Branching Out in a Very Cool Direction

During the time I've been working in Sports Vision, I have found that there is as much for me to learn from the athletes I work with as there is for me to teach them. Of course, this is the fun of doing what I do - learning, teaching, and sharing ideas with people of many different backgrounds, sports, and levels of experience.

Rick Alford is the owner of Defensive Edge Martial Arts Training in Wakefield, MA (less than a minute from my home) and we're having the greatest time learning from him. Rick has some fantastic ideas about how Gary and I can train martial artists more effectively, and we are really excited about working with him and some of the MMA fighters he trains.

Mixed martial arts has two components (striking and grappling) that are distinctly different from the standpoint of vision training. Striking (and defending against strikes) incorporate a greater visual component, while grappling is more highly tactile. We've been working with the Wayne Fixator and the smaller SVT board, and Rick's progress is astounding. Of course, his scores at the first visit were quite impressive, but yesterday he scored a 151 on the 9-14 routine on the WSF (counterclockwise spiral, accelerating.) I think it's the highest score we've seen yet on this routine, and he is narrowing the gap between his dominant and non-dominant hands.




















To celebrate Rick's new record, Gary snapped this photo of Rick, gleefully pointing to his score.

If you get the chance, check out Rick's site (http://www.modernjujitsu.com.) It's hard not to be impressed with his credentials, as well as those of his fellow instructors. It's been my pleasure to meet and get to know Rick and some of the people that work with him, and I'm looking forward to adding more news on this blog as we go.

Plans for WSF stand

I found the file that contains the plan for the WSF stand. Download it here. (Scroll down to where it says, "Dr. Rob's own design - Wayne Saccadic Fixator Stand."

I haven't given exact dimensions for all the holes, etc., but if you're skilled enough to build it, there should be no problem figuring it out, and if you end up with different hardware, things could end up in different places.

Enjoy!

Rack for Wayne Saccadic Fixator

I have received messages and comments from other Sports Vision practitioners, and one thing I think might be helpful would be to post a photo of the stand I made for the Wayne Saccadic Fixator. It was made of 6/4" x 4" poplar, available at Home Depot, and I used knockdown fasteners so it can be set up and torn down quickly.

In the photo, we see my lovely assistant, my daughter Leila, peeking out from under the WSF board.

I have used this stand several times in remote locations, and it has proven to be a sturdy but easily transported design. If there is interest, I can post dimensions and detail photos showing the various fasteners I used to make it easy to assemble and disassemble.

A Visitor From Down Under

On February 16, we were honored to receive Pierre Elmurr, Sports Vision Director of Primary Eye Care in the Sydney, Australia area, who is the inventor of the SVT Eye-Hand training board. The SVT has been used all over the world as a tool to improve eye-hand coordination and speed, and Pierre has done the research to prove its validity. (That's Pierre in the middle, with Dr. B. on the left and Gary on the right in the photo.)

Pierre brought our board with him on a trip which included a visit with family in the Boston area, a meeting with Dr. Dan Laby, ophthalmologist for the Red Sox, and a run down to Fort Myers to gather some data with the board at spring training. We can't begin to say just how much we enjoyed meeting Pierre, and how much he was able to teach us in just a short visit. We only hope we can take him up on his invitation to visit his facility in Sydney sometime.

This board differs from our other board, the Wayne Saccadic Fixator, in several ways; first, it is driven from software residing in a laptop, rather than firmware in the board itself, so it is very easy to update and upgrade the software. It also records data in real time, displays it in onscreen, and can save it in a spreadsheet for further analysis. It uses lights and pusbuttons, much like other boards, but you only need to press within the circle to create a response, and you use your whole hand, unlike other boards which require pressing of a small area with only one or two fingers; so it more closely mimics actual sports performance.

At this point, Gary and I are still learning the various routines the SVT offers, and how to use them. But we are sure that this new board, which is also readily transportable, will become and essential component of our program of sports vision training. And once again, the best part of all was that we had the chance to meet and talk with Pierre.

Larry Fitzgerald and Vision Training

A friend sent me a link to an article on Arizona Cardinals receiver Larry Fitzgerald, who credits his success in no small part to some vision training he had done as a child, under the direction of his grandfather, optometrist Dr. Robert Johnson.

The article is located here. It speaks for itself, and even quotes Joan Vickers, PhD, of the University of Calgary and leading researcher in the area of the Quiet Eye, explaining how Fitzgerald uses his eyes to capture data that his brain decodes to help him catch a pass.

He made some amazing plays in this past Sunday's Super Bowl, though the Cardinals fell to the Steelers in the final minutes.

Two Contact Lenses You Might Not Know About

This is a post directed to non-eye-care-practitioners, but all are welcome anyway. There are two lenses I've worked with (one for years, another I'm just beginning to work with) that most people have probably not heard about, and I'd like to introduce them.

First, the one I've been using a while: it's called the SynergEyes, and it's a true "hybrid" between a soft and hard lens. It's a soft lens with a hard center, or a hard lens with a soft flange (or "skirt"), depending on how you look at it. It's the size (diameter) of a soft lens, which is why it feels comfortable. A large lens will have less interaction with the inside of the lid, which is what causes smaller, hard lenses to be less comfortable.

Now when I say "hard center," let me be a little more precise. I'm really talking about a "rigid, oxygen-permeable" center, and these things transmit a whole lot of oxygen. A bit of history here: the SynergEyes is the third hybrid lens ever produced, and the first two (the Saturn and the Soft Perm, both of which I fitted in their day) were problematic mainly because they reduced the oxygen getting to the cornea, and because they tended to break at the junction between the soft and rigid parts. SynergEyes has solved both of these problems (bless their hearts!)

I use these lenses when soft toric ("astigmatic") lenses fail, which happens occasionally, and usually because the vision isn't good enough. Soft toric lenses will blur the vision if they rotate on the eye, and this can be quite a problem if you're trying to hit a 90 mph fastball or stop a puck traveling even faster than that.

Main point: I fit these because they provide sharper, crisper vision than we can sometimes get with soft lenses on patients with astigmatism, and it is for this reason that I'm mentioning them on a Sports Vision blog. (They also make even more specialized lenses for other situations.)

You can find out more at their own website, www.synergeyes.com.

The next lens I'd like to mention has drawn some strange looks from people when I start to explain it. It's a lens that re-shapes the front surface of the eye while you sleep, and it's called Paragon CRT (Corneal Refractive Therapy.) I promise, I'm not making this up!

The idea of reshaping the front of the cornea with a contact lens is nothing new. Long before I went into practice, it was known that hard lenses caused changes to occur whether we wanted them to or not. So there was a search to make these changes happen in a controlled and predictable way, in hopes of eliminating the need for a correction altogether. This process is called orthokeratology, and a diehard "ortho-K doc" would probably give a much longer (and better) definition than I just did; but mine works fine here.

These are rigid, oxygen-permeable lenses with very high oxygen transmission. We actually use the term RGP for Rigid Gas Permeable, because we not only want oxygen to get through the lens, we also want carbon dioxide to come out from behind it - and these lenses allow both gases to pass right through.

They are fairly large as RGP's go, so they remain centered on the eye during sleep (yeah, you really do wear these things to bed.) The center of the lens is fitted a bit flatter than the front of the eye, so the effect is to flatten the cornea, as is done with a laser when performing LASIK on a nearsighted person - except without surgery! The more correction we need, the more we flatten the front of the cornea, up to the limits within which these things work.

Their effect is not permanent, so if you stop wearing them, the eyes will return to their original shape. And there is even some work going on to determine if they help prevent further changes in the eyes of kids whose eyes are rapidly becoming more nearsighted with each passing year.

Why mention them in a SV blog? OK, here we go: they provide an alternative to laser vision correction for athletes who are either too young for laser (under 19 or so) or just don't want to have laser correction. They permit clear vision while wearing no lenses at all, so there is no worry about lenses falling out (and we all know that even soft lenses can fall out now and then - just ask Jacoby Ellsbury, or see my post of 8/24/08. BTW, a few soft lens wearers have echoed my reaction to that incident: "They should've let him put them in himself from the start.")

They are also good for athletes who have tried regular soft lenses but whose eyes are just too dry, and those who have trouble wearing lenses due to allergies.

For more information, you can check their site at www.paragoncrt.com.

P.S. I have a new site for my regular optometric practice: www.prattvilleeye.com.

I guess soft lenses do pop out after all...

During today's Red Sox game, Jacoby Ellsbury made a sensational catch - then slammed full-speed, face first, into a section of chain-link fence up at the Rogers Centre up in Toronto. He was down on the ground for a while, surrounded by teammates and trainers, one of whom retrieved a soft contact lens from the dirt of the warning track.

The trainer cleaned the lens with a rinsing solution, then tried three times to get the lens back in Jacoby's right eye. Three times it folded up, and goodness knows I've had that happen when trying to insert a contact lens in a patient's eye.

By this time, the fans in attendance were starting to express their impatience, as it had been several minutes (the total time of the delay was nine minutes.) Finally, Jacoby put it in his eye on the first attempt (no surprises here), and he was able to continue playing the game. He also had quite a bruise and a small cut above the eye from the sunglasses he was wearing when he hit the fence.

I guess the moral of the story (and my reason for including it here) is that soft lenses can and do come out of the eye, but generally only under pretty extreme conditions, and to mention that I actually had to fit a larger, tighter lens to a soccer player many years ago because he reported that his lenses tended to go flying when he headed the ball.

Of course, it also reminds me to mention that I have just begun to fit lenses that re-shape the eye to correct vision, and which are worn only while sleeping. They're called Paragon CRT (Corneal Refractive Therapy), and their website is www.paragoncrt.com. (More to follow on these.)