Whether you are a professional athlete or not, you will need to wear sports glasses to keep your eyes safe against injuries. And if you need vision correction, you can opt for prescription sports glasses. There are two kinds of lenses used in prescription sports glasses- bifocal lenses and progressive lenses. Read on to know which of these lenses is the right one for you.

Sports glasses are specially designed to give your eyes the protection they need while you are playing sports. This durable protective eyewear cannot only shield your eyes against harmful dirt and dust, but it can also help lower the risk of eye injury during sports. Not wearing sports glasses while playing sports, on the other hand, can increase risks to an eye injury, decrease reaction time, and negatively impact overall performance.

Unlike common belief, sports eyewear is not only intended for professional and serious players. In fact, many sports clubs nowadays do not just recommend but mandate their members to wear protective glasses when participating in different sports activities. Some even require them as part of the uniform.

Regardless of whether you are a professional athlete or just a sports hobbyist, you will need to wear sports glasses to keep your eyes safe against injuries. Unfortunately, people with vision problems often disregard the benefits of wearing a pair of protective sports glasses and prioritize their visual needs instead. While there is nothing wrong with choosing your ability to see clearly over protecting your eyes, wearing a regular pair of prescription glasses while playing sports or while participating in contact physical activities can be extremely dangerous. Though some regular prescription glasses are made sturdy, they lack the features needed to provide your eyes with enough protection against possible injury. They can easily get broken during impact and when they do, they can cause serious damages to the eyes. The shattered pieces of the lens and frame can get into your eyes and can even bruise or cut your eye socket or face.

Gone were the days when you need to choose between sports goggles and prescription glasses. Why choose one if you can combine the two within a single frame, right? Yes, you can now find protective sports glasses with an added prescription. Introducing – prescription sports goggles.

Prescription sports glasses can provide your eyes with enough protection against injuries during sports while meeting your vision needs. They can also help improve your sports performance by providing you with high-quality vision, allowing you to see more clearly and to focus on objects better and easier. Apart from that, specialized prescription glasses are made with glare reduction, better contrast viewing features, and added protection from the damaging rays of the sun.

Different lenses used in prescription sports glasses

There are two kinds of lenses used in prescription sports glasses available on the market today- the bifocal lenses and the progressive lenses. These lenses are used when magnification is needed to be added within the glasses. Both bifocal and progressive lenses are known as multifocal lenses. That means, they offer more than one point of focus. Though both bifocal and progressive lenses share the same purpose, they are different from each other in some ways.

To know which type of lens is the right one for you, let us define and understand what they are first.

• Bifocal Prescription Sports Glasses 

The bifocal prescription sports glasses are made with two viewing areas- distance viewing and reading area. These two viewing areas have distinct optical powers with different focal lengths. The larger viewing area or the upper portion of the lens is for distance viewing and it offers distance correction. The semicircle, smaller area, or the bottom portion of the lens is intended for reading purposes and it offers near vision correction.
You can easily distinguish bifocal prescription sports glasses because of the visible line that is used to divide the two viewing areas.

• Progressive Prescription Sports Glasses

The progressive prescription sports glasses offer three viewing areas – distance-, intermediate-, and near-vision. They include three prescriptions in one lens. Unlike bifocal lenses, the progressive lenses do not have any visible line dividing the viewing areas. As the name suggests, the magnification power of the progressive prescription glasses changes progressively throughout the lens. The distant viewing area is located at the top portion of the lens, the intermediate viewing area is placed at the center part, and the near vision area is situated at the bottom.

The progressive prescription sports glasses provide users with optimum vision at multiple distances, a more natural way of seeing, and a seamless progression of lens strength while keeping the eyes protected against injuries. They enable you to do close-up work, middle-distance work, and distance viewing and adjust your viewing distance anytime without having to change your glasses.

Which lens is right for you?

The bifocal prescription sports glasses are often recommended for people who experience difficulty in seeing objects located near or far away from the eyes or those who are both nearsighted and farsighted. If you have presbyopia or if you need vision correction for astigmatism, myopia, or hyperopia, choose a bifocal lens for your prescription sports glasses.

Just like the bifocal prescription sports glasses, the progressive prescription sports glasses are also intended for those who need correction in seeing distant and close up objects. If you are both nearsighted and farsighted but you want to have three viewing powers in a single lens, the progressive lens is perfect for you.

The best way to determine which among these two types of lenses are better for your prescription sports glasses, the best thing you can do is to try them on. Start with progressive glasses and check how well your eyes adjust to them. If after two to three weeks your eyes can’t still fully adjust to your progressive glasses, your optometrist may recommend you to try the bifocal glasses. Otherwise, you will need to have the strength of your lenses adjusted.