Upper body exercise capacity is considerably lower compared to lower body capacities, simply due to the lower muscle mass, and the more complex functional anatomy of the shoulder and wrist complexes. In addition, the upper body is often less trained and skilled in wheeled mobility and sports-specific tasks. In the context of optimum wheelchair sports performance and considering the limited physical resources and the concomitant upper body vulnerability, optimization of the individual wheelchair-user combination is crucial. Other than optimizing sports-specific work capacity and reducing mechanical losses from the wheelchair, this involves the detailed fine-tuning of the wheelchair to the user, i.e. the ergonomics of the wheelchair-athlete interface (Mason et al 2013). Fitting the final details of the wheelchair to the individual athlete is highly specialized, yet little documented, work and dominated by unique skills of the manufacturer or the sports wheelchair specialist. This skilled knowledge is to a large extent linked to the person of the AT specialist and hardly founded in congruent scientific theory (van Breukelen 2013). The scientific work done on the ergonomics of sports wheelchair fitting gives us different, yet somewhat limited leads towards optimization, based on a set of diverse often lab-based studies with variable groups of subjects, often able-bodied (Mason et al 2013). Self-evident elements like propulsion mechanism, seat height/position, handrim size, tube diameter and profile, and wheel camber have been dealt with in small sample experiments, using diverse methodologies. The major developments in wheelchair design, posture and fitting over the past 50yrs were empirically-based athlete and small industry-driven innovations (Sports `n Spokes), followed by a limited research evidence. With the help of the power balance model, different elements of the wheelchair-user combination can be evaluated in a combined framework of biomechanical and exercise physiological theories. The use of wheelchair and sport-specific measurement technologies, e.g. instrumented wheels with ambulant physiology and motion sensor technology, both in lab and field-based experiments, allows evaluating individual performance characteristics in dependence of wheelchair design and fitting. In a standardized repeated measures design this can help the individual athlete reach maximum performance (De Groot et al 2014), assuming knowledgeable support staff.
© Copyright 2014 19th Annual Congress of the European College of Sport Science (ECSS), Amsterdam, 2. - 5. July 2014. Veröffentlicht von VU University Amsterdam. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.