News from the AOA's Blog

An innovative new half-day program at Optometry’s Meeting® is designed to help optometrists integrate vision training into athletic training programs. “Bringing Visual Performance Training to the Athlete: A New Paradigm” will provide hands-on training to attendees at a local state-of-the-art rehabilitation facility.

Optometrists who understand how to optimize vision can assist athletes in reaching peak performance, but until now, absence of an effective delivery model has been a barrier to full adoption of sports vision services in the sporting community.

Experts Alan W. Reichow, O.D., and Graham B. Erickson, O.D., will lead the course and explain why being an outstanding athlete takes more than excellent physical attributes.

Nike Sensory Stations were developed to integrate many separate vision assessment and training tools into a validated, digitally based instrument. This course will provide an overview of a new paradigm that connects the athletic training community to local optometrists. Providing standardized sports vision services for athletes where they train while maintaining a relationship with the OD would quickly expand universal adoption of sports vision services.

Nike Sensory Sport Training developed an integrated model of sports vision services with state-of-the-art athletic facilities and training programs. Attendees will learn how optometrists and staff can be trained to profile visual performance skills of athletes and provide appropriate intervention when indicated. On the flip side, sports training staff are trained on how to integrate sport-specific vision enhancement training procedures into an overall sports training program. Demonstrations of the visual assessments on the Nike Sensory Station will be provided, and rationale and research results will be presented to support the assessments with an overview of normative data for athletes.

The course will also cover sports vision training algorithms and procedures used to enhance essential visual skills.

The Nike SPARQ Vapor Strobe, an innovative sports training device in use by many top athletes and teams, will be presented to highlight the successful integration of vision and sport performance training. Issues regarding sports improvement and integration with physical training will also be discussed.

This course is sponsored by Vistakon®, a division of Johnson & Johnson Vision Care, Inc., Nike SPARQ Sensory Training, with additional support from Athletic Republic and Bernell Corporation. The program is $75 per person and includes breakfast and transportation. Space is extremely limited, so register early for function #0350. For more information, contact Melissa Flower at mlflower@aoa.org.