If you have poor eyesight, you might be wondering if you can start boxing with glasses.
Keep reading to see why wearing glasses shouldn’t hold you back from boxing!
Can You Box With Glasses?
Yes, you can start training and learn to box with glasses, but you can’t spar or fight with them.
They shouldn’t hold you back from learning the basics, hitting the heavy bag, or shadow boxing.
If you want to spar and fight with poor vision, consider these alternatives:
- Contact Lenses
- Sports Glasses
- Corrective Eye Surgery
- Don’t Use Glasses
Below we’ll discuss the pros and cons of each alternative, so you can decide which one is best for you.
Contact Lenses
First, if you have poor vision, wear contact lenses while boxing.
Pros
Wearing contacts has benefits for many boxers, including:
- Gaining the ability to spar
- Removing the need for glasses
Using soft lenses is the most convenient way to jump in the ring even if you have bad vision.
Cons
However, wearing contacts has some drawbacks for boxers including:
- Your contact lens can get knocked out with a punch
- Your contact lens can get lodged in your eye with a punch
Many boxers have said that they boxed with contacts only to have them knocked out of their eyes in the first minute.
Afterwards, they had to rely on their blurry vision and instinct.
Sports Glasses
Next, if you have poor vision, wear sports glasses while boxing.
Pros
Wearing sports glasses has a number of benefits for boxers including:
- Ability to train boxing and hit punching bags
- Durability
Athletes in other sports such as tennis and soccer use sports glasses regularly and with success.
Cons
On the other hand, wearing sports glasses has drawbacks:
They can always be knocked off with a punch
If you want to spar, they may not fit inside your headgear.
If you can make them fit, it’ll be extremely uncomfortable for you once you take a few punches to the head.
Corrective Eye Surgery
Next, get corrective eye surgery such as Lasik if you want to box without glasses.
Pros
Getting corrective eye surgery:
- Removes the need for glasses altogether
- Allows you to spar and fight
This can potentially be a permanent fix for you and has many benefits outside of boxing as well.
Cons
However, getting corrective eye surgery has some major drawbacks for boxers:
- Expensive
- Fluctuating vision
- Risk permanent injury to eyesight after a punch
Regarding the last point, Lasik is an eye surgery procedure where the incision site never fully heals.
With a hard enough punch, this can reverse the surgery’s progress and leave you with worse eyesight than what you started with.
To many boxers, the cons of corrective eye surgery just aren’t worth it.
Don’t Use Glasses
Lastly, don’t use glasses when boxing.
This sounds counterintuitive but it makes things much simpler for you and gives you certain advantages over your opponent.
Pros
Not using glasses:
- Improves your confidence and muscle memory
- Trains your eyesight and boxing instinct
You use your vision to detect movement and see punches coming, not to see details.
Here, you’ll have to trust in your shadow boxing and training instead of relying entirely on your vision.
Cons
On the other hand, not using glasses while boxing has some drawbacks including:
- Inability to see details that can give you an advantage (i.e. physical tells such as an opponent’s twitch muscles or reaction to feints)
- Difficult to gauge distance and range
Regarding that last point, you’ll have to rely more on touch with your jab than on vision.
Otherwise, if you’re boxing in the pocket or on the inside, you don’t need perfect vision.
Conclusion
Now that you’ve read about these alternatives to glasses, you know that you don’t need to have perfect eyesight in order to box.
Some boxing pros that wear glasses or have bad vision include:
- Oleksandr Usyk
- Larry Holmes
- Nonito Donaire
- Joe Frazier
The last boxer on this list, Joe Frazier, was even legally blind in one eye and had to cheat on his eye exam in order to box!
These ideas apply to other martial arts as well. There are some famous MMA fighters who don’t rely exclusively on their vision to excel at their craft.
If you’re having trouble deciding what boxing equipment to get, check out these articles: