Glasses/contact lenses in table tennis?

[raazzz]

Things can always go wrong but that is highly unlikely, I have heard that it hurts a lot the days after. If it's worth it can't fully decide. It's a lot of money and I don't know exactly for how many years it helps completely. My father did it when he was young but now on later years he has started to see worse again.. But that was maybe thirty years ago.

 

[iHatePONGPING]

@ Alexander: Well, I can't speak about its results because that must vary from one person to the next and frankly it's beyond my area of expertise.
But I would assume it's generally safe, though safety depends on the technique the operator will be using, which in turn depends on your eyes, the degree of your myopia and whether or not you have astigmatism as well. And regarding the other question you have in mind: would it dispense you from having to wear glasses? I should think so, but then if you're somewhat advanced in the age department then your eye accommodation lessens and so you might need glasses anyway.

 

[DTopSpirit]

I had strong short sightedness and fairly strong astigmatism, but the doctor had no problem correcting my vision with laser surgery - lasik I think.

The surgery takes about 10 seconds for each eye, not really painful, more like uncomfortable.

That was about it as far as pain was concerned. Just some mild discomfort for the next day or two.

Had to wear plastic eye patches over each eye for about a day or so, to give things a chance to settle down. Then no strenuous activity for a week or so, in order not to raise the pressure in your eyeballs.

Laser surgery fixed my astigmatism and short sightedness, but as the doctor said it does not correct my oncoming long sightedness, which is caused by your eye muscles, not the shape of your cornea.

So I no longer need my glasses to drive, play table tennis etc, or even read normally. But I am having the usual 40+ year old problem of finding it difficult to focus on reading small jar labels, or anything really close to my face.

I am very happy with the result of my surgery, after wearing glasses/contacts for over 20 years it's great not to have to worry about them anymore. My vision has stayed sharp more than 2-3 years later, so it all worked out well for me.

Greg

 

[AndySmith]

Some pros in the top 100 wear glasses such as Adrien Mattenet and recently Daniel Habesohn (Austria) who used to wear contacts now wears glasses while playing. It's all personal preference, although when I changed to contact lenses I realized how important it is for serve receiving as you can see the spin much better.

Here is Habesohn wearing his new glasses at the Euros:

My contacts have been annoying me recently, mainly when I'm tired out of my mind from being up with the kids the night before. I find it hard to focus on anything and blinking seems to unsettle things further. I tried my regular glasses and felt much more comfortable, but they've got very narrow lenses and aren't designed for sport (quite loose and unsecured).

So I'm looking into getting the same glasses that Habesohn is using (Adidas Adivista/Adizero) with the optical insert. If anyone is interested I'll update this thead with my progress!

 

[AlexTax]

My eyes just dont accept glasses,provoking me headache when i wear them too much.Instead i just love wearing lenses even for all the day,but a lot of my friends think the exact opposite.In my case,it s too stressful playing with glasses,i tried few times and it s not for me.

 

[Ilia Minkin]

Did anybody tried glasses with this technology: http://optifogusa.com/ ?

 

[AndySmith]

A quick update on this.

I received my Adivista frames with prescription lenses a few weeks ago. Here's what they look like:

My prescription is pretty high (-4.75 in each eye), so I was right on the limit of what could be achieved with these frames and the lens technology. But the outcome was excellent.

The lenses are 1.67 index (super thin) and aspheric. This means that they are highly curved around the eye and have a variable strength depending on how far from the optical centre you are. This means that the lenses are very thick at the outside edge (you can see this in the 2nd pic) but are still quite thin in the middle.

The overall effect is initially unusual. It's like a mild fishbowl vision because your periphery is far more covered by the lens than you'd have in normal glasses. I wore them around the house for a few hours and it was a bit mad - bumping into things, ended up with a slight headache.

But these glasses are not for everyday use. At the table they work very well. It does take a few hours to get your head around what they're doing, but you adjust very quickly and any initial strangeness is now gone. It's a bit like changing between glasses and contacts all the time - initially things seem different and strange when you switch, but after a few days of switching your brain seems to get used to the adjustments needed. Same with these glasses - I keep them in my TT bag and put them on when I get to the venue and I'm ready to go now.

The frames are excellent - clicky adjustment in the arms and nose supports mean you can get a nice close fit. The arms have a soft plastic section at the end which gets a bit grippy when you sweat, so they can't ever move around during play. Having some clear vision in your peripheral vision is a big bonus for TT, so the lenses are a great help (once you're used to what they do!). The lenses aren't perfect all the way around and the correction is worse towards the outside edge, but still far better than nothing at all. This is probably more to do with my high prescription though.

In short, not quite as good as contacts, but far better than regular everyday prescription glasses. Anyone who has issues with contacts (as I do now) might find some benefit from this kind of solution, but it's a fairly expensive gamble I suppose.

Many thanks to www.eyekit.co.uk for all their efforts in sorting this out for me.

 

[vvk1]

Andy, you could have bought 4 Tenergies for that much money

 

[AndySmith]

Andy, you could have bought 4 Tenergies for that much money

Ha, yeah. And stuck them to my face with voc-free glue! I'd probably play better with all that lovely price-rigged Butterfly technology attached to my eyelids.

 

[AndySmith]

Oh, I forgot to mention! After my first post above (the one with the Habesohn video), I went to see my optician and he found that the muscles in my right eye are weakening. So this is causing the eye to struggle when focusing, very noticeable after I blink. So when wearing contacts, I blink, the contacts move, my eye fidgets around trying to focus, which keeps the contact moving around too, and it takes ages for things to settle. Tricky during a point, and probably the cause of the headaches. So he's suggested avoiding the contacts from now on (I'll still wear them for swimming, but that's it).

Always check with your eye guy!

 

[changed_23]

someone please take a look at this thread http://www.tabletennisdaily.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?12005-Real