Abstract

FERNANDEZ SANCHEZ, Agustín; ROMERO GUERRA, María Josefa; RUBIO RODRIGUEZ, Fernando  and  VIERA PULIDO, Omar. Effect of the development of visual skills on the performance of racketball elite athletes. Rev Cubana Oftalmol [online]. 2007, vol.20, n.2. ISSN 0864-2176.

Visual information plays a very important role in an athlete since roughly 85% of required information comes from the visual system; therefore training and development of visual skills are related to sport performance. The objectives of this paper were to determine how the development of visual skills affects the sports performance of racketball players, to evaluate the development of these skills, to define the most developed ones, to compare them by sex and associate them with the sports achievements and with ocular and/ or systemic pathologies. Binocularity was the most developed skill.  It was concluded that there was a higher number of racketball athletes presenting with developed visual skills, particularly binocularity, visual acuity (statics and dynamics) and visualization. The most developed skills in females were visual acuity (statics and dynamics), accommodation-convergence, binocularity and visualization whereas males showed binocularity, visual acuity (statics and dynamics) and visualization. In the case of the female racketball team, the highest development of visual skills was not associated with the best sport achievements, but in the case of the male team, this association did exist. No ocular or systemic pathologies related to the studied visual skills were found. It was recommended to perform this study in all the athletes at the beginning of their sports life, and also to set up a specialized ophthalmologic service for vision control, visual training to potentate the less developed skills in athletes and for regular check-ups.

Keywords : Visual skills; athletes; racketball; visual acuity; binocularity; visualization.