses will not protect your eyes from sports injuries. In fact, when a hard contact breaks, it can badly scratch or cut your cornea and may even become lodged in your eye. Hard contacts can also become dislodged or get dirt trapped underneath them.
Only specially fitted sports eyewear will protect your eyes as they should be in a sports context. If you prefer to wear contacts in your chosen sport, eye doctors recommend that nonprescription polycarbonate eye protection such as glasses, goggles, visors or shields be worn as well to protect both your eyes and your contacts from harm.
Here are some helpful guidelines to keep in mind when you are shopping for sports eyewear. Whether you need prescription or non-prescription eyewear, insist on products that fit your face and suit your needs.
Tennis, badminton, racquetball, squash and ping-pong
Racket sports account for a very high percentage of sports injuries since balls, rackets and people are all traveling at top speed within highly limited areas of play. Clear polycarbonate glasses or goggles for indoor racket sports and brown-tinted eyewear for outdoor racket sports made with prescription lenses will enhance your reaction time and the accuracy of your movements while protecting you from potential serious injury!
Basketball, volleyball and soccer
A stray finger or ball are the main cause of injury when playing these sports, all of which should be played with goggles. Goggle frames should hug your face to protect you from all oncoming objects, big or small. The lens part of your goggles should be made of polycarbonate. Make sure your frames are made of polycarbon and cover your entire eye socket (not just the eyeball). Frames with temple attachments may be dangerous if they are jammed in the wrong direction. So secure your frames with an elasticized sports band rather than temple attachments, so they stay put!
Baseball, rugby and football
In these rough-and-tumble sports, most injuries to the eye are related to the ball hitting a player, or blocking by fellow players and the intrusion of their various body parts. To withstand the considerable impact of balls and other foreign bodies, regulation helmets are a must, along with polycarbonate eye protection. Shield designs with plastic temple pieces and a continuous polycarbon frame-lens are becoming increasingly popular.
For casual weekend games, you may choose to wear goggles with your helmet. Make sure that goggle frames are made of polycarbon and that lenses are made of polycarbonate material. If contact lenses are preferred for vision correction, soft contacts are recommended, but should be worn with polycarbonate eye protection as your first line of defense!
Swimming
If you spend a lot of time in chlorinated pools, you should know that chlorine is a corrosive substance that can eat away at your cornea, the eye’s outer window. Depending on how much time you spend in the water, symptoms of this problem can range from itchy, irritated eyes to temporary blindness.
Contact lenses pose another problem in pools. Some people who wear contact lenses swim with their eyes closed for fear of losing their contacts. It goes without saying that this is a dangerous practise. But if you open your eyes in a swimming pool while wearing contacts, you may trap microorganisms found in the water and risk eye infections.
Well-fitted goggles with a water-tight seal will protect your eyes and contacts in both chlorinated pools and in open water outside. Your goggles can be made for your prescription for better vision underwater. Tinted goggles are not recommended for indoor use, but are indispensable in bright, sunny conditions.
Outdoor water sports
Surfing, jet skiing, waterskiing
A hard fall in any of these sports can cause plastic goggles to break or shatter and cause eye injury. So get shatter-proof polycarbonate goggles. Did you know that UV radiation is actually magnified when it reflects off water? For your comfort and safety in outdoor water sports, look for polarized lenses. You will find that your eyes relax more easily since these lenses can absorb 98% of glare from the surface of the water. Prescription lenses with antireflective coating will further improve the sharpness of your vision on the water.
As with sports in chlorinated pools, sports in salt water can cause eye strain, fatigue and temporary blindness. To protect the eyes against the corrosive effects of salt water, the seal on goggles should fit to the bone around the eyes rather than inside the eye socket. If you notice that your goggles are causing “raccoon eyes” it is because they are resting on your eye socket instead of the bone around your eye and cutting off circulation.
Ask a sales person for help in fitting your goggles. If the fit is good, no gaps should be visible between the goggles and your face. Before you get a prescription for goggles, make sure that the brand you have chosen is available with a prescription lens, and take your goggles home to test them and make sure the fit is perfect for your needs.
Skiing and snowboarding
In skiing and snowboarding, most eye injuries occur because the wrong kind of eye protection was worn or because no protection was worn at all. Some ski goggles may look attractive, but will they perform the way you want them to on the slopes? When you take a fall, you need to know that your eyes will be adequately protected from low branches and from your own equipment. If your lens or frames shatter on impact in a serious fall, the pieces may enter your eye and could cause permanent damage.
Polycarbonate lenses with plastic frames fare better in the cold than any other material. Metal frames may become brittle and snap. So look for polycarbonate goggles with plastic frames, anti-fog flow-through ventilation, 100% UV filtering and antireflective coatings inside. You will be amazed how much better you see the contours of the snow when glare is eliminated. With prescription goggles, you won’t have the worry of wearing glasses or contact lenses underneath.
Cycling — road and mountain
Wind and debris are the main culprits in obscuring the vision of cyclists.
When you are rolling down at 90 km per hour, you will want to protect your eyes with aerodynamic polycarbonate eyeglass frames and glasses that stay in place, especially for mountain biking. An elasticized strap will help your glasses hug your face so that you can concentrate on avoiding those pot holes, rocks and other hazards.
Light or yellow-tinted glasses with antireflective coatings are recommended for evening riding because they maximize the amount of light reaching the eye. For sunny conditions, brown or grayish tints are best. Lenses that change color with lighting conditions may also be appropriate.
Golf
Severe eye injuries are rare in the game of golf. But that doesn’t mean your eyes don’t need protection! Golf visors will partially protect your eyes from the sun and should be combined with glasses with full UV protection and antireflective coatings. Not only will glasses protect your eyes throughout the game, they will also help you distinguish the greens from the fairways for more holes-in-one!
If you have bifocal lenses, you can give yourself another competitive edge with progressive lenses. Thanks to the aspheric lens design of progressive lenses, the transition between all viewing areas is smooth and distortion-free. You will notice that eyestrain is minimized and your game improves significantly with progressive lenses.
Hunting and archery
In sports that involve shooting, it goes without saying that mistakes can have dire consequences. For this reason, any shooting-sport enthusiast should wear protective eyewear with prescription adjustments for sharper vision, safety from stray particles or bullets, protection from branches and improved performance overall.
Specialty features such as flip sunglasses with can help adjust to varying light conditions in wooded areas. Yellow or light tinting will help acuity and aim in overcast or darker conditions, while brown or gray tints are ideal for brighter settings.
The next time you see your eye doctor for an examination, tell him or her about your sports and leisure activities. No matter what the activity, you may be able to enhance your performance and give you and your family a little peace of mind.
For more information
Contact lenses: http://www.iglobal.com/CLC/clc-02.htm
Eye-hand-body coordination: http://www.aoanet.org/
One-eyed athletes: http://www.healthatoz.com/
Manufacturers’ tests: http://www.2020mag.com/Issues/1999/jun/technology.htm
Polycarbonate lenses: http://www.essilor.ca/
Sources
http://www.2020mag.com/Issues/1998/Apr/technology.htm
http://www.eyesite.ca/info/03a-safe.html#anchor701964
http://www.healthatoz.com/
http://www.2020mag.com/Issues/1998/Apr/sportingnews.htm
http://www.2020mag.com/Issues/1999/Jul/childs.htm
