Balance Optics Sunglasses

Why wear eyewear for sport?

Quality eyewear is important for a few reasons. It will protect your eyes from damage, increase your performance, improve the way you see the specific components of your sport and improve comfort whilst doing so.

Prescription – Being corrected for any refractive errors will improve acuity, meaning the target will be seen more clearly, and reaction times will be increased. Optimum acuity and balance of vision will mean that the visual system will be more comfortable, and will be able to follow a target with greater ease.

Glare Reduction – Bright light can be disabling during sport, meaning you could miss the ball in flight, or to miss your step. For long periods, less intense light can cause a tiring of the visual system, reducing performance. Tinted eyewear absorbs light, and reduces the amount of light entering the eye. Photochromic tints that change in darkness depending on the conditions are very useful when the conditions change. Polarised lenses greatly reduce glare caused by reflections from bright surfaces, such as water, snow, sand and roads.

Increase specific Contrast – different tints can change the way that you see the world. Different sports have varying conditions, and specific tint colours can increase your awareness. A specific tint for tennis will increase the contrast of the ball against the background, whereas in golf, the tint will allow the greens to be read more accurately. Sports such as cycling and running have specific tints that will brighten light in low light conditions, and will relax the vision in harsher conditions. (see our tint demonstrator to see how contrast is affected by different tints).

Protection – Eyewear act as a barrier to protect the eyes from wind, dust, sand, stones and insects. These things can not only be disabling during sport, but also potentially damaging to the eyes long term. All our eyewear incorporates UltraViolet (UV) protection as standard. UV causes long term damage to the eye, from skin cancer of the lids, to increasing cataracts, macular degeneration and snow blindness. (see our section under UV).