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The Not So Silent Michelle Roark and Sports Vision

I came across an interesting article about how some players on the Edmonton Oilers hockey team are benefiting from vision therapy, but nobody wants to talk about it in effort to keep their competitive edge. 

Though we’ve worked with several world-class athletes that fit into this same ‘silent’ category, one athlete with whom we’ve worked for several years has been a huge proponent of the sports vision work we’ve done with her — Michelle Roark.  Michelle recently took home the gold in the women’s dual moguls at the 2008 SPRINT U.S. Freestyle Championships.   This is Michelle’s 11^th season on the U.S. Ski Team, in which time she’s landed on the podium more than 10 times – including five World Cup wins and a spot on the Olympic team.

As the article points out, not only can vision therapy and sports vision programs benefit skiers and hockey players, athletes involved in nearly any sport that demand quick reaction time, distance judgment, peripheral vision and balance can reap tremendous rewards.  Some of the more popular sports for which athletes benefit from vision therapy include baseball, golf, tennis, soccer, football (receivers and quarterbacks especially), basketball even NASCAR and Formula 1 drivers.  Who knows, maybe your favorite athlete has already completed a vision training/sports vision course in order to get that competitive edge… 

 Thanks again and congratulations to Michelle Roark. 

Vision Enhancement and Visual Therapy Overview

Though my years of practicing visual therapy and vision enhancement, I’ve found that many people are not familiar with the practice, so I thought a quick overview would be a good starting point…  

Vision is a learned process and therefore trainable.  Vision enhancement is a means of improving conditions, which cannot be adequately treated with glasses or contact lenses alone.   Through the use of therapy to reinforce or re-teach visual skills, conditions such as poor eye coordination and movement, convergence insufficiency, low focus endurance, crossed eyes and lazy eye may be improved. 

Poor vision skills may result in underachievement in reading, academics, athletics, and vocations.  Vision problems may be simple and therefore require only a few sessions.  They may be more complex, involving the need to improve organization and integration of all the information systems and to train vision to be the dominant sensory mode.  Strabismus (crossed eyes) and amblyopia (lazy eye) are among the most complex problems and take the longest to resolve. 

Treatment consists of an individually prescribed therapy program in a controlled setting that includes the use of prism lenses, filters, and special instruments.  The program may include procedures to improve balance, coordination, rhythm, and timing as well as judgments of space, size, and shape.  Reinforcement of these skills is accomplished by the use of such things as a walking rail, balance board, trampoline, balls, bean bags, etc. 

Vision therapy reduces or removes barriers to learning and achievement that in turn reduce stress and frustration.  The end result is the ability to perform with increased efficiency and reduced effort, and to achieve greater use of one’s potential.   Stay tuned for more.  

 Edvin Manniko, O.D.    

Welcome to the Optic Dynamics Blog!

With so little easily accessible information about visual therapy and its benefits on the Web, I’m creating this blog as a source for parents, teachers, athletes, coaches and many others to learn about visual therapy and its benefits.  I intend to post several times per month — topics to include visual therapy and ADD, ADHD and other learning disabilities, sports vision for various sports including skiing, golfing, baseball, etc., as well as many other timely topics. 

In the meantime, please visit the http://www.opticdynamics.com/ for information on visual therapy and my Denver-based clinic, Accelerated Visual Performance. 

Thank you for visiting!  

Edvin Manniko, O.D.