Exercise Your Eyes
- Insight uOttawa
- Jan 31, 2022
- 3 min read
Abigail O’Bright
I’m sure we have all been to a gym at some point in our lives or done workouts at home to grow muscles in our arms, legs, or core… But have you ever stopped to consider the other parts of your body that can improve with training? Your muscles aren’t the only thing that can develop over time, so I think it’s time we start to consider the part of our body that enables a portion of the perception of the world around us… Our eyes. Believe it or not, we can actually train them to improve that quality of perception. Peripheral vision, hand-eye coordination and depth perception are all components of visual perception that you can train to improve.
Depth perception is the ability for a person to distinguish the distance between 2 objects. When we are looking down a path through a forest, we can tell which trees are closer to us and which ones are farther away all thanks to our visual acuity and processing. There may be some occasions, though, where you might have a hard time telling which is closer. Depth perception is not always only for seeing far away, we analyze depth for objects that are nearby as well. To practice this, we are going to use an exercise that is demonstrated by Vivid Visions Optometry Inc.
Step 1 is to get a pen with a cap and hold it out straight in front of you, with your other hand down by your side.
Step 2 is to bring your hand up to the cap and pull it off and back to your side as fast as you can. And then you can bring your hand up and replace the cap with as smooth a motion as possible.
Once you get the hang of it, and can do it swiftly with high precision, you can move your pen holding hand either below your shoulders, or above your shoulders, and practice the same motion. Try switching sides!
Hand-eye coordination is a skill we use every day and probably aren’t aware of it. Every time you are typing on your laptop, or playing catch with a friend, or paying for your groceries with a credit card, you are utilizing your hand-eye coordination. Your eyes act as a liaison of information that gets sent to the brain, and allows you to make precise movements without really thinking about it. To improve this skill, you can practice any activities that require hand-eye coordination, or you can perform one of the 10 exercises as demonstrated by Jarlo Ilano, a physical therapist and cofounder of GMB (https://gmb.io/coordination/). Here are my favourites:
1) Wall-Ball: With a small ball and wall, you can throw the ball at the wall and catch it when it returns. You can start simple, by throwing and catching with 2 hands, and then get more advanced as you practice. Start throwing with one hand and catch with the other hand, or throw and catch with the same hand.
2) Balloon Volleyball: keep a balloon in the air by bumping it back up. Try different angles and with different amounts of force to improve dexterity.
Lastly, your peripheral vision includes the portion of the visual field that is not in focus (all light rays that do not focus on the fovea). Your peripheral vision is actually the majority of the visual field, so strengthening and widening your ability to see the area around the point of fixation will improve overall sight interpretation. In order to enhance your peripheral vision, you can do an exercise provided by Matthew Roda in the Reflexion blog (https://www.reflexion.co/blog/how-to-improve-peripheral-vision/)
You will need a straw, 2 toothpicks and a friend. Start by drawing a black line in the center of the straw and have your friend hold it out horizontally in front of you. Take a step back and focus on the line drawn in the center of the straw. Next, using your peripheral vision, place the toothpicks in either side of the straw. As you practice and develop a sharpness in your peripheral vision, this task should become very simple, and you can move the straw to difference heights, or practice focusing on a point that is not on the straw.
Happy eye exercising!!!
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