Corrective Lenses

[Shoot]

Do you guys who need corrective lenses (ie. nearsighted) wear contacts when you box/train/spar?

Sometimes I take my contacts out to do bag work. I'm thinking about sparring without them too. Just curious what other boxers with bad eyes do.

[twtguy]

i always get mine knocked out when i spar...maybe cause i suck. but, either way, they will fall out, cause unless youre god, you will get hit. it isnt necessary to take them out for bag work though.

[npk9]

Just get Ortho-K and you'll be fine.

[da_mill]

I got one of mine knocked out whilst sparring yesterday. my eyes SUCK tho id definitely prefer 2 wear them....

[Paul-M]

Why will it mean no sparring? Does lasik give you sore eyes or something? I'm planning on getting it but don't know much about it.

[bodhisattva]

Boxing with Contacts

Do you guys who need corrective lenses (ie. nearsighted) wear contacts when you box/train/spar?

Sometimes I take my contacts out to do bag work. I'm thinking about sparring without them too. Just curious what other boxers with bad eyes do.

I'm kind of concerned about it, because some of my guys wear contacts. I'm always worried about their eyes getting banged up or something by the contact when they get punched in the face.

But these same guys are so blind that they can't box with out them ?!?! So we have no real solution at our disposal.

Sometimes they even pop out while we're boxing and we have to stop, look for a contact, and rotate another guy into the fight while the guy with contacts washes his contact with solution.

I'm just worried about it hurting their eyes.

[bodhisattva]

Boxing and Contacts

One of our members suggested to a guy who's contacts fell out that they might need to get them resized. He said his did that once, his doctor resized his contacts, and they quit bouncing out like little frogs.

[bodhisattva]

Soft contacts won't really hurt the eye, in fact they actually prevent getting a scratch from a fingernail or something, Anything that would damage your eye with a soft contact would have damaged the eye without,

Hard contacts are another matter entirely

honestly I have really considered eye protection goggles, I've seen people get their eyes messed up before, and it doesn't actually take much. I've come close a few times over the years with nearly taking very bad shots to the eye. lucky they always hit the orbital socket rather than the eye directly.

I saw something pretty cool while doing a quick patrol around my local sporting goods store.

I typically migrate towards cage face mask helmets and protective handgear just because I like to stickfight now and then. I saw something pretty wild - it was a set of goggles that are actually cage/wire mask. They were for field hockey. I figured they'd be great for fighting with sticks.

They were expensive, 75-$100. But they were pretty cool. You might check them out instead of normal safety goggles.

[npk9]

As I mentioned before - Ortho-K is the way to go. I've been using it for the past 6 months and have had no problems.

Since no one asked what it is - I'm assuming that people already know. But for those of you who don't its hard contact that you wear and sleep at night. It slowly reforms your cornea (the way lasik does) but this is only temporary. You don't need to wear contacts during the day and the longer you use them the longer the refraction lasts. Of course this all depends on how bad your vision is. But I don't need to wear contacts during the day - I can spar and get hit in the eye with no worries.

[Britt]

My eyes are way too bad to spar without contacts. I couldn't see at all if I did. I'd love to get LASIK but contact sports can give you a detached retina unless you get the non-invasive no-flap kind, and my eyes are too bad for it until the technology improves. Ortho K sounds great, but I bet my eyes are too bad for it as well.

[Britt]

Sorry, I'm half remembering from when I did some research on it a few years ago. I think I'm actually thinking of a detached cornea or "flap slip." Googling it a little now it looks like retinal detachment can happen, but very rarely, so I guess I meant to say corneal injury. This is what I remember from the FDA website:

When is LASIK not for me?
You are probably NOT a good candidate for refractive surgery if:

* You actively participate in contact sports. You participate in boxing, wrestling, martial arts or other activities in which blows to the face and eyes are a normal occurrence.

http://www.fda.gov/cdrh/lasik/when.htm

[Britt]

Oh. I was just curious, because I know there can be some weird side effects from all sorts of surgeries. I know of a guy who almost damaged his eye irreparably when he went scuba diving several weeks after his lasik. It was within the safe zone as far as recovery, but he got a squeeze from failing to equalize his mask and it "unflapped" his eye. It was not a cheap fix.

Good God! How scary would that be? one minute you're at depth enjoying yourself, the next your eye is coming apart! I don't think I could have the presence of mind to do a safety stop with part of my eye hanging off. Was he at least somewhere he could get to good medical attention?

[martialartspeon]

I find that I fight much better when I have sharper vision I also find that I will get my contacts knocked out in 1 out of 5 sparing matches

Anyone try lasik?

[Paul-M]

I have lasik in one eye, hopefully will soon have the other one done.

I have no problems with the lasik eye. I had it done about 6 years ago. In fact it's vision is probably a bit better distance wise than the eye with a contact lens,.

Do you get hit in the face often? I've been planning on laser surgery since I was like 15, I'm now 17 and want to get it done as soon as I'm 18 but this whole flap slip thing is worrying me.

[Shoot]

Yeah, apparently the flap that gets cut in Lasik is always there. I know that it is re-used for repeated Lasik. I think Ortho-K is approved for people up to a -6. I've actually done it with great success. The break in period was absolutely terrible. I had abrasions on both my eyes for about a week which were very painful and caused me to not be able to see well at all--like looking through fog. This is partly because my vision is around a -5, so I had a lot of cornea to reshape. I almost gave up but then it just seemed to snap my eyes into shape and I loved it. I couldn't even feel them at night when I slept and I had perfect vision all day long. I might go back to it in the near future. I did it for a year and then developed an allergy to pollen. After being outside during a bad time of the year for allergies my eyes got all swollen (from the allergies). When I put the contacts in at night I woke up with very bad abrasions. So, I had to quit using them for several days. During that several days my eyes slipped back into close to their old shape (after a year without Ortho-K my eyes are still about a +.5 better!). I just didn't want to go through with the break in period again. One of my complaints with Ortho-K was night vision--the field of correction is only about 4 or 5 mm whereas your pupil might dilate to 7-8 mm in low light situations. So this can cause glares, starburts, and hallows around lights. I mainly got used to it, but it did annoy me. Also, if you drink alcohol it will interfere with your nightly vision correction (at least it did with me) and then you're slightly blurry the next day. Also, if you don't sleep 7-8 hours your vision correction might not be 100% for the next day.

I wear extended wear Night and Day contacts. These are the future of contacts. They are a "soft" lense that can be worn continuously (even while sleeping) 30 days without removal. They have a much lower water content than normal contacts and allow as much oxygen to your eye as not wearing any contact at all. so, you cannot feel them at all--they don't dry out and they don't starve your eye for oxygen which causes redness. they are as comfortable on day 30 as day 1. They also seem to suck onto the eye much better, so they don't shift when you blink and I've never had one get knocked out through sparring, wrestling, mountain biking or anything else I do.