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Wheelchair Sport
A complete guide for athletes, coaches, and teachers
Edited by Vicky Goosey-Tolfrey
224 Pages
Wheelchair Sport provides coaches, teachers, and athletes with the information they need to compete and succeed in wheelchair sports. Written by top coaches, athletes, sport scientists, and specialists in sports medicine and physical therapy who work with Paralympic athletes, this resource offers
an explanation of the physiological differences between able-bodied and disabled athletes and the physiological adaptations that result from training; guidelines for training that are customized to wheelchair athletes’ unique needs, including strength and conditioning, nutrition and hydration, and mental wellness; tips on the practical aspects of competing in wheelchair sport, such as optimizing chair set-up and preparing for travel; and expert guidance in developing top-notch training programs for athletes at all skill levels.
People who use wheelchairs have a greater opportunity than ever before to be physically active at the level of their choosing. Wheelchair Sport equips coaches, teachers, and athletes to develop their minds and bodies to their potential and enjoy their participation in sports.
Foreword
Preface
Acknowledgements
Part I: Understanding Wheelchair Sport
Chapter 1. Introduction to Wheelchair Sport
Sean Tweedy and Nik Diaper
Spinal Cord Injury
Health-Related Effects of Wheelchair Sport
Sport Classification
Sports for Wheelchair Athletes
Using Sport Knowledge for Athlete Profiling
Conclusion
References
Chapter 2. Sport Chair Set-Up and Selection
Hsin-yi Liu, Ian M. Rice, Justin Z. Laferrier, Rosemarie Cooper, Mike Boninger, MD, and Rory A. Cooper
Wheelchair Components and Accessories
Basic Wheelchair Set-Up
Sport-Specific Wheelchair Set-Up
Injury Prevention
Conclusion
References
Chapter 3. Physiology of Wheelchair Sport
Vicky Goosey-Tolfrey and Mike Price
Physiological Responses
Training Considerations
Types of Training
Measuring Exercise Intensity and Fitness
Conclusion
References
Chapter 4. Strength and Conditioning for Wheelchair Sport
Andy Allford and Linda Mitchell-Norfolk
Unique Strength Training Needs of Wheelchair Athletes
Needs Analysis
Guidelines for Safe and Effective Training
Guidelines for Exercise Prescription
Strength Training Equipment
Free Weights Versus Fixed Resistance machines
Sample Training Programmes
Conclusion
References
Chapter 5. Nutrition and Body Composition
Tom Reilly and Jeanette Crosland
Eating to Train
Eating to Win
Body Composition
Body Compartments
Assessment Methods
Conclusion
References
Suggested Reading
Suggested Websites
Chapter 6. The Traveling Athlete
Mike Price, Jeanette Crosland, and Nick Webborn MD
Medical Issues Related to Travel
Practical Concerns Related to Flying
Accommodations and Adaptations
Nutrition and Hydration When Travelling
Exercising in the Heat
Conclusion
References
Suggested Reading
Chapter 7. Psychological Aspects of Wheelchair Sport
Elisabeth Bressan and David Shearer
Getting Involved in Wheelchair Sport
Developing Athletes’ Sport Commitment
Understanding Psychological Aspects of Wheelchair Sport
Conclusion
References
Part II: Training for Wheelchair Sports
Chapter 8. Wheelchair Basketball
Mike Frogley
Wheelchair Propulsion
Wheelchair Skills
Power Start and Stop
Half-Court Tow
Forward Partner Pulls
Backward Partner Pulls
Clovers
U-Turns
Hops
Tilting
Christmas Trees
Jump and Recover
Shooting
Passing
Dribbling
Conclusion
Chapter 9. Wheelchair Racing
Dame Tanni Grey-Thompson and Ian Thompson
Chair Set-Up
Gloves
Pushing Technique
Training Programme
Skill and Fitness Training
Racing Tactics for Sprints
Racing Tactics for Endurance
Wheelchair Racing Rules
Conclusion
Chapter 10. Wheelchair Rugby
Kevin Orr and Laurie A. Malone
Game Play and Rules
Classification
Equipment Selection and Maintenance
Fundamental Skills
Rugby Offence
Rugby Defence
Training Programme
Drills for Rugby Skill Development
Ball Pickups
Whistle Drill
Figure-Eight Passing
Caterpillar Passing
Hot Seat Passing
Three-Man Weave
Long Passing
Diamond in the Rough
Four Corners
Skills Testing
Conclusion
Chapter 11. Wheelchair Tennis
Dawn Newbery, Geraint Richards, Stephanie Trill, and Martyn Whait
Ten Steps to the Top
Taping
Attack and Defence Drills
Returning Second Serve
High Forehand
Deep, Short, Deep, Short
Deep, Mid, Short
Bounce–Smash
Hit Down the Line Off a Crosscourt Ball
Hit Crosscourt Off a Down-the-Line Ball
Twenty Shots
Rabbit Ears
Hustle
Mobility Drills
Down the Mountain
Park the Car
Through the Gate
Sprint, Slalom, Reverse
Two-Push Slalom
Half-Court Map
Fan Drill
Agility Drill
Box-Command Drill
Speed Play
Taping
Conclusion
Chapter 12. Handcycling
Thomas Abel, Yves Vanlandewijck, and Joeri Verellen
Training Programmes
Assessment
Training Activities
High-Volume Training
Recovery
Position
Strength for Long and Intensive Routes
Velocity
Mechanical Efficiency
Cadence Versus Power
Nonspecific Training
Steering, Braking, and Accelerating
Riding in Groups
Racing Tactics
Conclusion
Index
About the Editor
About the Contributors
Vicky Goosey-Tolfrey, PhD,is a senior lecturer in exercise physiology and director of the Peter Harrison Centre for Disability Sport at LoughboroughUniversity in Leicestershire, UK. Her work in 1994 with Prof. Ian Campbell and Dame Tanni Grey-Thompson sparked her interest in disability sport, and she went on to earn her PhD in sport science from ManchesterMetropolitanUniversity five years later.
Dr. Goosey-Tolfrey attended the Atlanta 1996 and Sydney 2000 Paralympic Games with the Great Britain wheelchair racing and wheelchair basketball teams, respectively, and was the lead physiology consultant for the British Paralympic Association for the Athens 2004 and Beijing 2008 Games. In her leisure time, she enjoys being with her family, golfing, and watching films.
Psychological aspects of wheelchair sport
Many people find it difficult to relate to someone who has a physical disability. This lack of understanding can create additional challenges for people with disabilities. If society responded more adequately to people who have impairments, they would not experience nearly as many challenges and limitations
by David Shearer and Elizabeth Bressan
I was travelling with a wheelchair basketball team from the UK to the USA for an international tournament. Upon arriving at the airport, I went to check in with one of the athletes who was in his wheelchair. The check-in assistant proceeded to direct a torrent of questions at me. “Can he move through the airport without assistance? Will he need assistance to get onto the aircraft? Has anyone interfered with his bags since he packed them?” The athlete and I looked at each other in disbelief! Did she think he could not answer these questions himself? In my head I began to compose a response, but I was too slow. The athlete provided her with an energetic response aimed at her re-education about his functional capacity. Her red face showed that the desired effect was achieved. Her assumption that people who use wheelchairs are generally incapable was shattered. I doubt that she ever made the same mistake again.
David Shearer
Many people find it difficult to relate to someone who has a physical disability, often because they have not had any personal interaction with anyone with a disability. For example, they might be unsure what to expect from a person who has a mobility impairment and uses a wheelchair because they have never spent any time with wheelchair users. This lack of understanding can create additional challenges for people with disabilities. If society responded more adequately to people who have impairments, they would not experience nearly as many challenges and limitations (LoBianco & Shephard-Jones, 2007). Consider office workers who happen to use wheelchairs. Provided that there is only one level or there are ramps or elevators between levels, they may need no assistance whatsoever in the workplace. In other words, in an adapted work environment, they do not have a disability.
In wheelchair sport, the rules have been designed to ensure that people who have a variety of mobility impairments can play physically demanding and competitive sports in their wheelchairs. They provide adapted sport environments that encourage wheelchair users to become wheelchair athletes. The aim of this chapter is not to convince practitioners that wheelchair athletes deserve equal opportunities to participate in sport. Instead, our goal is to provide practitioners (e.g., coaches, sport science, and sport medicine support staff) with both general and specific psychological considerations for interacting and working with athletes with disabilities.
Getting Involved in Wheelchair Sport
Previous reviews that have compared working with athletes with physical disabilities to working with nondisabled athletes have highlighted more similarities than differences (Hanrahan, 1998, 2005; Martin, 1999). Whether working with a team sport or an individual sport, all practitioners must be prepared to adapt training methods, practice schedules, and communication styles in order to arrive at an optimal approach. This is true when working with any athlete, not just wheelchair athletes. By adopting this professional approach, practitioners will look at all wheelchair athletes as individuals. Although one athlete may have an amputation, another SCI, and another a mobility impairment, these physical disabilities will not be the point of departure when working with them. If practitioners' initial interactions with wheelchair athletes follow the same protocols as their interactions with all other athletes, they are likely to build strong rapport that will enhance the support that they can provide.
Who Participates in Wheelchair Sport?
From a clinical perspective, people who are eligible to participate in wheelchair sport at the Paralympic level have a variety of physical disabilities, all of which present serious disadvantages in the mobility aspects of sport participation. For example, a person with a below-knee amputation will be at a substantial disadvantage when playing basketball while wearing a prosthetic leg but will be able to participate without any disadvantage in wheelchair basketball.
It can be important to know whether a disability is congenital (present since birth) or acquired (caused by an accident or medical incident). Someone with a congenital disability has never experienced the sudden loss of physical mobility that has changed the life of a person who now uses a wheelchair as a result of paraplegia caused by an accident. On the other hand, the person with a congenital disability may have experienced a lifetime of discrimination. From a practical perspective, the practitioner's commitment to getting to know each athlete as an individual will help the practitioner develop an understanding of how the athlete feels. The realization that each athlete may feel differently about his impairment and the notion of disability will help the practitioner establish effective channels of communication.
Wheelchair athletes strive for victory and take pride in their achievements just as any other athletes do.
Photo courtesy of ES Bressan.
When working with wheelchair athletes, remember that in addition to the normal competitive pressures experienced by all athletes, those who use wheelchairs face a number of unique challenges. A wheelchair athlete will encounter disadvantages in nonadapted environments. For example, a gymnasium without an adapted entrance (e.g., a ramp) creates a barrier for fitness training for athletes who use wheelchairs for all their mobility needs, such as someone whose impairment is tetraplegia.
There are other kinds of barriers that present wheelchair athletes with challenges not usually experienced by nondisabled athletes. Researchers have found that elite wheelchair basketball players suffer unique stressors not experienced by nondisabled players (Campbell & Jones, 2002a, 2002b), including worries associated with travelling (e.g., going to the toilet on planes, handling luggage) and a lack of understanding from the general public (e.g., airline staff, support staff). In addition to these general concerns, there may also be sport-specific stressors. For example, research has shown that wheelchair racers experience greater stress about the condition of road surfaces compared with nondisabled racers (Martin, 2005). In our experience, knowledge of the challenges that athletes face is best gained through open and honest communication with them. This knowledge can be enhanced by observing athletes in and out of sporting contexts and noting the challenges faced and the manner in which the person copes with those challenges.
Not all wheelchair athletes use wheelchairs for their day-to-day mobility. Athletes with leg amputations and some athletes with SCI or with cerebral palsy are able to walk. They are wheelchair athletes because they play competitive sport in wheelchairs. There are also people who play wheelchair sport who do not have any mobility impairment at all. They choose to play wheelchair sport based on an inclusive model for recreation or competition. They also may be motivated by a shortage of athletes with mobility impairments needed to form a team. However, athletes without mobility impairments do not meet minimum eligibility requirements for participation in Paralympic wheelchair sport and are not included in our presentation.
Familiarization With Wheelchair Sport
Beginner and elite wheelchair athletes want support from people who understand their sport. This requires familiarity with their sport. Sport familiarization is a continuous process, and the longer practitioners remain involved in wheelchair sport, the more sophisticated their understanding of how they can contribute.
The simplest way to become familiar with any wheelchair sport is to become immersed in the sport and actively observe the athletes in training and competition. Actively observing is more than just watching; it entails observing with specific objectives. For example, before attending a competition, practitioners could identify specific aspects of the sport on which they intend to focus, such as team tactics in wheelchair basketball or the biomechanics of serving technique and ground strokes in wheelchair tennis.
Often, observation alone is not enough. Using the previous examples, a coach may notice that one basketball team frequently uses the fast break after winning a defensive rebound whereas the other team tends to slow the game down when they get possession in a similar situation. Similarly, one wheelchair tennis player may hit the forehand from a more full-on position than another. Asking questions of people who have specialist knowledge is invaluable in understanding any wheelchair sport. This might include having conversations with existing coaching staff but more importantly speaking with the athletes themselves. Athletes generally enjoy talking about their sport. These conversations will also provide an opportunity to become familiar with the athletes as well as their sport.
You may also consider attempting the sport yourself. For example, a physiotherapist and a sport psychologist for a wheelchair basketball team tried playing one-on-one after the team had finished practice. The physiotherapist thought that this gave him a better understanding of the forces that the athletes' muscles were subjected to and the potential injuries that might occur, and the sport psychologist believed he had a better grasp of the attentional demands of the game. In contrast, the coach of this same team, who was an accomplished basketball coach but was new to wheelchair basketball, decided not to try playing the game. His reasoning was that because his wheelchair skills were poor, he would not have a realistic experience and might unconsciously lower his expectations for the players. For him, sport familiarization did not include actual participation.
In some instances it may be useful to experiment firsthand how athletes' lives are affected by their disability. Hanrahan (1998) suggested trying to complete simple tasks such as getting off and on a chair without the use of leg muscles, a daily ritual for an athlete with paraplegia. It might be helpful to take a trip using a wheelchair to increase awareness of the barriers that wheelchair athletes face on a daily basis. However, the knowledge gained by such exercises should be used for personal insight only. Some athletes may consider such efforts patronizing, so practitioners should not try to use their experiences as a basis for understanding what their lives are like. If you would like to know what any athlete is thinking or feeling, the best advice is to ask her.
Sport-specific knowledge is critical. Learning the rules of the sport as well as the system of athlete classification is central to understanding how the sport is played and how competitions are managed. However, given the various support roles when working with wheelchair athletes, there is some variation in the knowledge required. In some roles, such as coach, sport-specific knowledge must become more and more sophisticated. For the physiotherapist or sport psychologist, developing a good understanding of the sport may be sufficient. Both the coach and the sport psychologist will use an understanding of the areas presented in the next two sections in order to help wheelchair athletes develop their sport commitment and the psychological aspects of their sport.
This is an excerpt from Wheelchair Sport.
Sample skills and drills for wheelchair basketball
Learn more about the skills needed for wheelchair basketball, and get a sneak peek of some of the drills featured in the Wheelchair Sport.
A great deal has been written on basketball skills and how to teach these skills to athletes. Such is not the case in wheelchair basketball. Though wheelchair basketball has been played since shortly after World War II, very little has been presented in the literature specifically for the sport. As a result, most coaches and players of wheelchair basketball have taken what they learned from the running game of basketball and tried to adapt it to wheelchair basketball with varying degrees of success. Some of what is taught in the running game of basketball can be transferred to wheelchair basketball; however, the different levels of muscle function present in wheelchair basketball and the different movements resulting from using a wheelchair present some unique skills. This chapter will focus on some of those differences and emphasize the individual and team skills used in wheelchair basketball.
This is an excerpt from Wheelchair Sport.
Learn more about Wheelchair Sport, a new book from HK
Wheelchair sport can increase confidence and self-esteem, and it may provide people with a positive outlook on life. There is a wheelchair sport for almost everyone who wants to participate and for any level of expertise, from novice through to Paralympic competition.
by Vicky Goosey-Tolfrey, Editor
Each year thousands of men and women become disabled due to an accident or illness and thereafter use a wheelchair for locomotion. The statistics tell us that there are approximately 1 to 2 million wheelchair users in the United States and approximately 1 to 2 million wheelchair users in Europe. This means that approximately 1 in every 200 people in the United States and Europe are in wheelchairs.
In 1948, Sir Ludwig Guttman, a neurologist who was working with World War II veterans with spinal injuries at Stoke Mandeville Hospital, Aylesbury, in the United Kingdom, began using sport as part of the rehabilitation programmes for his patients. Since that time, participation in wheelchair sport has grown beyond a method to improve wheelchair users' physical capacity. Wheelchair sport can increase confidence and self-esteem, and it may provide people with a positive outlook on life. There is a wheelchair sport for almost everyone who wants to participate and for any level of expertise, from novice through to Paralympic competition.
High-performance athletes are high performance whether they have a disability or not. However, the journey to this level of sporting excellence is dramatically different for wheelchair sport. Wheelchair athletes need sporting opportunities that nurture, recruit, and develop them through to the national level. They need access to sporting facilities and the community, as well as effective disability sport organizations. Access and support are just some of the challenges that wheelchair athletes and nondisabled athletes do not share.
Although the unique challenges of wheelchair sport participation can present obstacles, there are more opportunities than ever before to compete at any level. Advances in wheelchairs, understanding of the classification system, training methods, pushing techniques, and psychological aspects of wheelchair sport should help people with disabilities to achieve their sporting dreams. At the highest level, wheelchair sports have a dominating presence at the Paralympic Games, and while the science, engineering, and sporting classification systems evolve we rely on evidence practice through scientific communities to keep up. Wheelchair Sport bridges the gap between sporting excellence to wheelchair sport at a grassroots level. Wheelchair Sport is an educational resource for coaches, physical trainers, sport scientists, rehabilitation practitioners, wheelchair users, and all those with an interest in the field of wheelchair sport.
The development and implementation of safe and effective exercise and technical training programmes for wheelchair athletes may be based on theory for nondisabled athletes. After appreciating the many differences between nondisabled and wheelchair athletes, the book highlights the practical application of conventional strength and conditioning principles, nutritional considerations, and aspects of travel in relation to the needs of athletes who use a wheelchair for sport or for daily locomotion. Many questions may be asked by coaches, athletes, and practitioners, such as, “Do I need to adapt my coaching techniques to suit athletes with disabilities?”, “How should I set up my sport wheelchair?”, and “What are the energy requirements of the wheelchair athlete?” There are obviously going to be differences to the conventional theories regarding nondisabled athletes; however, even among wheelchair users there is likely to be a wide range of answers to these questions based on whether the athlete has a spinal cord injury, at what point the injury is sited, when the onset of the disability occurred, whether it is complete or incomplete, and whether the athlete uses a wheelchair for a different reason.
In order to answer some of these questions, Wheelchair Sport is divided into two parts. The contributors of part I have all made significant contributions to sport science education through involvement with national sporting governing bodies and national Paralympic associations. The structure of this text provides a balance between a general overview of and details about classification; psychological, mechanical, biomechanical, and physiological factors; strength and conditioning; nutrition and body composition; and the travel concerns that may be experienced when participating in wheelchair sport.
The first chapter introduces the sports that form the basis of this text and familiarizes the reader towards classification. This is followed by a chapter that describes the importance of wheelchair selection and propulsion technique. The third chapter demonstrates the importance of understanding the physiological differences between nondisabled and wheelchair athletes and the physiological adaptations that result from training. As a natural progression from this, chapter 4 introduces the concepts of strength and conditioning for wheelchair sport. Optimum nutritional strategies for health, training, and competition are discussed in chapter 5, along with assessment of body composition. Chapter 6 provides some practical advice to the wheelchair athlete who is travelling and competing abroad. Finally, chapter 7 describes principles and considerations that should be incorporated into the practice of those working with wheelchair athletes.
Part II is made up of sport-specific chapters and covers the five main sports (wheelchair basketball, racing, rugby, tennis, and handcycling). Although their experience lies in a number of wheelchair sports, the contributors of this section are united by their passion towards each sport, a respect of other coaches and athletes, and a desire to further the status that wheelchair sport deserves. All the contributors in this section have personally coached or been involved themselves as either an athlete or part of the support team at a very high level (including the Paralympics). These chapters provide a brief background of the sport, tactical advice in the form of drills, and playing and racing strategies. There is a truly international flavour to this section, with contributions from Belgium, Canada, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
The authors contributing to this book include coaches, applied sport scientists, and specialists in sports medicine and physical therapy working within Paralympic sport, as well as four high-performance wheelchair athletes whose stories can only have enhanced wheelchair sporting knowledge. It was a pleasure to incorporate these brief insights of life as a Paralympian by Mike Frogley; the Baroness Grey-Thompson; Peter Norfolk, OBE; and Randy Snow. This text is designed to help readers gain the necessary knowledge to enhance performance while at the same time allowing people with disabilities to realize what it may take to achieve their sporting dreams at any level.
This is an excerpt from Wheelchair Sport.
Psychological aspects of wheelchair sport
Many people find it difficult to relate to someone who has a physical disability. This lack of understanding can create additional challenges for people with disabilities. If society responded more adequately to people who have impairments, they would not experience nearly as many challenges and limitations
by David Shearer and Elizabeth Bressan
I was travelling with a wheelchair basketball team from the UK to the USA for an international tournament. Upon arriving at the airport, I went to check in with one of the athletes who was in his wheelchair. The check-in assistant proceeded to direct a torrent of questions at me. “Can he move through the airport without assistance? Will he need assistance to get onto the aircraft? Has anyone interfered with his bags since he packed them?” The athlete and I looked at each other in disbelief! Did she think he could not answer these questions himself? In my head I began to compose a response, but I was too slow. The athlete provided her with an energetic response aimed at her re-education about his functional capacity. Her red face showed that the desired effect was achieved. Her assumption that people who use wheelchairs are generally incapable was shattered. I doubt that she ever made the same mistake again.
David Shearer
Many people find it difficult to relate to someone who has a physical disability, often because they have not had any personal interaction with anyone with a disability. For example, they might be unsure what to expect from a person who has a mobility impairment and uses a wheelchair because they have never spent any time with wheelchair users. This lack of understanding can create additional challenges for people with disabilities. If society responded more adequately to people who have impairments, they would not experience nearly as many challenges and limitations (LoBianco & Shephard-Jones, 2007). Consider office workers who happen to use wheelchairs. Provided that there is only one level or there are ramps or elevators between levels, they may need no assistance whatsoever in the workplace. In other words, in an adapted work environment, they do not have a disability.
In wheelchair sport, the rules have been designed to ensure that people who have a variety of mobility impairments can play physically demanding and competitive sports in their wheelchairs. They provide adapted sport environments that encourage wheelchair users to become wheelchair athletes. The aim of this chapter is not to convince practitioners that wheelchair athletes deserve equal opportunities to participate in sport. Instead, our goal is to provide practitioners (e.g., coaches, sport science, and sport medicine support staff) with both general and specific psychological considerations for interacting and working with athletes with disabilities.
Getting Involved in Wheelchair Sport
Previous reviews that have compared working with athletes with physical disabilities to working with nondisabled athletes have highlighted more similarities than differences (Hanrahan, 1998, 2005; Martin, 1999). Whether working with a team sport or an individual sport, all practitioners must be prepared to adapt training methods, practice schedules, and communication styles in order to arrive at an optimal approach. This is true when working with any athlete, not just wheelchair athletes. By adopting this professional approach, practitioners will look at all wheelchair athletes as individuals. Although one athlete may have an amputation, another SCI, and another a mobility impairment, these physical disabilities will not be the point of departure when working with them. If practitioners' initial interactions with wheelchair athletes follow the same protocols as their interactions with all other athletes, they are likely to build strong rapport that will enhance the support that they can provide.
Who Participates in Wheelchair Sport?
From a clinical perspective, people who are eligible to participate in wheelchair sport at the Paralympic level have a variety of physical disabilities, all of which present serious disadvantages in the mobility aspects of sport participation. For example, a person with a below-knee amputation will be at a substantial disadvantage when playing basketball while wearing a prosthetic leg but will be able to participate without any disadvantage in wheelchair basketball.
It can be important to know whether a disability is congenital (present since birth) or acquired (caused by an accident or medical incident). Someone with a congenital disability has never experienced the sudden loss of physical mobility that has changed the life of a person who now uses a wheelchair as a result of paraplegia caused by an accident. On the other hand, the person with a congenital disability may have experienced a lifetime of discrimination. From a practical perspective, the practitioner's commitment to getting to know each athlete as an individual will help the practitioner develop an understanding of how the athlete feels. The realization that each athlete may feel differently about his impairment and the notion of disability will help the practitioner establish effective channels of communication.
Wheelchair athletes strive for victory and take pride in their achievements just as any other athletes do.
Photo courtesy of ES Bressan.
When working with wheelchair athletes, remember that in addition to the normal competitive pressures experienced by all athletes, those who use wheelchairs face a number of unique challenges. A wheelchair athlete will encounter disadvantages in nonadapted environments. For example, a gymnasium without an adapted entrance (e.g., a ramp) creates a barrier for fitness training for athletes who use wheelchairs for all their mobility needs, such as someone whose impairment is tetraplegia.
There are other kinds of barriers that present wheelchair athletes with challenges not usually experienced by nondisabled athletes. Researchers have found that elite wheelchair basketball players suffer unique stressors not experienced by nondisabled players (Campbell & Jones, 2002a, 2002b), including worries associated with travelling (e.g., going to the toilet on planes, handling luggage) and a lack of understanding from the general public (e.g., airline staff, support staff). In addition to these general concerns, there may also be sport-specific stressors. For example, research has shown that wheelchair racers experience greater stress about the condition of road surfaces compared with nondisabled racers (Martin, 2005). In our experience, knowledge of the challenges that athletes face is best gained through open and honest communication with them. This knowledge can be enhanced by observing athletes in and out of sporting contexts and noting the challenges faced and the manner in which the person copes with those challenges.
Not all wheelchair athletes use wheelchairs for their day-to-day mobility. Athletes with leg amputations and some athletes with SCI or with cerebral palsy are able to walk. They are wheelchair athletes because they play competitive sport in wheelchairs. There are also people who play wheelchair sport who do not have any mobility impairment at all. They choose to play wheelchair sport based on an inclusive model for recreation or competition. They also may be motivated by a shortage of athletes with mobility impairments needed to form a team. However, athletes without mobility impairments do not meet minimum eligibility requirements for participation in Paralympic wheelchair sport and are not included in our presentation.
Familiarization With Wheelchair Sport
Beginner and elite wheelchair athletes want support from people who understand their sport. This requires familiarity with their sport. Sport familiarization is a continuous process, and the longer practitioners remain involved in wheelchair sport, the more sophisticated their understanding of how they can contribute.
The simplest way to become familiar with any wheelchair sport is to become immersed in the sport and actively observe the athletes in training and competition. Actively observing is more than just watching; it entails observing with specific objectives. For example, before attending a competition, practitioners could identify specific aspects of the sport on which they intend to focus, such as team tactics in wheelchair basketball or the biomechanics of serving technique and ground strokes in wheelchair tennis.
Often, observation alone is not enough. Using the previous examples, a coach may notice that one basketball team frequently uses the fast break after winning a defensive rebound whereas the other team tends to slow the game down when they get possession in a similar situation. Similarly, one wheelchair tennis player may hit the forehand from a more full-on position than another. Asking questions of people who have specialist knowledge is invaluable in understanding any wheelchair sport. This might include having conversations with existing coaching staff but more importantly speaking with the athletes themselves. Athletes generally enjoy talking about their sport. These conversations will also provide an opportunity to become familiar with the athletes as well as their sport.
You may also consider attempting the sport yourself. For example, a physiotherapist and a sport psychologist for a wheelchair basketball team tried playing one-on-one after the team had finished practice. The physiotherapist thought that this gave him a better understanding of the forces that the athletes' muscles were subjected to and the potential injuries that might occur, and the sport psychologist believed he had a better grasp of the attentional demands of the game. In contrast, the coach of this same team, who was an accomplished basketball coach but was new to wheelchair basketball, decided not to try playing the game. His reasoning was that because his wheelchair skills were poor, he would not have a realistic experience and might unconsciously lower his expectations for the players. For him, sport familiarization did not include actual participation.
In some instances it may be useful to experiment firsthand how athletes' lives are affected by their disability. Hanrahan (1998) suggested trying to complete simple tasks such as getting off and on a chair without the use of leg muscles, a daily ritual for an athlete with paraplegia. It might be helpful to take a trip using a wheelchair to increase awareness of the barriers that wheelchair athletes face on a daily basis. However, the knowledge gained by such exercises should be used for personal insight only. Some athletes may consider such efforts patronizing, so practitioners should not try to use their experiences as a basis for understanding what their lives are like. If you would like to know what any athlete is thinking or feeling, the best advice is to ask her.
Sport-specific knowledge is critical. Learning the rules of the sport as well as the system of athlete classification is central to understanding how the sport is played and how competitions are managed. However, given the various support roles when working with wheelchair athletes, there is some variation in the knowledge required. In some roles, such as coach, sport-specific knowledge must become more and more sophisticated. For the physiotherapist or sport psychologist, developing a good understanding of the sport may be sufficient. Both the coach and the sport psychologist will use an understanding of the areas presented in the next two sections in order to help wheelchair athletes develop their sport commitment and the psychological aspects of their sport.
This is an excerpt from Wheelchair Sport.
Sample skills and drills for wheelchair basketball
Learn more about the skills needed for wheelchair basketball, and get a sneak peek of some of the drills featured in the Wheelchair Sport.
A great deal has been written on basketball skills and how to teach these skills to athletes. Such is not the case in wheelchair basketball. Though wheelchair basketball has been played since shortly after World War II, very little has been presented in the literature specifically for the sport. As a result, most coaches and players of wheelchair basketball have taken what they learned from the running game of basketball and tried to adapt it to wheelchair basketball with varying degrees of success. Some of what is taught in the running game of basketball can be transferred to wheelchair basketball; however, the different levels of muscle function present in wheelchair basketball and the different movements resulting from using a wheelchair present some unique skills. This chapter will focus on some of those differences and emphasize the individual and team skills used in wheelchair basketball.
This is an excerpt from Wheelchair Sport.
Learn more about Wheelchair Sport, a new book from HK
Wheelchair sport can increase confidence and self-esteem, and it may provide people with a positive outlook on life. There is a wheelchair sport for almost everyone who wants to participate and for any level of expertise, from novice through to Paralympic competition.
by Vicky Goosey-Tolfrey, Editor
Each year thousands of men and women become disabled due to an accident or illness and thereafter use a wheelchair for locomotion. The statistics tell us that there are approximately 1 to 2 million wheelchair users in the United States and approximately 1 to 2 million wheelchair users in Europe. This means that approximately 1 in every 200 people in the United States and Europe are in wheelchairs.
In 1948, Sir Ludwig Guttman, a neurologist who was working with World War II veterans with spinal injuries at Stoke Mandeville Hospital, Aylesbury, in the United Kingdom, began using sport as part of the rehabilitation programmes for his patients. Since that time, participation in wheelchair sport has grown beyond a method to improve wheelchair users' physical capacity. Wheelchair sport can increase confidence and self-esteem, and it may provide people with a positive outlook on life. There is a wheelchair sport for almost everyone who wants to participate and for any level of expertise, from novice through to Paralympic competition.
High-performance athletes are high performance whether they have a disability or not. However, the journey to this level of sporting excellence is dramatically different for wheelchair sport. Wheelchair athletes need sporting opportunities that nurture, recruit, and develop them through to the national level. They need access to sporting facilities and the community, as well as effective disability sport organizations. Access and support are just some of the challenges that wheelchair athletes and nondisabled athletes do not share.
Although the unique challenges of wheelchair sport participation can present obstacles, there are more opportunities than ever before to compete at any level. Advances in wheelchairs, understanding of the classification system, training methods, pushing techniques, and psychological aspects of wheelchair sport should help people with disabilities to achieve their sporting dreams. At the highest level, wheelchair sports have a dominating presence at the Paralympic Games, and while the science, engineering, and sporting classification systems evolve we rely on evidence practice through scientific communities to keep up. Wheelchair Sport bridges the gap between sporting excellence to wheelchair sport at a grassroots level. Wheelchair Sport is an educational resource for coaches, physical trainers, sport scientists, rehabilitation practitioners, wheelchair users, and all those with an interest in the field of wheelchair sport.
The development and implementation of safe and effective exercise and technical training programmes for wheelchair athletes may be based on theory for nondisabled athletes. After appreciating the many differences between nondisabled and wheelchair athletes, the book highlights the practical application of conventional strength and conditioning principles, nutritional considerations, and aspects of travel in relation to the needs of athletes who use a wheelchair for sport or for daily locomotion. Many questions may be asked by coaches, athletes, and practitioners, such as, “Do I need to adapt my coaching techniques to suit athletes with disabilities?”, “How should I set up my sport wheelchair?”, and “What are the energy requirements of the wheelchair athlete?” There are obviously going to be differences to the conventional theories regarding nondisabled athletes; however, even among wheelchair users there is likely to be a wide range of answers to these questions based on whether the athlete has a spinal cord injury, at what point the injury is sited, when the onset of the disability occurred, whether it is complete or incomplete, and whether the athlete uses a wheelchair for a different reason.
In order to answer some of these questions, Wheelchair Sport is divided into two parts. The contributors of part I have all made significant contributions to sport science education through involvement with national sporting governing bodies and national Paralympic associations. The structure of this text provides a balance between a general overview of and details about classification; psychological, mechanical, biomechanical, and physiological factors; strength and conditioning; nutrition and body composition; and the travel concerns that may be experienced when participating in wheelchair sport.
The first chapter introduces the sports that form the basis of this text and familiarizes the reader towards classification. This is followed by a chapter that describes the importance of wheelchair selection and propulsion technique. The third chapter demonstrates the importance of understanding the physiological differences between nondisabled and wheelchair athletes and the physiological adaptations that result from training. As a natural progression from this, chapter 4 introduces the concepts of strength and conditioning for wheelchair sport. Optimum nutritional strategies for health, training, and competition are discussed in chapter 5, along with assessment of body composition. Chapter 6 provides some practical advice to the wheelchair athlete who is travelling and competing abroad. Finally, chapter 7 describes principles and considerations that should be incorporated into the practice of those working with wheelchair athletes.
Part II is made up of sport-specific chapters and covers the five main sports (wheelchair basketball, racing, rugby, tennis, and handcycling). Although their experience lies in a number of wheelchair sports, the contributors of this section are united by their passion towards each sport, a respect of other coaches and athletes, and a desire to further the status that wheelchair sport deserves. All the contributors in this section have personally coached or been involved themselves as either an athlete or part of the support team at a very high level (including the Paralympics). These chapters provide a brief background of the sport, tactical advice in the form of drills, and playing and racing strategies. There is a truly international flavour to this section, with contributions from Belgium, Canada, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
The authors contributing to this book include coaches, applied sport scientists, and specialists in sports medicine and physical therapy working within Paralympic sport, as well as four high-performance wheelchair athletes whose stories can only have enhanced wheelchair sporting knowledge. It was a pleasure to incorporate these brief insights of life as a Paralympian by Mike Frogley; the Baroness Grey-Thompson; Peter Norfolk, OBE; and Randy Snow. This text is designed to help readers gain the necessary knowledge to enhance performance while at the same time allowing people with disabilities to realize what it may take to achieve their sporting dreams at any level.
This is an excerpt from Wheelchair Sport.
Psychological aspects of wheelchair sport
Many people find it difficult to relate to someone who has a physical disability. This lack of understanding can create additional challenges for people with disabilities. If society responded more adequately to people who have impairments, they would not experience nearly as many challenges and limitations
by David Shearer and Elizabeth Bressan
I was travelling with a wheelchair basketball team from the UK to the USA for an international tournament. Upon arriving at the airport, I went to check in with one of the athletes who was in his wheelchair. The check-in assistant proceeded to direct a torrent of questions at me. “Can he move through the airport without assistance? Will he need assistance to get onto the aircraft? Has anyone interfered with his bags since he packed them?” The athlete and I looked at each other in disbelief! Did she think he could not answer these questions himself? In my head I began to compose a response, but I was too slow. The athlete provided her with an energetic response aimed at her re-education about his functional capacity. Her red face showed that the desired effect was achieved. Her assumption that people who use wheelchairs are generally incapable was shattered. I doubt that she ever made the same mistake again.
David Shearer
Many people find it difficult to relate to someone who has a physical disability, often because they have not had any personal interaction with anyone with a disability. For example, they might be unsure what to expect from a person who has a mobility impairment and uses a wheelchair because they have never spent any time with wheelchair users. This lack of understanding can create additional challenges for people with disabilities. If society responded more adequately to people who have impairments, they would not experience nearly as many challenges and limitations (LoBianco & Shephard-Jones, 2007). Consider office workers who happen to use wheelchairs. Provided that there is only one level or there are ramps or elevators between levels, they may need no assistance whatsoever in the workplace. In other words, in an adapted work environment, they do not have a disability.
In wheelchair sport, the rules have been designed to ensure that people who have a variety of mobility impairments can play physically demanding and competitive sports in their wheelchairs. They provide adapted sport environments that encourage wheelchair users to become wheelchair athletes. The aim of this chapter is not to convince practitioners that wheelchair athletes deserve equal opportunities to participate in sport. Instead, our goal is to provide practitioners (e.g., coaches, sport science, and sport medicine support staff) with both general and specific psychological considerations for interacting and working with athletes with disabilities.
Getting Involved in Wheelchair Sport
Previous reviews that have compared working with athletes with physical disabilities to working with nondisabled athletes have highlighted more similarities than differences (Hanrahan, 1998, 2005; Martin, 1999). Whether working with a team sport or an individual sport, all practitioners must be prepared to adapt training methods, practice schedules, and communication styles in order to arrive at an optimal approach. This is true when working with any athlete, not just wheelchair athletes. By adopting this professional approach, practitioners will look at all wheelchair athletes as individuals. Although one athlete may have an amputation, another SCI, and another a mobility impairment, these physical disabilities will not be the point of departure when working with them. If practitioners' initial interactions with wheelchair athletes follow the same protocols as their interactions with all other athletes, they are likely to build strong rapport that will enhance the support that they can provide.
Who Participates in Wheelchair Sport?
From a clinical perspective, people who are eligible to participate in wheelchair sport at the Paralympic level have a variety of physical disabilities, all of which present serious disadvantages in the mobility aspects of sport participation. For example, a person with a below-knee amputation will be at a substantial disadvantage when playing basketball while wearing a prosthetic leg but will be able to participate without any disadvantage in wheelchair basketball.
It can be important to know whether a disability is congenital (present since birth) or acquired (caused by an accident or medical incident). Someone with a congenital disability has never experienced the sudden loss of physical mobility that has changed the life of a person who now uses a wheelchair as a result of paraplegia caused by an accident. On the other hand, the person with a congenital disability may have experienced a lifetime of discrimination. From a practical perspective, the practitioner's commitment to getting to know each athlete as an individual will help the practitioner develop an understanding of how the athlete feels. The realization that each athlete may feel differently about his impairment and the notion of disability will help the practitioner establish effective channels of communication.
Wheelchair athletes strive for victory and take pride in their achievements just as any other athletes do.
Photo courtesy of ES Bressan.
When working with wheelchair athletes, remember that in addition to the normal competitive pressures experienced by all athletes, those who use wheelchairs face a number of unique challenges. A wheelchair athlete will encounter disadvantages in nonadapted environments. For example, a gymnasium without an adapted entrance (e.g., a ramp) creates a barrier for fitness training for athletes who use wheelchairs for all their mobility needs, such as someone whose impairment is tetraplegia.
There are other kinds of barriers that present wheelchair athletes with challenges not usually experienced by nondisabled athletes. Researchers have found that elite wheelchair basketball players suffer unique stressors not experienced by nondisabled players (Campbell & Jones, 2002a, 2002b), including worries associated with travelling (e.g., going to the toilet on planes, handling luggage) and a lack of understanding from the general public (e.g., airline staff, support staff). In addition to these general concerns, there may also be sport-specific stressors. For example, research has shown that wheelchair racers experience greater stress about the condition of road surfaces compared with nondisabled racers (Martin, 2005). In our experience, knowledge of the challenges that athletes face is best gained through open and honest communication with them. This knowledge can be enhanced by observing athletes in and out of sporting contexts and noting the challenges faced and the manner in which the person copes with those challenges.
Not all wheelchair athletes use wheelchairs for their day-to-day mobility. Athletes with leg amputations and some athletes with SCI or with cerebral palsy are able to walk. They are wheelchair athletes because they play competitive sport in wheelchairs. There are also people who play wheelchair sport who do not have any mobility impairment at all. They choose to play wheelchair sport based on an inclusive model for recreation or competition. They also may be motivated by a shortage of athletes with mobility impairments needed to form a team. However, athletes without mobility impairments do not meet minimum eligibility requirements for participation in Paralympic wheelchair sport and are not included in our presentation.
Familiarization With Wheelchair Sport
Beginner and elite wheelchair athletes want support from people who understand their sport. This requires familiarity with their sport. Sport familiarization is a continuous process, and the longer practitioners remain involved in wheelchair sport, the more sophisticated their understanding of how they can contribute.
The simplest way to become familiar with any wheelchair sport is to become immersed in the sport and actively observe the athletes in training and competition. Actively observing is more than just watching; it entails observing with specific objectives. For example, before attending a competition, practitioners could identify specific aspects of the sport on which they intend to focus, such as team tactics in wheelchair basketball or the biomechanics of serving technique and ground strokes in wheelchair tennis.
Often, observation alone is not enough. Using the previous examples, a coach may notice that one basketball team frequently uses the fast break after winning a defensive rebound whereas the other team tends to slow the game down when they get possession in a similar situation. Similarly, one wheelchair tennis player may hit the forehand from a more full-on position than another. Asking questions of people who have specialist knowledge is invaluable in understanding any wheelchair sport. This might include having conversations with existing coaching staff but more importantly speaking with the athletes themselves. Athletes generally enjoy talking about their sport. These conversations will also provide an opportunity to become familiar with the athletes as well as their sport.
You may also consider attempting the sport yourself. For example, a physiotherapist and a sport psychologist for a wheelchair basketball team tried playing one-on-one after the team had finished practice. The physiotherapist thought that this gave him a better understanding of the forces that the athletes' muscles were subjected to and the potential injuries that might occur, and the sport psychologist believed he had a better grasp of the attentional demands of the game. In contrast, the coach of this same team, who was an accomplished basketball coach but was new to wheelchair basketball, decided not to try playing the game. His reasoning was that because his wheelchair skills were poor, he would not have a realistic experience and might unconsciously lower his expectations for the players. For him, sport familiarization did not include actual participation.
In some instances it may be useful to experiment firsthand how athletes' lives are affected by their disability. Hanrahan (1998) suggested trying to complete simple tasks such as getting off and on a chair without the use of leg muscles, a daily ritual for an athlete with paraplegia. It might be helpful to take a trip using a wheelchair to increase awareness of the barriers that wheelchair athletes face on a daily basis. However, the knowledge gained by such exercises should be used for personal insight only. Some athletes may consider such efforts patronizing, so practitioners should not try to use their experiences as a basis for understanding what their lives are like. If you would like to know what any athlete is thinking or feeling, the best advice is to ask her.
Sport-specific knowledge is critical. Learning the rules of the sport as well as the system of athlete classification is central to understanding how the sport is played and how competitions are managed. However, given the various support roles when working with wheelchair athletes, there is some variation in the knowledge required. In some roles, such as coach, sport-specific knowledge must become more and more sophisticated. For the physiotherapist or sport psychologist, developing a good understanding of the sport may be sufficient. Both the coach and the sport psychologist will use an understanding of the areas presented in the next two sections in order to help wheelchair athletes develop their sport commitment and the psychological aspects of their sport.
This is an excerpt from Wheelchair Sport.
Sample skills and drills for wheelchair basketball
Learn more about the skills needed for wheelchair basketball, and get a sneak peek of some of the drills featured in the Wheelchair Sport.
A great deal has been written on basketball skills and how to teach these skills to athletes. Such is not the case in wheelchair basketball. Though wheelchair basketball has been played since shortly after World War II, very little has been presented in the literature specifically for the sport. As a result, most coaches and players of wheelchair basketball have taken what they learned from the running game of basketball and tried to adapt it to wheelchair basketball with varying degrees of success. Some of what is taught in the running game of basketball can be transferred to wheelchair basketball; however, the different levels of muscle function present in wheelchair basketball and the different movements resulting from using a wheelchair present some unique skills. This chapter will focus on some of those differences and emphasize the individual and team skills used in wheelchair basketball.
This is an excerpt from Wheelchair Sport.
Learn more about Wheelchair Sport, a new book from HK
Wheelchair sport can increase confidence and self-esteem, and it may provide people with a positive outlook on life. There is a wheelchair sport for almost everyone who wants to participate and for any level of expertise, from novice through to Paralympic competition.
by Vicky Goosey-Tolfrey, Editor
Each year thousands of men and women become disabled due to an accident or illness and thereafter use a wheelchair for locomotion. The statistics tell us that there are approximately 1 to 2 million wheelchair users in the United States and approximately 1 to 2 million wheelchair users in Europe. This means that approximately 1 in every 200 people in the United States and Europe are in wheelchairs.
In 1948, Sir Ludwig Guttman, a neurologist who was working with World War II veterans with spinal injuries at Stoke Mandeville Hospital, Aylesbury, in the United Kingdom, began using sport as part of the rehabilitation programmes for his patients. Since that time, participation in wheelchair sport has grown beyond a method to improve wheelchair users' physical capacity. Wheelchair sport can increase confidence and self-esteem, and it may provide people with a positive outlook on life. There is a wheelchair sport for almost everyone who wants to participate and for any level of expertise, from novice through to Paralympic competition.
High-performance athletes are high performance whether they have a disability or not. However, the journey to this level of sporting excellence is dramatically different for wheelchair sport. Wheelchair athletes need sporting opportunities that nurture, recruit, and develop them through to the national level. They need access to sporting facilities and the community, as well as effective disability sport organizations. Access and support are just some of the challenges that wheelchair athletes and nondisabled athletes do not share.
Although the unique challenges of wheelchair sport participation can present obstacles, there are more opportunities than ever before to compete at any level. Advances in wheelchairs, understanding of the classification system, training methods, pushing techniques, and psychological aspects of wheelchair sport should help people with disabilities to achieve their sporting dreams. At the highest level, wheelchair sports have a dominating presence at the Paralympic Games, and while the science, engineering, and sporting classification systems evolve we rely on evidence practice through scientific communities to keep up. Wheelchair Sport bridges the gap between sporting excellence to wheelchair sport at a grassroots level. Wheelchair Sport is an educational resource for coaches, physical trainers, sport scientists, rehabilitation practitioners, wheelchair users, and all those with an interest in the field of wheelchair sport.
The development and implementation of safe and effective exercise and technical training programmes for wheelchair athletes may be based on theory for nondisabled athletes. After appreciating the many differences between nondisabled and wheelchair athletes, the book highlights the practical application of conventional strength and conditioning principles, nutritional considerations, and aspects of travel in relation to the needs of athletes who use a wheelchair for sport or for daily locomotion. Many questions may be asked by coaches, athletes, and practitioners, such as, “Do I need to adapt my coaching techniques to suit athletes with disabilities?”, “How should I set up my sport wheelchair?”, and “What are the energy requirements of the wheelchair athlete?” There are obviously going to be differences to the conventional theories regarding nondisabled athletes; however, even among wheelchair users there is likely to be a wide range of answers to these questions based on whether the athlete has a spinal cord injury, at what point the injury is sited, when the onset of the disability occurred, whether it is complete or incomplete, and whether the athlete uses a wheelchair for a different reason.
In order to answer some of these questions, Wheelchair Sport is divided into two parts. The contributors of part I have all made significant contributions to sport science education through involvement with national sporting governing bodies and national Paralympic associations. The structure of this text provides a balance between a general overview of and details about classification; psychological, mechanical, biomechanical, and physiological factors; strength and conditioning; nutrition and body composition; and the travel concerns that may be experienced when participating in wheelchair sport.
The first chapter introduces the sports that form the basis of this text and familiarizes the reader towards classification. This is followed by a chapter that describes the importance of wheelchair selection and propulsion technique. The third chapter demonstrates the importance of understanding the physiological differences between nondisabled and wheelchair athletes and the physiological adaptations that result from training. As a natural progression from this, chapter 4 introduces the concepts of strength and conditioning for wheelchair sport. Optimum nutritional strategies for health, training, and competition are discussed in chapter 5, along with assessment of body composition. Chapter 6 provides some practical advice to the wheelchair athlete who is travelling and competing abroad. Finally, chapter 7 describes principles and considerations that should be incorporated into the practice of those working with wheelchair athletes.
Part II is made up of sport-specific chapters and covers the five main sports (wheelchair basketball, racing, rugby, tennis, and handcycling). Although their experience lies in a number of wheelchair sports, the contributors of this section are united by their passion towards each sport, a respect of other coaches and athletes, and a desire to further the status that wheelchair sport deserves. All the contributors in this section have personally coached or been involved themselves as either an athlete or part of the support team at a very high level (including the Paralympics). These chapters provide a brief background of the sport, tactical advice in the form of drills, and playing and racing strategies. There is a truly international flavour to this section, with contributions from Belgium, Canada, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
The authors contributing to this book include coaches, applied sport scientists, and specialists in sports medicine and physical therapy working within Paralympic sport, as well as four high-performance wheelchair athletes whose stories can only have enhanced wheelchair sporting knowledge. It was a pleasure to incorporate these brief insights of life as a Paralympian by Mike Frogley; the Baroness Grey-Thompson; Peter Norfolk, OBE; and Randy Snow. This text is designed to help readers gain the necessary knowledge to enhance performance while at the same time allowing people with disabilities to realize what it may take to achieve their sporting dreams at any level.
This is an excerpt from Wheelchair Sport.
Psychological aspects of wheelchair sport
Many people find it difficult to relate to someone who has a physical disability. This lack of understanding can create additional challenges for people with disabilities. If society responded more adequately to people who have impairments, they would not experience nearly as many challenges and limitations
by David Shearer and Elizabeth Bressan
I was travelling with a wheelchair basketball team from the UK to the USA for an international tournament. Upon arriving at the airport, I went to check in with one of the athletes who was in his wheelchair. The check-in assistant proceeded to direct a torrent of questions at me. “Can he move through the airport without assistance? Will he need assistance to get onto the aircraft? Has anyone interfered with his bags since he packed them?” The athlete and I looked at each other in disbelief! Did she think he could not answer these questions himself? In my head I began to compose a response, but I was too slow. The athlete provided her with an energetic response aimed at her re-education about his functional capacity. Her red face showed that the desired effect was achieved. Her assumption that people who use wheelchairs are generally incapable was shattered. I doubt that she ever made the same mistake again.
David Shearer
Many people find it difficult to relate to someone who has a physical disability, often because they have not had any personal interaction with anyone with a disability. For example, they might be unsure what to expect from a person who has a mobility impairment and uses a wheelchair because they have never spent any time with wheelchair users. This lack of understanding can create additional challenges for people with disabilities. If society responded more adequately to people who have impairments, they would not experience nearly as many challenges and limitations (LoBianco & Shephard-Jones, 2007). Consider office workers who happen to use wheelchairs. Provided that there is only one level or there are ramps or elevators between levels, they may need no assistance whatsoever in the workplace. In other words, in an adapted work environment, they do not have a disability.
In wheelchair sport, the rules have been designed to ensure that people who have a variety of mobility impairments can play physically demanding and competitive sports in their wheelchairs. They provide adapted sport environments that encourage wheelchair users to become wheelchair athletes. The aim of this chapter is not to convince practitioners that wheelchair athletes deserve equal opportunities to participate in sport. Instead, our goal is to provide practitioners (e.g., coaches, sport science, and sport medicine support staff) with both general and specific psychological considerations for interacting and working with athletes with disabilities.
Getting Involved in Wheelchair Sport
Previous reviews that have compared working with athletes with physical disabilities to working with nondisabled athletes have highlighted more similarities than differences (Hanrahan, 1998, 2005; Martin, 1999). Whether working with a team sport or an individual sport, all practitioners must be prepared to adapt training methods, practice schedules, and communication styles in order to arrive at an optimal approach. This is true when working with any athlete, not just wheelchair athletes. By adopting this professional approach, practitioners will look at all wheelchair athletes as individuals. Although one athlete may have an amputation, another SCI, and another a mobility impairment, these physical disabilities will not be the point of departure when working with them. If practitioners' initial interactions with wheelchair athletes follow the same protocols as their interactions with all other athletes, they are likely to build strong rapport that will enhance the support that they can provide.
Who Participates in Wheelchair Sport?
From a clinical perspective, people who are eligible to participate in wheelchair sport at the Paralympic level have a variety of physical disabilities, all of which present serious disadvantages in the mobility aspects of sport participation. For example, a person with a below-knee amputation will be at a substantial disadvantage when playing basketball while wearing a prosthetic leg but will be able to participate without any disadvantage in wheelchair basketball.
It can be important to know whether a disability is congenital (present since birth) or acquired (caused by an accident or medical incident). Someone with a congenital disability has never experienced the sudden loss of physical mobility that has changed the life of a person who now uses a wheelchair as a result of paraplegia caused by an accident. On the other hand, the person with a congenital disability may have experienced a lifetime of discrimination. From a practical perspective, the practitioner's commitment to getting to know each athlete as an individual will help the practitioner develop an understanding of how the athlete feels. The realization that each athlete may feel differently about his impairment and the notion of disability will help the practitioner establish effective channels of communication.
Wheelchair athletes strive for victory and take pride in their achievements just as any other athletes do.
Photo courtesy of ES Bressan.
When working with wheelchair athletes, remember that in addition to the normal competitive pressures experienced by all athletes, those who use wheelchairs face a number of unique challenges. A wheelchair athlete will encounter disadvantages in nonadapted environments. For example, a gymnasium without an adapted entrance (e.g., a ramp) creates a barrier for fitness training for athletes who use wheelchairs for all their mobility needs, such as someone whose impairment is tetraplegia.
There are other kinds of barriers that present wheelchair athletes with challenges not usually experienced by nondisabled athletes. Researchers have found that elite wheelchair basketball players suffer unique stressors not experienced by nondisabled players (Campbell & Jones, 2002a, 2002b), including worries associated with travelling (e.g., going to the toilet on planes, handling luggage) and a lack of understanding from the general public (e.g., airline staff, support staff). In addition to these general concerns, there may also be sport-specific stressors. For example, research has shown that wheelchair racers experience greater stress about the condition of road surfaces compared with nondisabled racers (Martin, 2005). In our experience, knowledge of the challenges that athletes face is best gained through open and honest communication with them. This knowledge can be enhanced by observing athletes in and out of sporting contexts and noting the challenges faced and the manner in which the person copes with those challenges.
Not all wheelchair athletes use wheelchairs for their day-to-day mobility. Athletes with leg amputations and some athletes with SCI or with cerebral palsy are able to walk. They are wheelchair athletes because they play competitive sport in wheelchairs. There are also people who play wheelchair sport who do not have any mobility impairment at all. They choose to play wheelchair sport based on an inclusive model for recreation or competition. They also may be motivated by a shortage of athletes with mobility impairments needed to form a team. However, athletes without mobility impairments do not meet minimum eligibility requirements for participation in Paralympic wheelchair sport and are not included in our presentation.
Familiarization With Wheelchair Sport
Beginner and elite wheelchair athletes want support from people who understand their sport. This requires familiarity with their sport. Sport familiarization is a continuous process, and the longer practitioners remain involved in wheelchair sport, the more sophisticated their understanding of how they can contribute.
The simplest way to become familiar with any wheelchair sport is to become immersed in the sport and actively observe the athletes in training and competition. Actively observing is more than just watching; it entails observing with specific objectives. For example, before attending a competition, practitioners could identify specific aspects of the sport on which they intend to focus, such as team tactics in wheelchair basketball or the biomechanics of serving technique and ground strokes in wheelchair tennis.
Often, observation alone is not enough. Using the previous examples, a coach may notice that one basketball team frequently uses the fast break after winning a defensive rebound whereas the other team tends to slow the game down when they get possession in a similar situation. Similarly, one wheelchair tennis player may hit the forehand from a more full-on position than another. Asking questions of people who have specialist knowledge is invaluable in understanding any wheelchair sport. This might include having conversations with existing coaching staff but more importantly speaking with the athletes themselves. Athletes generally enjoy talking about their sport. These conversations will also provide an opportunity to become familiar with the athletes as well as their sport.
You may also consider attempting the sport yourself. For example, a physiotherapist and a sport psychologist for a wheelchair basketball team tried playing one-on-one after the team had finished practice. The physiotherapist thought that this gave him a better understanding of the forces that the athletes' muscles were subjected to and the potential injuries that might occur, and the sport psychologist believed he had a better grasp of the attentional demands of the game. In contrast, the coach of this same team, who was an accomplished basketball coach but was new to wheelchair basketball, decided not to try playing the game. His reasoning was that because his wheelchair skills were poor, he would not have a realistic experience and might unconsciously lower his expectations for the players. For him, sport familiarization did not include actual participation.
In some instances it may be useful to experiment firsthand how athletes' lives are affected by their disability. Hanrahan (1998) suggested trying to complete simple tasks such as getting off and on a chair without the use of leg muscles, a daily ritual for an athlete with paraplegia. It might be helpful to take a trip using a wheelchair to increase awareness of the barriers that wheelchair athletes face on a daily basis. However, the knowledge gained by such exercises should be used for personal insight only. Some athletes may consider such efforts patronizing, so practitioners should not try to use their experiences as a basis for understanding what their lives are like. If you would like to know what any athlete is thinking or feeling, the best advice is to ask her.
Sport-specific knowledge is critical. Learning the rules of the sport as well as the system of athlete classification is central to understanding how the sport is played and how competitions are managed. However, given the various support roles when working with wheelchair athletes, there is some variation in the knowledge required. In some roles, such as coach, sport-specific knowledge must become more and more sophisticated. For the physiotherapist or sport psychologist, developing a good understanding of the sport may be sufficient. Both the coach and the sport psychologist will use an understanding of the areas presented in the next two sections in order to help wheelchair athletes develop their sport commitment and the psychological aspects of their sport.
This is an excerpt from Wheelchair Sport.
Sample skills and drills for wheelchair basketball
Learn more about the skills needed for wheelchair basketball, and get a sneak peek of some of the drills featured in the Wheelchair Sport.
A great deal has been written on basketball skills and how to teach these skills to athletes. Such is not the case in wheelchair basketball. Though wheelchair basketball has been played since shortly after World War II, very little has been presented in the literature specifically for the sport. As a result, most coaches and players of wheelchair basketball have taken what they learned from the running game of basketball and tried to adapt it to wheelchair basketball with varying degrees of success. Some of what is taught in the running game of basketball can be transferred to wheelchair basketball; however, the different levels of muscle function present in wheelchair basketball and the different movements resulting from using a wheelchair present some unique skills. This chapter will focus on some of those differences and emphasize the individual and team skills used in wheelchair basketball.
This is an excerpt from Wheelchair Sport.
Learn more about Wheelchair Sport, a new book from HK
Wheelchair sport can increase confidence and self-esteem, and it may provide people with a positive outlook on life. There is a wheelchair sport for almost everyone who wants to participate and for any level of expertise, from novice through to Paralympic competition.
by Vicky Goosey-Tolfrey, Editor
Each year thousands of men and women become disabled due to an accident or illness and thereafter use a wheelchair for locomotion. The statistics tell us that there are approximately 1 to 2 million wheelchair users in the United States and approximately 1 to 2 million wheelchair users in Europe. This means that approximately 1 in every 200 people in the United States and Europe are in wheelchairs.
In 1948, Sir Ludwig Guttman, a neurologist who was working with World War II veterans with spinal injuries at Stoke Mandeville Hospital, Aylesbury, in the United Kingdom, began using sport as part of the rehabilitation programmes for his patients. Since that time, participation in wheelchair sport has grown beyond a method to improve wheelchair users' physical capacity. Wheelchair sport can increase confidence and self-esteem, and it may provide people with a positive outlook on life. There is a wheelchair sport for almost everyone who wants to participate and for any level of expertise, from novice through to Paralympic competition.
High-performance athletes are high performance whether they have a disability or not. However, the journey to this level of sporting excellence is dramatically different for wheelchair sport. Wheelchair athletes need sporting opportunities that nurture, recruit, and develop them through to the national level. They need access to sporting facilities and the community, as well as effective disability sport organizations. Access and support are just some of the challenges that wheelchair athletes and nondisabled athletes do not share.
Although the unique challenges of wheelchair sport participation can present obstacles, there are more opportunities than ever before to compete at any level. Advances in wheelchairs, understanding of the classification system, training methods, pushing techniques, and psychological aspects of wheelchair sport should help people with disabilities to achieve their sporting dreams. At the highest level, wheelchair sports have a dominating presence at the Paralympic Games, and while the science, engineering, and sporting classification systems evolve we rely on evidence practice through scientific communities to keep up. Wheelchair Sport bridges the gap between sporting excellence to wheelchair sport at a grassroots level. Wheelchair Sport is an educational resource for coaches, physical trainers, sport scientists, rehabilitation practitioners, wheelchair users, and all those with an interest in the field of wheelchair sport.
The development and implementation of safe and effective exercise and technical training programmes for wheelchair athletes may be based on theory for nondisabled athletes. After appreciating the many differences between nondisabled and wheelchair athletes, the book highlights the practical application of conventional strength and conditioning principles, nutritional considerations, and aspects of travel in relation to the needs of athletes who use a wheelchair for sport or for daily locomotion. Many questions may be asked by coaches, athletes, and practitioners, such as, “Do I need to adapt my coaching techniques to suit athletes with disabilities?”, “How should I set up my sport wheelchair?”, and “What are the energy requirements of the wheelchair athlete?” There are obviously going to be differences to the conventional theories regarding nondisabled athletes; however, even among wheelchair users there is likely to be a wide range of answers to these questions based on whether the athlete has a spinal cord injury, at what point the injury is sited, when the onset of the disability occurred, whether it is complete or incomplete, and whether the athlete uses a wheelchair for a different reason.
In order to answer some of these questions, Wheelchair Sport is divided into two parts. The contributors of part I have all made significant contributions to sport science education through involvement with national sporting governing bodies and national Paralympic associations. The structure of this text provides a balance between a general overview of and details about classification; psychological, mechanical, biomechanical, and physiological factors; strength and conditioning; nutrition and body composition; and the travel concerns that may be experienced when participating in wheelchair sport.
The first chapter introduces the sports that form the basis of this text and familiarizes the reader towards classification. This is followed by a chapter that describes the importance of wheelchair selection and propulsion technique. The third chapter demonstrates the importance of understanding the physiological differences between nondisabled and wheelchair athletes and the physiological adaptations that result from training. As a natural progression from this, chapter 4 introduces the concepts of strength and conditioning for wheelchair sport. Optimum nutritional strategies for health, training, and competition are discussed in chapter 5, along with assessment of body composition. Chapter 6 provides some practical advice to the wheelchair athlete who is travelling and competing abroad. Finally, chapter 7 describes principles and considerations that should be incorporated into the practice of those working with wheelchair athletes.
Part II is made up of sport-specific chapters and covers the five main sports (wheelchair basketball, racing, rugby, tennis, and handcycling). Although their experience lies in a number of wheelchair sports, the contributors of this section are united by their passion towards each sport, a respect of other coaches and athletes, and a desire to further the status that wheelchair sport deserves. All the contributors in this section have personally coached or been involved themselves as either an athlete or part of the support team at a very high level (including the Paralympics). These chapters provide a brief background of the sport, tactical advice in the form of drills, and playing and racing strategies. There is a truly international flavour to this section, with contributions from Belgium, Canada, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
The authors contributing to this book include coaches, applied sport scientists, and specialists in sports medicine and physical therapy working within Paralympic sport, as well as four high-performance wheelchair athletes whose stories can only have enhanced wheelchair sporting knowledge. It was a pleasure to incorporate these brief insights of life as a Paralympian by Mike Frogley; the Baroness Grey-Thompson; Peter Norfolk, OBE; and Randy Snow. This text is designed to help readers gain the necessary knowledge to enhance performance while at the same time allowing people with disabilities to realize what it may take to achieve their sporting dreams at any level.
This is an excerpt from Wheelchair Sport.
Psychological aspects of wheelchair sport
Many people find it difficult to relate to someone who has a physical disability. This lack of understanding can create additional challenges for people with disabilities. If society responded more adequately to people who have impairments, they would not experience nearly as many challenges and limitations
by David Shearer and Elizabeth Bressan
I was travelling with a wheelchair basketball team from the UK to the USA for an international tournament. Upon arriving at the airport, I went to check in with one of the athletes who was in his wheelchair. The check-in assistant proceeded to direct a torrent of questions at me. “Can he move through the airport without assistance? Will he need assistance to get onto the aircraft? Has anyone interfered with his bags since he packed them?” The athlete and I looked at each other in disbelief! Did she think he could not answer these questions himself? In my head I began to compose a response, but I was too slow. The athlete provided her with an energetic response aimed at her re-education about his functional capacity. Her red face showed that the desired effect was achieved. Her assumption that people who use wheelchairs are generally incapable was shattered. I doubt that she ever made the same mistake again.
David Shearer
Many people find it difficult to relate to someone who has a physical disability, often because they have not had any personal interaction with anyone with a disability. For example, they might be unsure what to expect from a person who has a mobility impairment and uses a wheelchair because they have never spent any time with wheelchair users. This lack of understanding can create additional challenges for people with disabilities. If society responded more adequately to people who have impairments, they would not experience nearly as many challenges and limitations (LoBianco & Shephard-Jones, 2007). Consider office workers who happen to use wheelchairs. Provided that there is only one level or there are ramps or elevators between levels, they may need no assistance whatsoever in the workplace. In other words, in an adapted work environment, they do not have a disability.
In wheelchair sport, the rules have been designed to ensure that people who have a variety of mobility impairments can play physically demanding and competitive sports in their wheelchairs. They provide adapted sport environments that encourage wheelchair users to become wheelchair athletes. The aim of this chapter is not to convince practitioners that wheelchair athletes deserve equal opportunities to participate in sport. Instead, our goal is to provide practitioners (e.g., coaches, sport science, and sport medicine support staff) with both general and specific psychological considerations for interacting and working with athletes with disabilities.
Getting Involved in Wheelchair Sport
Previous reviews that have compared working with athletes with physical disabilities to working with nondisabled athletes have highlighted more similarities than differences (Hanrahan, 1998, 2005; Martin, 1999). Whether working with a team sport or an individual sport, all practitioners must be prepared to adapt training methods, practice schedules, and communication styles in order to arrive at an optimal approach. This is true when working with any athlete, not just wheelchair athletes. By adopting this professional approach, practitioners will look at all wheelchair athletes as individuals. Although one athlete may have an amputation, another SCI, and another a mobility impairment, these physical disabilities will not be the point of departure when working with them. If practitioners' initial interactions with wheelchair athletes follow the same protocols as their interactions with all other athletes, they are likely to build strong rapport that will enhance the support that they can provide.
Who Participates in Wheelchair Sport?
From a clinical perspective, people who are eligible to participate in wheelchair sport at the Paralympic level have a variety of physical disabilities, all of which present serious disadvantages in the mobility aspects of sport participation. For example, a person with a below-knee amputation will be at a substantial disadvantage when playing basketball while wearing a prosthetic leg but will be able to participate without any disadvantage in wheelchair basketball.
It can be important to know whether a disability is congenital (present since birth) or acquired (caused by an accident or medical incident). Someone with a congenital disability has never experienced the sudden loss of physical mobility that has changed the life of a person who now uses a wheelchair as a result of paraplegia caused by an accident. On the other hand, the person with a congenital disability may have experienced a lifetime of discrimination. From a practical perspective, the practitioner's commitment to getting to know each athlete as an individual will help the practitioner develop an understanding of how the athlete feels. The realization that each athlete may feel differently about his impairment and the notion of disability will help the practitioner establish effective channels of communication.
Wheelchair athletes strive for victory and take pride in their achievements just as any other athletes do.
Photo courtesy of ES Bressan.
When working with wheelchair athletes, remember that in addition to the normal competitive pressures experienced by all athletes, those who use wheelchairs face a number of unique challenges. A wheelchair athlete will encounter disadvantages in nonadapted environments. For example, a gymnasium without an adapted entrance (e.g., a ramp) creates a barrier for fitness training for athletes who use wheelchairs for all their mobility needs, such as someone whose impairment is tetraplegia.
There are other kinds of barriers that present wheelchair athletes with challenges not usually experienced by nondisabled athletes. Researchers have found that elite wheelchair basketball players suffer unique stressors not experienced by nondisabled players (Campbell & Jones, 2002a, 2002b), including worries associated with travelling (e.g., going to the toilet on planes, handling luggage) and a lack of understanding from the general public (e.g., airline staff, support staff). In addition to these general concerns, there may also be sport-specific stressors. For example, research has shown that wheelchair racers experience greater stress about the condition of road surfaces compared with nondisabled racers (Martin, 2005). In our experience, knowledge of the challenges that athletes face is best gained through open and honest communication with them. This knowledge can be enhanced by observing athletes in and out of sporting contexts and noting the challenges faced and the manner in which the person copes with those challenges.
Not all wheelchair athletes use wheelchairs for their day-to-day mobility. Athletes with leg amputations and some athletes with SCI or with cerebral palsy are able to walk. They are wheelchair athletes because they play competitive sport in wheelchairs. There are also people who play wheelchair sport who do not have any mobility impairment at all. They choose to play wheelchair sport based on an inclusive model for recreation or competition. They also may be motivated by a shortage of athletes with mobility impairments needed to form a team. However, athletes without mobility impairments do not meet minimum eligibility requirements for participation in Paralympic wheelchair sport and are not included in our presentation.
Familiarization With Wheelchair Sport
Beginner and elite wheelchair athletes want support from people who understand their sport. This requires familiarity with their sport. Sport familiarization is a continuous process, and the longer practitioners remain involved in wheelchair sport, the more sophisticated their understanding of how they can contribute.
The simplest way to become familiar with any wheelchair sport is to become immersed in the sport and actively observe the athletes in training and competition. Actively observing is more than just watching; it entails observing with specific objectives. For example, before attending a competition, practitioners could identify specific aspects of the sport on which they intend to focus, such as team tactics in wheelchair basketball or the biomechanics of serving technique and ground strokes in wheelchair tennis.
Often, observation alone is not enough. Using the previous examples, a coach may notice that one basketball team frequently uses the fast break after winning a defensive rebound whereas the other team tends to slow the game down when they get possession in a similar situation. Similarly, one wheelchair tennis player may hit the forehand from a more full-on position than another. Asking questions of people who have specialist knowledge is invaluable in understanding any wheelchair sport. This might include having conversations with existing coaching staff but more importantly speaking with the athletes themselves. Athletes generally enjoy talking about their sport. These conversations will also provide an opportunity to become familiar with the athletes as well as their sport.
You may also consider attempting the sport yourself. For example, a physiotherapist and a sport psychologist for a wheelchair basketball team tried playing one-on-one after the team had finished practice. The physiotherapist thought that this gave him a better understanding of the forces that the athletes' muscles were subjected to and the potential injuries that might occur, and the sport psychologist believed he had a better grasp of the attentional demands of the game. In contrast, the coach of this same team, who was an accomplished basketball coach but was new to wheelchair basketball, decided not to try playing the game. His reasoning was that because his wheelchair skills were poor, he would not have a realistic experience and might unconsciously lower his expectations for the players. For him, sport familiarization did not include actual participation.
In some instances it may be useful to experiment firsthand how athletes' lives are affected by their disability. Hanrahan (1998) suggested trying to complete simple tasks such as getting off and on a chair without the use of leg muscles, a daily ritual for an athlete with paraplegia. It might be helpful to take a trip using a wheelchair to increase awareness of the barriers that wheelchair athletes face on a daily basis. However, the knowledge gained by such exercises should be used for personal insight only. Some athletes may consider such efforts patronizing, so practitioners should not try to use their experiences as a basis for understanding what their lives are like. If you would like to know what any athlete is thinking or feeling, the best advice is to ask her.
Sport-specific knowledge is critical. Learning the rules of the sport as well as the system of athlete classification is central to understanding how the sport is played and how competitions are managed. However, given the various support roles when working with wheelchair athletes, there is some variation in the knowledge required. In some roles, such as coach, sport-specific knowledge must become more and more sophisticated. For the physiotherapist or sport psychologist, developing a good understanding of the sport may be sufficient. Both the coach and the sport psychologist will use an understanding of the areas presented in the next two sections in order to help wheelchair athletes develop their sport commitment and the psychological aspects of their sport.
This is an excerpt from Wheelchair Sport.
Sample skills and drills for wheelchair basketball
Learn more about the skills needed for wheelchair basketball, and get a sneak peek of some of the drills featured in the Wheelchair Sport.
A great deal has been written on basketball skills and how to teach these skills to athletes. Such is not the case in wheelchair basketball. Though wheelchair basketball has been played since shortly after World War II, very little has been presented in the literature specifically for the sport. As a result, most coaches and players of wheelchair basketball have taken what they learned from the running game of basketball and tried to adapt it to wheelchair basketball with varying degrees of success. Some of what is taught in the running game of basketball can be transferred to wheelchair basketball; however, the different levels of muscle function present in wheelchair basketball and the different movements resulting from using a wheelchair present some unique skills. This chapter will focus on some of those differences and emphasize the individual and team skills used in wheelchair basketball.
This is an excerpt from Wheelchair Sport.
Learn more about Wheelchair Sport, a new book from HK
Wheelchair sport can increase confidence and self-esteem, and it may provide people with a positive outlook on life. There is a wheelchair sport for almost everyone who wants to participate and for any level of expertise, from novice through to Paralympic competition.
by Vicky Goosey-Tolfrey, Editor
Each year thousands of men and women become disabled due to an accident or illness and thereafter use a wheelchair for locomotion. The statistics tell us that there are approximately 1 to 2 million wheelchair users in the United States and approximately 1 to 2 million wheelchair users in Europe. This means that approximately 1 in every 200 people in the United States and Europe are in wheelchairs.
In 1948, Sir Ludwig Guttman, a neurologist who was working with World War II veterans with spinal injuries at Stoke Mandeville Hospital, Aylesbury, in the United Kingdom, began using sport as part of the rehabilitation programmes for his patients. Since that time, participation in wheelchair sport has grown beyond a method to improve wheelchair users' physical capacity. Wheelchair sport can increase confidence and self-esteem, and it may provide people with a positive outlook on life. There is a wheelchair sport for almost everyone who wants to participate and for any level of expertise, from novice through to Paralympic competition.
High-performance athletes are high performance whether they have a disability or not. However, the journey to this level of sporting excellence is dramatically different for wheelchair sport. Wheelchair athletes need sporting opportunities that nurture, recruit, and develop them through to the national level. They need access to sporting facilities and the community, as well as effective disability sport organizations. Access and support are just some of the challenges that wheelchair athletes and nondisabled athletes do not share.
Although the unique challenges of wheelchair sport participation can present obstacles, there are more opportunities than ever before to compete at any level. Advances in wheelchairs, understanding of the classification system, training methods, pushing techniques, and psychological aspects of wheelchair sport should help people with disabilities to achieve their sporting dreams. At the highest level, wheelchair sports have a dominating presence at the Paralympic Games, and while the science, engineering, and sporting classification systems evolve we rely on evidence practice through scientific communities to keep up. Wheelchair Sport bridges the gap between sporting excellence to wheelchair sport at a grassroots level. Wheelchair Sport is an educational resource for coaches, physical trainers, sport scientists, rehabilitation practitioners, wheelchair users, and all those with an interest in the field of wheelchair sport.
The development and implementation of safe and effective exercise and technical training programmes for wheelchair athletes may be based on theory for nondisabled athletes. After appreciating the many differences between nondisabled and wheelchair athletes, the book highlights the practical application of conventional strength and conditioning principles, nutritional considerations, and aspects of travel in relation to the needs of athletes who use a wheelchair for sport or for daily locomotion. Many questions may be asked by coaches, athletes, and practitioners, such as, “Do I need to adapt my coaching techniques to suit athletes with disabilities?”, “How should I set up my sport wheelchair?”, and “What are the energy requirements of the wheelchair athlete?” There are obviously going to be differences to the conventional theories regarding nondisabled athletes; however, even among wheelchair users there is likely to be a wide range of answers to these questions based on whether the athlete has a spinal cord injury, at what point the injury is sited, when the onset of the disability occurred, whether it is complete or incomplete, and whether the athlete uses a wheelchair for a different reason.
In order to answer some of these questions, Wheelchair Sport is divided into two parts. The contributors of part I have all made significant contributions to sport science education through involvement with national sporting governing bodies and national Paralympic associations. The structure of this text provides a balance between a general overview of and details about classification; psychological, mechanical, biomechanical, and physiological factors; strength and conditioning; nutrition and body composition; and the travel concerns that may be experienced when participating in wheelchair sport.
The first chapter introduces the sports that form the basis of this text and familiarizes the reader towards classification. This is followed by a chapter that describes the importance of wheelchair selection and propulsion technique. The third chapter demonstrates the importance of understanding the physiological differences between nondisabled and wheelchair athletes and the physiological adaptations that result from training. As a natural progression from this, chapter 4 introduces the concepts of strength and conditioning for wheelchair sport. Optimum nutritional strategies for health, training, and competition are discussed in chapter 5, along with assessment of body composition. Chapter 6 provides some practical advice to the wheelchair athlete who is travelling and competing abroad. Finally, chapter 7 describes principles and considerations that should be incorporated into the practice of those working with wheelchair athletes.
Part II is made up of sport-specific chapters and covers the five main sports (wheelchair basketball, racing, rugby, tennis, and handcycling). Although their experience lies in a number of wheelchair sports, the contributors of this section are united by their passion towards each sport, a respect of other coaches and athletes, and a desire to further the status that wheelchair sport deserves. All the contributors in this section have personally coached or been involved themselves as either an athlete or part of the support team at a very high level (including the Paralympics). These chapters provide a brief background of the sport, tactical advice in the form of drills, and playing and racing strategies. There is a truly international flavour to this section, with contributions from Belgium, Canada, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
The authors contributing to this book include coaches, applied sport scientists, and specialists in sports medicine and physical therapy working within Paralympic sport, as well as four high-performance wheelchair athletes whose stories can only have enhanced wheelchair sporting knowledge. It was a pleasure to incorporate these brief insights of life as a Paralympian by Mike Frogley; the Baroness Grey-Thompson; Peter Norfolk, OBE; and Randy Snow. This text is designed to help readers gain the necessary knowledge to enhance performance while at the same time allowing people with disabilities to realize what it may take to achieve their sporting dreams at any level.
This is an excerpt from Wheelchair Sport.
Psychological aspects of wheelchair sport
Many people find it difficult to relate to someone who has a physical disability. This lack of understanding can create additional challenges for people with disabilities. If society responded more adequately to people who have impairments, they would not experience nearly as many challenges and limitations
by David Shearer and Elizabeth Bressan
I was travelling with a wheelchair basketball team from the UK to the USA for an international tournament. Upon arriving at the airport, I went to check in with one of the athletes who was in his wheelchair. The check-in assistant proceeded to direct a torrent of questions at me. “Can he move through the airport without assistance? Will he need assistance to get onto the aircraft? Has anyone interfered with his bags since he packed them?” The athlete and I looked at each other in disbelief! Did she think he could not answer these questions himself? In my head I began to compose a response, but I was too slow. The athlete provided her with an energetic response aimed at her re-education about his functional capacity. Her red face showed that the desired effect was achieved. Her assumption that people who use wheelchairs are generally incapable was shattered. I doubt that she ever made the same mistake again.
David Shearer
Many people find it difficult to relate to someone who has a physical disability, often because they have not had any personal interaction with anyone with a disability. For example, they might be unsure what to expect from a person who has a mobility impairment and uses a wheelchair because they have never spent any time with wheelchair users. This lack of understanding can create additional challenges for people with disabilities. If society responded more adequately to people who have impairments, they would not experience nearly as many challenges and limitations (LoBianco & Shephard-Jones, 2007). Consider office workers who happen to use wheelchairs. Provided that there is only one level or there are ramps or elevators between levels, they may need no assistance whatsoever in the workplace. In other words, in an adapted work environment, they do not have a disability.
In wheelchair sport, the rules have been designed to ensure that people who have a variety of mobility impairments can play physically demanding and competitive sports in their wheelchairs. They provide adapted sport environments that encourage wheelchair users to become wheelchair athletes. The aim of this chapter is not to convince practitioners that wheelchair athletes deserve equal opportunities to participate in sport. Instead, our goal is to provide practitioners (e.g., coaches, sport science, and sport medicine support staff) with both general and specific psychological considerations for interacting and working with athletes with disabilities.
Getting Involved in Wheelchair Sport
Previous reviews that have compared working with athletes with physical disabilities to working with nondisabled athletes have highlighted more similarities than differences (Hanrahan, 1998, 2005; Martin, 1999). Whether working with a team sport or an individual sport, all practitioners must be prepared to adapt training methods, practice schedules, and communication styles in order to arrive at an optimal approach. This is true when working with any athlete, not just wheelchair athletes. By adopting this professional approach, practitioners will look at all wheelchair athletes as individuals. Although one athlete may have an amputation, another SCI, and another a mobility impairment, these physical disabilities will not be the point of departure when working with them. If practitioners' initial interactions with wheelchair athletes follow the same protocols as their interactions with all other athletes, they are likely to build strong rapport that will enhance the support that they can provide.
Who Participates in Wheelchair Sport?
From a clinical perspective, people who are eligible to participate in wheelchair sport at the Paralympic level have a variety of physical disabilities, all of which present serious disadvantages in the mobility aspects of sport participation. For example, a person with a below-knee amputation will be at a substantial disadvantage when playing basketball while wearing a prosthetic leg but will be able to participate without any disadvantage in wheelchair basketball.
It can be important to know whether a disability is congenital (present since birth) or acquired (caused by an accident or medical incident). Someone with a congenital disability has never experienced the sudden loss of physical mobility that has changed the life of a person who now uses a wheelchair as a result of paraplegia caused by an accident. On the other hand, the person with a congenital disability may have experienced a lifetime of discrimination. From a practical perspective, the practitioner's commitment to getting to know each athlete as an individual will help the practitioner develop an understanding of how the athlete feels. The realization that each athlete may feel differently about his impairment and the notion of disability will help the practitioner establish effective channels of communication.
Wheelchair athletes strive for victory and take pride in their achievements just as any other athletes do.
Photo courtesy of ES Bressan.
When working with wheelchair athletes, remember that in addition to the normal competitive pressures experienced by all athletes, those who use wheelchairs face a number of unique challenges. A wheelchair athlete will encounter disadvantages in nonadapted environments. For example, a gymnasium without an adapted entrance (e.g., a ramp) creates a barrier for fitness training for athletes who use wheelchairs for all their mobility needs, such as someone whose impairment is tetraplegia.
There are other kinds of barriers that present wheelchair athletes with challenges not usually experienced by nondisabled athletes. Researchers have found that elite wheelchair basketball players suffer unique stressors not experienced by nondisabled players (Campbell & Jones, 2002a, 2002b), including worries associated with travelling (e.g., going to the toilet on planes, handling luggage) and a lack of understanding from the general public (e.g., airline staff, support staff). In addition to these general concerns, there may also be sport-specific stressors. For example, research has shown that wheelchair racers experience greater stress about the condition of road surfaces compared with nondisabled racers (Martin, 2005). In our experience, knowledge of the challenges that athletes face is best gained through open and honest communication with them. This knowledge can be enhanced by observing athletes in and out of sporting contexts and noting the challenges faced and the manner in which the person copes with those challenges.
Not all wheelchair athletes use wheelchairs for their day-to-day mobility. Athletes with leg amputations and some athletes with SCI or with cerebral palsy are able to walk. They are wheelchair athletes because they play competitive sport in wheelchairs. There are also people who play wheelchair sport who do not have any mobility impairment at all. They choose to play wheelchair sport based on an inclusive model for recreation or competition. They also may be motivated by a shortage of athletes with mobility impairments needed to form a team. However, athletes without mobility impairments do not meet minimum eligibility requirements for participation in Paralympic wheelchair sport and are not included in our presentation.
Familiarization With Wheelchair Sport
Beginner and elite wheelchair athletes want support from people who understand their sport. This requires familiarity with their sport. Sport familiarization is a continuous process, and the longer practitioners remain involved in wheelchair sport, the more sophisticated their understanding of how they can contribute.
The simplest way to become familiar with any wheelchair sport is to become immersed in the sport and actively observe the athletes in training and competition. Actively observing is more than just watching; it entails observing with specific objectives. For example, before attending a competition, practitioners could identify specific aspects of the sport on which they intend to focus, such as team tactics in wheelchair basketball or the biomechanics of serving technique and ground strokes in wheelchair tennis.
Often, observation alone is not enough. Using the previous examples, a coach may notice that one basketball team frequently uses the fast break after winning a defensive rebound whereas the other team tends to slow the game down when they get possession in a similar situation. Similarly, one wheelchair tennis player may hit the forehand from a more full-on position than another. Asking questions of people who have specialist knowledge is invaluable in understanding any wheelchair sport. This might include having conversations with existing coaching staff but more importantly speaking with the athletes themselves. Athletes generally enjoy talking about their sport. These conversations will also provide an opportunity to become familiar with the athletes as well as their sport.
You may also consider attempting the sport yourself. For example, a physiotherapist and a sport psychologist for a wheelchair basketball team tried playing one-on-one after the team had finished practice. The physiotherapist thought that this gave him a better understanding of the forces that the athletes' muscles were subjected to and the potential injuries that might occur, and the sport psychologist believed he had a better grasp of the attentional demands of the game. In contrast, the coach of this same team, who was an accomplished basketball coach but was new to wheelchair basketball, decided not to try playing the game. His reasoning was that because his wheelchair skills were poor, he would not have a realistic experience and might unconsciously lower his expectations for the players. For him, sport familiarization did not include actual participation.
In some instances it may be useful to experiment firsthand how athletes' lives are affected by their disability. Hanrahan (1998) suggested trying to complete simple tasks such as getting off and on a chair without the use of leg muscles, a daily ritual for an athlete with paraplegia. It might be helpful to take a trip using a wheelchair to increase awareness of the barriers that wheelchair athletes face on a daily basis. However, the knowledge gained by such exercises should be used for personal insight only. Some athletes may consider such efforts patronizing, so practitioners should not try to use their experiences as a basis for understanding what their lives are like. If you would like to know what any athlete is thinking or feeling, the best advice is to ask her.
Sport-specific knowledge is critical. Learning the rules of the sport as well as the system of athlete classification is central to understanding how the sport is played and how competitions are managed. However, given the various support roles when working with wheelchair athletes, there is some variation in the knowledge required. In some roles, such as coach, sport-specific knowledge must become more and more sophisticated. For the physiotherapist or sport psychologist, developing a good understanding of the sport may be sufficient. Both the coach and the sport psychologist will use an understanding of the areas presented in the next two sections in order to help wheelchair athletes develop their sport commitment and the psychological aspects of their sport.
This is an excerpt from Wheelchair Sport.
Sample skills and drills for wheelchair basketball
Learn more about the skills needed for wheelchair basketball, and get a sneak peek of some of the drills featured in the Wheelchair Sport.
A great deal has been written on basketball skills and how to teach these skills to athletes. Such is not the case in wheelchair basketball. Though wheelchair basketball has been played since shortly after World War II, very little has been presented in the literature specifically for the sport. As a result, most coaches and players of wheelchair basketball have taken what they learned from the running game of basketball and tried to adapt it to wheelchair basketball with varying degrees of success. Some of what is taught in the running game of basketball can be transferred to wheelchair basketball; however, the different levels of muscle function present in wheelchair basketball and the different movements resulting from using a wheelchair present some unique skills. This chapter will focus on some of those differences and emphasize the individual and team skills used in wheelchair basketball.
This is an excerpt from Wheelchair Sport.
Learn more about Wheelchair Sport, a new book from HK
Wheelchair sport can increase confidence and self-esteem, and it may provide people with a positive outlook on life. There is a wheelchair sport for almost everyone who wants to participate and for any level of expertise, from novice through to Paralympic competition.
by Vicky Goosey-Tolfrey, Editor
Each year thousands of men and women become disabled due to an accident or illness and thereafter use a wheelchair for locomotion. The statistics tell us that there are approximately 1 to 2 million wheelchair users in the United States and approximately 1 to 2 million wheelchair users in Europe. This means that approximately 1 in every 200 people in the United States and Europe are in wheelchairs.
In 1948, Sir Ludwig Guttman, a neurologist who was working with World War II veterans with spinal injuries at Stoke Mandeville Hospital, Aylesbury, in the United Kingdom, began using sport as part of the rehabilitation programmes for his patients. Since that time, participation in wheelchair sport has grown beyond a method to improve wheelchair users' physical capacity. Wheelchair sport can increase confidence and self-esteem, and it may provide people with a positive outlook on life. There is a wheelchair sport for almost everyone who wants to participate and for any level of expertise, from novice through to Paralympic competition.
High-performance athletes are high performance whether they have a disability or not. However, the journey to this level of sporting excellence is dramatically different for wheelchair sport. Wheelchair athletes need sporting opportunities that nurture, recruit, and develop them through to the national level. They need access to sporting facilities and the community, as well as effective disability sport organizations. Access and support are just some of the challenges that wheelchair athletes and nondisabled athletes do not share.
Although the unique challenges of wheelchair sport participation can present obstacles, there are more opportunities than ever before to compete at any level. Advances in wheelchairs, understanding of the classification system, training methods, pushing techniques, and psychological aspects of wheelchair sport should help people with disabilities to achieve their sporting dreams. At the highest level, wheelchair sports have a dominating presence at the Paralympic Games, and while the science, engineering, and sporting classification systems evolve we rely on evidence practice through scientific communities to keep up. Wheelchair Sport bridges the gap between sporting excellence to wheelchair sport at a grassroots level. Wheelchair Sport is an educational resource for coaches, physical trainers, sport scientists, rehabilitation practitioners, wheelchair users, and all those with an interest in the field of wheelchair sport.
The development and implementation of safe and effective exercise and technical training programmes for wheelchair athletes may be based on theory for nondisabled athletes. After appreciating the many differences between nondisabled and wheelchair athletes, the book highlights the practical application of conventional strength and conditioning principles, nutritional considerations, and aspects of travel in relation to the needs of athletes who use a wheelchair for sport or for daily locomotion. Many questions may be asked by coaches, athletes, and practitioners, such as, “Do I need to adapt my coaching techniques to suit athletes with disabilities?”, “How should I set up my sport wheelchair?”, and “What are the energy requirements of the wheelchair athlete?” There are obviously going to be differences to the conventional theories regarding nondisabled athletes; however, even among wheelchair users there is likely to be a wide range of answers to these questions based on whether the athlete has a spinal cord injury, at what point the injury is sited, when the onset of the disability occurred, whether it is complete or incomplete, and whether the athlete uses a wheelchair for a different reason.
In order to answer some of these questions, Wheelchair Sport is divided into two parts. The contributors of part I have all made significant contributions to sport science education through involvement with national sporting governing bodies and national Paralympic associations. The structure of this text provides a balance between a general overview of and details about classification; psychological, mechanical, biomechanical, and physiological factors; strength and conditioning; nutrition and body composition; and the travel concerns that may be experienced when participating in wheelchair sport.
The first chapter introduces the sports that form the basis of this text and familiarizes the reader towards classification. This is followed by a chapter that describes the importance of wheelchair selection and propulsion technique. The third chapter demonstrates the importance of understanding the physiological differences between nondisabled and wheelchair athletes and the physiological adaptations that result from training. As a natural progression from this, chapter 4 introduces the concepts of strength and conditioning for wheelchair sport. Optimum nutritional strategies for health, training, and competition are discussed in chapter 5, along with assessment of body composition. Chapter 6 provides some practical advice to the wheelchair athlete who is travelling and competing abroad. Finally, chapter 7 describes principles and considerations that should be incorporated into the practice of those working with wheelchair athletes.
Part II is made up of sport-specific chapters and covers the five main sports (wheelchair basketball, racing, rugby, tennis, and handcycling). Although their experience lies in a number of wheelchair sports, the contributors of this section are united by their passion towards each sport, a respect of other coaches and athletes, and a desire to further the status that wheelchair sport deserves. All the contributors in this section have personally coached or been involved themselves as either an athlete or part of the support team at a very high level (including the Paralympics). These chapters provide a brief background of the sport, tactical advice in the form of drills, and playing and racing strategies. There is a truly international flavour to this section, with contributions from Belgium, Canada, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
The authors contributing to this book include coaches, applied sport scientists, and specialists in sports medicine and physical therapy working within Paralympic sport, as well as four high-performance wheelchair athletes whose stories can only have enhanced wheelchair sporting knowledge. It was a pleasure to incorporate these brief insights of life as a Paralympian by Mike Frogley; the Baroness Grey-Thompson; Peter Norfolk, OBE; and Randy Snow. This text is designed to help readers gain the necessary knowledge to enhance performance while at the same time allowing people with disabilities to realize what it may take to achieve their sporting dreams at any level.
This is an excerpt from Wheelchair Sport.
Psychological aspects of wheelchair sport
Many people find it difficult to relate to someone who has a physical disability. This lack of understanding can create additional challenges for people with disabilities. If society responded more adequately to people who have impairments, they would not experience nearly as many challenges and limitations
by David Shearer and Elizabeth Bressan
I was travelling with a wheelchair basketball team from the UK to the USA for an international tournament. Upon arriving at the airport, I went to check in with one of the athletes who was in his wheelchair. The check-in assistant proceeded to direct a torrent of questions at me. “Can he move through the airport without assistance? Will he need assistance to get onto the aircraft? Has anyone interfered with his bags since he packed them?” The athlete and I looked at each other in disbelief! Did she think he could not answer these questions himself? In my head I began to compose a response, but I was too slow. The athlete provided her with an energetic response aimed at her re-education about his functional capacity. Her red face showed that the desired effect was achieved. Her assumption that people who use wheelchairs are generally incapable was shattered. I doubt that she ever made the same mistake again.
David Shearer
Many people find it difficult to relate to someone who has a physical disability, often because they have not had any personal interaction with anyone with a disability. For example, they might be unsure what to expect from a person who has a mobility impairment and uses a wheelchair because they have never spent any time with wheelchair users. This lack of understanding can create additional challenges for people with disabilities. If society responded more adequately to people who have impairments, they would not experience nearly as many challenges and limitations (LoBianco & Shephard-Jones, 2007). Consider office workers who happen to use wheelchairs. Provided that there is only one level or there are ramps or elevators between levels, they may need no assistance whatsoever in the workplace. In other words, in an adapted work environment, they do not have a disability.
In wheelchair sport, the rules have been designed to ensure that people who have a variety of mobility impairments can play physically demanding and competitive sports in their wheelchairs. They provide adapted sport environments that encourage wheelchair users to become wheelchair athletes. The aim of this chapter is not to convince practitioners that wheelchair athletes deserve equal opportunities to participate in sport. Instead, our goal is to provide practitioners (e.g., coaches, sport science, and sport medicine support staff) with both general and specific psychological considerations for interacting and working with athletes with disabilities.
Getting Involved in Wheelchair Sport
Previous reviews that have compared working with athletes with physical disabilities to working with nondisabled athletes have highlighted more similarities than differences (Hanrahan, 1998, 2005; Martin, 1999). Whether working with a team sport or an individual sport, all practitioners must be prepared to adapt training methods, practice schedules, and communication styles in order to arrive at an optimal approach. This is true when working with any athlete, not just wheelchair athletes. By adopting this professional approach, practitioners will look at all wheelchair athletes as individuals. Although one athlete may have an amputation, another SCI, and another a mobility impairment, these physical disabilities will not be the point of departure when working with them. If practitioners' initial interactions with wheelchair athletes follow the same protocols as their interactions with all other athletes, they are likely to build strong rapport that will enhance the support that they can provide.
Who Participates in Wheelchair Sport?
From a clinical perspective, people who are eligible to participate in wheelchair sport at the Paralympic level have a variety of physical disabilities, all of which present serious disadvantages in the mobility aspects of sport participation. For example, a person with a below-knee amputation will be at a substantial disadvantage when playing basketball while wearing a prosthetic leg but will be able to participate without any disadvantage in wheelchair basketball.
It can be important to know whether a disability is congenital (present since birth) or acquired (caused by an accident or medical incident). Someone with a congenital disability has never experienced the sudden loss of physical mobility that has changed the life of a person who now uses a wheelchair as a result of paraplegia caused by an accident. On the other hand, the person with a congenital disability may have experienced a lifetime of discrimination. From a practical perspective, the practitioner's commitment to getting to know each athlete as an individual will help the practitioner develop an understanding of how the athlete feels. The realization that each athlete may feel differently about his impairment and the notion of disability will help the practitioner establish effective channels of communication.
Wheelchair athletes strive for victory and take pride in their achievements just as any other athletes do.
Photo courtesy of ES Bressan.
When working with wheelchair athletes, remember that in addition to the normal competitive pressures experienced by all athletes, those who use wheelchairs face a number of unique challenges. A wheelchair athlete will encounter disadvantages in nonadapted environments. For example, a gymnasium without an adapted entrance (e.g., a ramp) creates a barrier for fitness training for athletes who use wheelchairs for all their mobility needs, such as someone whose impairment is tetraplegia.
There are other kinds of barriers that present wheelchair athletes with challenges not usually experienced by nondisabled athletes. Researchers have found that elite wheelchair basketball players suffer unique stressors not experienced by nondisabled players (Campbell & Jones, 2002a, 2002b), including worries associated with travelling (e.g., going to the toilet on planes, handling luggage) and a lack of understanding from the general public (e.g., airline staff, support staff). In addition to these general concerns, there may also be sport-specific stressors. For example, research has shown that wheelchair racers experience greater stress about the condition of road surfaces compared with nondisabled racers (Martin, 2005). In our experience, knowledge of the challenges that athletes face is best gained through open and honest communication with them. This knowledge can be enhanced by observing athletes in and out of sporting contexts and noting the challenges faced and the manner in which the person copes with those challenges.
Not all wheelchair athletes use wheelchairs for their day-to-day mobility. Athletes with leg amputations and some athletes with SCI or with cerebral palsy are able to walk. They are wheelchair athletes because they play competitive sport in wheelchairs. There are also people who play wheelchair sport who do not have any mobility impairment at all. They choose to play wheelchair sport based on an inclusive model for recreation or competition. They also may be motivated by a shortage of athletes with mobility impairments needed to form a team. However, athletes without mobility impairments do not meet minimum eligibility requirements for participation in Paralympic wheelchair sport and are not included in our presentation.
Familiarization With Wheelchair Sport
Beginner and elite wheelchair athletes want support from people who understand their sport. This requires familiarity with their sport. Sport familiarization is a continuous process, and the longer practitioners remain involved in wheelchair sport, the more sophisticated their understanding of how they can contribute.
The simplest way to become familiar with any wheelchair sport is to become immersed in the sport and actively observe the athletes in training and competition. Actively observing is more than just watching; it entails observing with specific objectives. For example, before attending a competition, practitioners could identify specific aspects of the sport on which they intend to focus, such as team tactics in wheelchair basketball or the biomechanics of serving technique and ground strokes in wheelchair tennis.
Often, observation alone is not enough. Using the previous examples, a coach may notice that one basketball team frequently uses the fast break after winning a defensive rebound whereas the other team tends to slow the game down when they get possession in a similar situation. Similarly, one wheelchair tennis player may hit the forehand from a more full-on position than another. Asking questions of people who have specialist knowledge is invaluable in understanding any wheelchair sport. This might include having conversations with existing coaching staff but more importantly speaking with the athletes themselves. Athletes generally enjoy talking about their sport. These conversations will also provide an opportunity to become familiar with the athletes as well as their sport.
You may also consider attempting the sport yourself. For example, a physiotherapist and a sport psychologist for a wheelchair basketball team tried playing one-on-one after the team had finished practice. The physiotherapist thought that this gave him a better understanding of the forces that the athletes' muscles were subjected to and the potential injuries that might occur, and the sport psychologist believed he had a better grasp of the attentional demands of the game. In contrast, the coach of this same team, who was an accomplished basketball coach but was new to wheelchair basketball, decided not to try playing the game. His reasoning was that because his wheelchair skills were poor, he would not have a realistic experience and might unconsciously lower his expectations for the players. For him, sport familiarization did not include actual participation.
In some instances it may be useful to experiment firsthand how athletes' lives are affected by their disability. Hanrahan (1998) suggested trying to complete simple tasks such as getting off and on a chair without the use of leg muscles, a daily ritual for an athlete with paraplegia. It might be helpful to take a trip using a wheelchair to increase awareness of the barriers that wheelchair athletes face on a daily basis. However, the knowledge gained by such exercises should be used for personal insight only. Some athletes may consider such efforts patronizing, so practitioners should not try to use their experiences as a basis for understanding what their lives are like. If you would like to know what any athlete is thinking or feeling, the best advice is to ask her.
Sport-specific knowledge is critical. Learning the rules of the sport as well as the system of athlete classification is central to understanding how the sport is played and how competitions are managed. However, given the various support roles when working with wheelchair athletes, there is some variation in the knowledge required. In some roles, such as coach, sport-specific knowledge must become more and more sophisticated. For the physiotherapist or sport psychologist, developing a good understanding of the sport may be sufficient. Both the coach and the sport psychologist will use an understanding of the areas presented in the next two sections in order to help wheelchair athletes develop their sport commitment and the psychological aspects of their sport.
This is an excerpt from Wheelchair Sport.
Sample skills and drills for wheelchair basketball
Learn more about the skills needed for wheelchair basketball, and get a sneak peek of some of the drills featured in the Wheelchair Sport.
A great deal has been written on basketball skills and how to teach these skills to athletes. Such is not the case in wheelchair basketball. Though wheelchair basketball has been played since shortly after World War II, very little has been presented in the literature specifically for the sport. As a result, most coaches and players of wheelchair basketball have taken what they learned from the running game of basketball and tried to adapt it to wheelchair basketball with varying degrees of success. Some of what is taught in the running game of basketball can be transferred to wheelchair basketball; however, the different levels of muscle function present in wheelchair basketball and the different movements resulting from using a wheelchair present some unique skills. This chapter will focus on some of those differences and emphasize the individual and team skills used in wheelchair basketball.
This is an excerpt from Wheelchair Sport.
Learn more about Wheelchair Sport, a new book from HK
Wheelchair sport can increase confidence and self-esteem, and it may provide people with a positive outlook on life. There is a wheelchair sport for almost everyone who wants to participate and for any level of expertise, from novice through to Paralympic competition.
by Vicky Goosey-Tolfrey, Editor
Each year thousands of men and women become disabled due to an accident or illness and thereafter use a wheelchair for locomotion. The statistics tell us that there are approximately 1 to 2 million wheelchair users in the United States and approximately 1 to 2 million wheelchair users in Europe. This means that approximately 1 in every 200 people in the United States and Europe are in wheelchairs.
In 1948, Sir Ludwig Guttman, a neurologist who was working with World War II veterans with spinal injuries at Stoke Mandeville Hospital, Aylesbury, in the United Kingdom, began using sport as part of the rehabilitation programmes for his patients. Since that time, participation in wheelchair sport has grown beyond a method to improve wheelchair users' physical capacity. Wheelchair sport can increase confidence and self-esteem, and it may provide people with a positive outlook on life. There is a wheelchair sport for almost everyone who wants to participate and for any level of expertise, from novice through to Paralympic competition.
High-performance athletes are high performance whether they have a disability or not. However, the journey to this level of sporting excellence is dramatically different for wheelchair sport. Wheelchair athletes need sporting opportunities that nurture, recruit, and develop them through to the national level. They need access to sporting facilities and the community, as well as effective disability sport organizations. Access and support are just some of the challenges that wheelchair athletes and nondisabled athletes do not share.
Although the unique challenges of wheelchair sport participation can present obstacles, there are more opportunities than ever before to compete at any level. Advances in wheelchairs, understanding of the classification system, training methods, pushing techniques, and psychological aspects of wheelchair sport should help people with disabilities to achieve their sporting dreams. At the highest level, wheelchair sports have a dominating presence at the Paralympic Games, and while the science, engineering, and sporting classification systems evolve we rely on evidence practice through scientific communities to keep up. Wheelchair Sport bridges the gap between sporting excellence to wheelchair sport at a grassroots level. Wheelchair Sport is an educational resource for coaches, physical trainers, sport scientists, rehabilitation practitioners, wheelchair users, and all those with an interest in the field of wheelchair sport.
The development and implementation of safe and effective exercise and technical training programmes for wheelchair athletes may be based on theory for nondisabled athletes. After appreciating the many differences between nondisabled and wheelchair athletes, the book highlights the practical application of conventional strength and conditioning principles, nutritional considerations, and aspects of travel in relation to the needs of athletes who use a wheelchair for sport or for daily locomotion. Many questions may be asked by coaches, athletes, and practitioners, such as, “Do I need to adapt my coaching techniques to suit athletes with disabilities?”, “How should I set up my sport wheelchair?”, and “What are the energy requirements of the wheelchair athlete?” There are obviously going to be differences to the conventional theories regarding nondisabled athletes; however, even among wheelchair users there is likely to be a wide range of answers to these questions based on whether the athlete has a spinal cord injury, at what point the injury is sited, when the onset of the disability occurred, whether it is complete or incomplete, and whether the athlete uses a wheelchair for a different reason.
In order to answer some of these questions, Wheelchair Sport is divided into two parts. The contributors of part I have all made significant contributions to sport science education through involvement with national sporting governing bodies and national Paralympic associations. The structure of this text provides a balance between a general overview of and details about classification; psychological, mechanical, biomechanical, and physiological factors; strength and conditioning; nutrition and body composition; and the travel concerns that may be experienced when participating in wheelchair sport.
The first chapter introduces the sports that form the basis of this text and familiarizes the reader towards classification. This is followed by a chapter that describes the importance of wheelchair selection and propulsion technique. The third chapter demonstrates the importance of understanding the physiological differences between nondisabled and wheelchair athletes and the physiological adaptations that result from training. As a natural progression from this, chapter 4 introduces the concepts of strength and conditioning for wheelchair sport. Optimum nutritional strategies for health, training, and competition are discussed in chapter 5, along with assessment of body composition. Chapter 6 provides some practical advice to the wheelchair athlete who is travelling and competing abroad. Finally, chapter 7 describes principles and considerations that should be incorporated into the practice of those working with wheelchair athletes.
Part II is made up of sport-specific chapters and covers the five main sports (wheelchair basketball, racing, rugby, tennis, and handcycling). Although their experience lies in a number of wheelchair sports, the contributors of this section are united by their passion towards each sport, a respect of other coaches and athletes, and a desire to further the status that wheelchair sport deserves. All the contributors in this section have personally coached or been involved themselves as either an athlete or part of the support team at a very high level (including the Paralympics). These chapters provide a brief background of the sport, tactical advice in the form of drills, and playing and racing strategies. There is a truly international flavour to this section, with contributions from Belgium, Canada, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
The authors contributing to this book include coaches, applied sport scientists, and specialists in sports medicine and physical therapy working within Paralympic sport, as well as four high-performance wheelchair athletes whose stories can only have enhanced wheelchair sporting knowledge. It was a pleasure to incorporate these brief insights of life as a Paralympian by Mike Frogley; the Baroness Grey-Thompson; Peter Norfolk, OBE; and Randy Snow. This text is designed to help readers gain the necessary knowledge to enhance performance while at the same time allowing people with disabilities to realize what it may take to achieve their sporting dreams at any level.
This is an excerpt from Wheelchair Sport.
Psychological aspects of wheelchair sport
Many people find it difficult to relate to someone who has a physical disability. This lack of understanding can create additional challenges for people with disabilities. If society responded more adequately to people who have impairments, they would not experience nearly as many challenges and limitations
by David Shearer and Elizabeth Bressan
I was travelling with a wheelchair basketball team from the UK to the USA for an international tournament. Upon arriving at the airport, I went to check in with one of the athletes who was in his wheelchair. The check-in assistant proceeded to direct a torrent of questions at me. “Can he move through the airport without assistance? Will he need assistance to get onto the aircraft? Has anyone interfered with his bags since he packed them?” The athlete and I looked at each other in disbelief! Did she think he could not answer these questions himself? In my head I began to compose a response, but I was too slow. The athlete provided her with an energetic response aimed at her re-education about his functional capacity. Her red face showed that the desired effect was achieved. Her assumption that people who use wheelchairs are generally incapable was shattered. I doubt that she ever made the same mistake again.
David Shearer
Many people find it difficult to relate to someone who has a physical disability, often because they have not had any personal interaction with anyone with a disability. For example, they might be unsure what to expect from a person who has a mobility impairment and uses a wheelchair because they have never spent any time with wheelchair users. This lack of understanding can create additional challenges for people with disabilities. If society responded more adequately to people who have impairments, they would not experience nearly as many challenges and limitations (LoBianco & Shephard-Jones, 2007). Consider office workers who happen to use wheelchairs. Provided that there is only one level or there are ramps or elevators between levels, they may need no assistance whatsoever in the workplace. In other words, in an adapted work environment, they do not have a disability.
In wheelchair sport, the rules have been designed to ensure that people who have a variety of mobility impairments can play physically demanding and competitive sports in their wheelchairs. They provide adapted sport environments that encourage wheelchair users to become wheelchair athletes. The aim of this chapter is not to convince practitioners that wheelchair athletes deserve equal opportunities to participate in sport. Instead, our goal is to provide practitioners (e.g., coaches, sport science, and sport medicine support staff) with both general and specific psychological considerations for interacting and working with athletes with disabilities.
Getting Involved in Wheelchair Sport
Previous reviews that have compared working with athletes with physical disabilities to working with nondisabled athletes have highlighted more similarities than differences (Hanrahan, 1998, 2005; Martin, 1999). Whether working with a team sport or an individual sport, all practitioners must be prepared to adapt training methods, practice schedules, and communication styles in order to arrive at an optimal approach. This is true when working with any athlete, not just wheelchair athletes. By adopting this professional approach, practitioners will look at all wheelchair athletes as individuals. Although one athlete may have an amputation, another SCI, and another a mobility impairment, these physical disabilities will not be the point of departure when working with them. If practitioners' initial interactions with wheelchair athletes follow the same protocols as their interactions with all other athletes, they are likely to build strong rapport that will enhance the support that they can provide.
Who Participates in Wheelchair Sport?
From a clinical perspective, people who are eligible to participate in wheelchair sport at the Paralympic level have a variety of physical disabilities, all of which present serious disadvantages in the mobility aspects of sport participation. For example, a person with a below-knee amputation will be at a substantial disadvantage when playing basketball while wearing a prosthetic leg but will be able to participate without any disadvantage in wheelchair basketball.
It can be important to know whether a disability is congenital (present since birth) or acquired (caused by an accident or medical incident). Someone with a congenital disability has never experienced the sudden loss of physical mobility that has changed the life of a person who now uses a wheelchair as a result of paraplegia caused by an accident. On the other hand, the person with a congenital disability may have experienced a lifetime of discrimination. From a practical perspective, the practitioner's commitment to getting to know each athlete as an individual will help the practitioner develop an understanding of how the athlete feels. The realization that each athlete may feel differently about his impairment and the notion of disability will help the practitioner establish effective channels of communication.
Wheelchair athletes strive for victory and take pride in their achievements just as any other athletes do.
Photo courtesy of ES Bressan.
When working with wheelchair athletes, remember that in addition to the normal competitive pressures experienced by all athletes, those who use wheelchairs face a number of unique challenges. A wheelchair athlete will encounter disadvantages in nonadapted environments. For example, a gymnasium without an adapted entrance (e.g., a ramp) creates a barrier for fitness training for athletes who use wheelchairs for all their mobility needs, such as someone whose impairment is tetraplegia.
There are other kinds of barriers that present wheelchair athletes with challenges not usually experienced by nondisabled athletes. Researchers have found that elite wheelchair basketball players suffer unique stressors not experienced by nondisabled players (Campbell & Jones, 2002a, 2002b), including worries associated with travelling (e.g., going to the toilet on planes, handling luggage) and a lack of understanding from the general public (e.g., airline staff, support staff). In addition to these general concerns, there may also be sport-specific stressors. For example, research has shown that wheelchair racers experience greater stress about the condition of road surfaces compared with nondisabled racers (Martin, 2005). In our experience, knowledge of the challenges that athletes face is best gained through open and honest communication with them. This knowledge can be enhanced by observing athletes in and out of sporting contexts and noting the challenges faced and the manner in which the person copes with those challenges.
Not all wheelchair athletes use wheelchairs for their day-to-day mobility. Athletes with leg amputations and some athletes with SCI or with cerebral palsy are able to walk. They are wheelchair athletes because they play competitive sport in wheelchairs. There are also people who play wheelchair sport who do not have any mobility impairment at all. They choose to play wheelchair sport based on an inclusive model for recreation or competition. They also may be motivated by a shortage of athletes with mobility impairments needed to form a team. However, athletes without mobility impairments do not meet minimum eligibility requirements for participation in Paralympic wheelchair sport and are not included in our presentation.
Familiarization With Wheelchair Sport
Beginner and elite wheelchair athletes want support from people who understand their sport. This requires familiarity with their sport. Sport familiarization is a continuous process, and the longer practitioners remain involved in wheelchair sport, the more sophisticated their understanding of how they can contribute.
The simplest way to become familiar with any wheelchair sport is to become immersed in the sport and actively observe the athletes in training and competition. Actively observing is more than just watching; it entails observing with specific objectives. For example, before attending a competition, practitioners could identify specific aspects of the sport on which they intend to focus, such as team tactics in wheelchair basketball or the biomechanics of serving technique and ground strokes in wheelchair tennis.
Often, observation alone is not enough. Using the previous examples, a coach may notice that one basketball team frequently uses the fast break after winning a defensive rebound whereas the other team tends to slow the game down when they get possession in a similar situation. Similarly, one wheelchair tennis player may hit the forehand from a more full-on position than another. Asking questions of people who have specialist knowledge is invaluable in understanding any wheelchair sport. This might include having conversations with existing coaching staff but more importantly speaking with the athletes themselves. Athletes generally enjoy talking about their sport. These conversations will also provide an opportunity to become familiar with the athletes as well as their sport.
You may also consider attempting the sport yourself. For example, a physiotherapist and a sport psychologist for a wheelchair basketball team tried playing one-on-one after the team had finished practice. The physiotherapist thought that this gave him a better understanding of the forces that the athletes' muscles were subjected to and the potential injuries that might occur, and the sport psychologist believed he had a better grasp of the attentional demands of the game. In contrast, the coach of this same team, who was an accomplished basketball coach but was new to wheelchair basketball, decided not to try playing the game. His reasoning was that because his wheelchair skills were poor, he would not have a realistic experience and might unconsciously lower his expectations for the players. For him, sport familiarization did not include actual participation.
In some instances it may be useful to experiment firsthand how athletes' lives are affected by their disability. Hanrahan (1998) suggested trying to complete simple tasks such as getting off and on a chair without the use of leg muscles, a daily ritual for an athlete with paraplegia. It might be helpful to take a trip using a wheelchair to increase awareness of the barriers that wheelchair athletes face on a daily basis. However, the knowledge gained by such exercises should be used for personal insight only. Some athletes may consider such efforts patronizing, so practitioners should not try to use their experiences as a basis for understanding what their lives are like. If you would like to know what any athlete is thinking or feeling, the best advice is to ask her.
Sport-specific knowledge is critical. Learning the rules of the sport as well as the system of athlete classification is central to understanding how the sport is played and how competitions are managed. However, given the various support roles when working with wheelchair athletes, there is some variation in the knowledge required. In some roles, such as coach, sport-specific knowledge must become more and more sophisticated. For the physiotherapist or sport psychologist, developing a good understanding of the sport may be sufficient. Both the coach and the sport psychologist will use an understanding of the areas presented in the next two sections in order to help wheelchair athletes develop their sport commitment and the psychological aspects of their sport.
This is an excerpt from Wheelchair Sport.
Sample skills and drills for wheelchair basketball
Learn more about the skills needed for wheelchair basketball, and get a sneak peek of some of the drills featured in the Wheelchair Sport.
A great deal has been written on basketball skills and how to teach these skills to athletes. Such is not the case in wheelchair basketball. Though wheelchair basketball has been played since shortly after World War II, very little has been presented in the literature specifically for the sport. As a result, most coaches and players of wheelchair basketball have taken what they learned from the running game of basketball and tried to adapt it to wheelchair basketball with varying degrees of success. Some of what is taught in the running game of basketball can be transferred to wheelchair basketball; however, the different levels of muscle function present in wheelchair basketball and the different movements resulting from using a wheelchair present some unique skills. This chapter will focus on some of those differences and emphasize the individual and team skills used in wheelchair basketball.
This is an excerpt from Wheelchair Sport.
Learn more about Wheelchair Sport, a new book from HK
Wheelchair sport can increase confidence and self-esteem, and it may provide people with a positive outlook on life. There is a wheelchair sport for almost everyone who wants to participate and for any level of expertise, from novice through to Paralympic competition.
by Vicky Goosey-Tolfrey, Editor
Each year thousands of men and women become disabled due to an accident or illness and thereafter use a wheelchair for locomotion. The statistics tell us that there are approximately 1 to 2 million wheelchair users in the United States and approximately 1 to 2 million wheelchair users in Europe. This means that approximately 1 in every 200 people in the United States and Europe are in wheelchairs.
In 1948, Sir Ludwig Guttman, a neurologist who was working with World War II veterans with spinal injuries at Stoke Mandeville Hospital, Aylesbury, in the United Kingdom, began using sport as part of the rehabilitation programmes for his patients. Since that time, participation in wheelchair sport has grown beyond a method to improve wheelchair users' physical capacity. Wheelchair sport can increase confidence and self-esteem, and it may provide people with a positive outlook on life. There is a wheelchair sport for almost everyone who wants to participate and for any level of expertise, from novice through to Paralympic competition.
High-performance athletes are high performance whether they have a disability or not. However, the journey to this level of sporting excellence is dramatically different for wheelchair sport. Wheelchair athletes need sporting opportunities that nurture, recruit, and develop them through to the national level. They need access to sporting facilities and the community, as well as effective disability sport organizations. Access and support are just some of the challenges that wheelchair athletes and nondisabled athletes do not share.
Although the unique challenges of wheelchair sport participation can present obstacles, there are more opportunities than ever before to compete at any level. Advances in wheelchairs, understanding of the classification system, training methods, pushing techniques, and psychological aspects of wheelchair sport should help people with disabilities to achieve their sporting dreams. At the highest level, wheelchair sports have a dominating presence at the Paralympic Games, and while the science, engineering, and sporting classification systems evolve we rely on evidence practice through scientific communities to keep up. Wheelchair Sport bridges the gap between sporting excellence to wheelchair sport at a grassroots level. Wheelchair Sport is an educational resource for coaches, physical trainers, sport scientists, rehabilitation practitioners, wheelchair users, and all those with an interest in the field of wheelchair sport.
The development and implementation of safe and effective exercise and technical training programmes for wheelchair athletes may be based on theory for nondisabled athletes. After appreciating the many differences between nondisabled and wheelchair athletes, the book highlights the practical application of conventional strength and conditioning principles, nutritional considerations, and aspects of travel in relation to the needs of athletes who use a wheelchair for sport or for daily locomotion. Many questions may be asked by coaches, athletes, and practitioners, such as, “Do I need to adapt my coaching techniques to suit athletes with disabilities?”, “How should I set up my sport wheelchair?”, and “What are the energy requirements of the wheelchair athlete?” There are obviously going to be differences to the conventional theories regarding nondisabled athletes; however, even among wheelchair users there is likely to be a wide range of answers to these questions based on whether the athlete has a spinal cord injury, at what point the injury is sited, when the onset of the disability occurred, whether it is complete or incomplete, and whether the athlete uses a wheelchair for a different reason.
In order to answer some of these questions, Wheelchair Sport is divided into two parts. The contributors of part I have all made significant contributions to sport science education through involvement with national sporting governing bodies and national Paralympic associations. The structure of this text provides a balance between a general overview of and details about classification; psychological, mechanical, biomechanical, and physiological factors; strength and conditioning; nutrition and body composition; and the travel concerns that may be experienced when participating in wheelchair sport.
The first chapter introduces the sports that form the basis of this text and familiarizes the reader towards classification. This is followed by a chapter that describes the importance of wheelchair selection and propulsion technique. The third chapter demonstrates the importance of understanding the physiological differences between nondisabled and wheelchair athletes and the physiological adaptations that result from training. As a natural progression from this, chapter 4 introduces the concepts of strength and conditioning for wheelchair sport. Optimum nutritional strategies for health, training, and competition are discussed in chapter 5, along with assessment of body composition. Chapter 6 provides some practical advice to the wheelchair athlete who is travelling and competing abroad. Finally, chapter 7 describes principles and considerations that should be incorporated into the practice of those working with wheelchair athletes.
Part II is made up of sport-specific chapters and covers the five main sports (wheelchair basketball, racing, rugby, tennis, and handcycling). Although their experience lies in a number of wheelchair sports, the contributors of this section are united by their passion towards each sport, a respect of other coaches and athletes, and a desire to further the status that wheelchair sport deserves. All the contributors in this section have personally coached or been involved themselves as either an athlete or part of the support team at a very high level (including the Paralympics). These chapters provide a brief background of the sport, tactical advice in the form of drills, and playing and racing strategies. There is a truly international flavour to this section, with contributions from Belgium, Canada, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
The authors contributing to this book include coaches, applied sport scientists, and specialists in sports medicine and physical therapy working within Paralympic sport, as well as four high-performance wheelchair athletes whose stories can only have enhanced wheelchair sporting knowledge. It was a pleasure to incorporate these brief insights of life as a Paralympian by Mike Frogley; the Baroness Grey-Thompson; Peter Norfolk, OBE; and Randy Snow. This text is designed to help readers gain the necessary knowledge to enhance performance while at the same time allowing people with disabilities to realize what it may take to achieve their sporting dreams at any level.
This is an excerpt from Wheelchair Sport.
Psychological aspects of wheelchair sport
Many people find it difficult to relate to someone who has a physical disability. This lack of understanding can create additional challenges for people with disabilities. If society responded more adequately to people who have impairments, they would not experience nearly as many challenges and limitations
by David Shearer and Elizabeth Bressan
I was travelling with a wheelchair basketball team from the UK to the USA for an international tournament. Upon arriving at the airport, I went to check in with one of the athletes who was in his wheelchair. The check-in assistant proceeded to direct a torrent of questions at me. “Can he move through the airport without assistance? Will he need assistance to get onto the aircraft? Has anyone interfered with his bags since he packed them?” The athlete and I looked at each other in disbelief! Did she think he could not answer these questions himself? In my head I began to compose a response, but I was too slow. The athlete provided her with an energetic response aimed at her re-education about his functional capacity. Her red face showed that the desired effect was achieved. Her assumption that people who use wheelchairs are generally incapable was shattered. I doubt that she ever made the same mistake again.
David Shearer
Many people find it difficult to relate to someone who has a physical disability, often because they have not had any personal interaction with anyone with a disability. For example, they might be unsure what to expect from a person who has a mobility impairment and uses a wheelchair because they have never spent any time with wheelchair users. This lack of understanding can create additional challenges for people with disabilities. If society responded more adequately to people who have impairments, they would not experience nearly as many challenges and limitations (LoBianco & Shephard-Jones, 2007). Consider office workers who happen to use wheelchairs. Provided that there is only one level or there are ramps or elevators between levels, they may need no assistance whatsoever in the workplace. In other words, in an adapted work environment, they do not have a disability.
In wheelchair sport, the rules have been designed to ensure that people who have a variety of mobility impairments can play physically demanding and competitive sports in their wheelchairs. They provide adapted sport environments that encourage wheelchair users to become wheelchair athletes. The aim of this chapter is not to convince practitioners that wheelchair athletes deserve equal opportunities to participate in sport. Instead, our goal is to provide practitioners (e.g., coaches, sport science, and sport medicine support staff) with both general and specific psychological considerations for interacting and working with athletes with disabilities.
Getting Involved in Wheelchair Sport
Previous reviews that have compared working with athletes with physical disabilities to working with nondisabled athletes have highlighted more similarities than differences (Hanrahan, 1998, 2005; Martin, 1999). Whether working with a team sport or an individual sport, all practitioners must be prepared to adapt training methods, practice schedules, and communication styles in order to arrive at an optimal approach. This is true when working with any athlete, not just wheelchair athletes. By adopting this professional approach, practitioners will look at all wheelchair athletes as individuals. Although one athlete may have an amputation, another SCI, and another a mobility impairment, these physical disabilities will not be the point of departure when working with them. If practitioners' initial interactions with wheelchair athletes follow the same protocols as their interactions with all other athletes, they are likely to build strong rapport that will enhance the support that they can provide.
Who Participates in Wheelchair Sport?
From a clinical perspective, people who are eligible to participate in wheelchair sport at the Paralympic level have a variety of physical disabilities, all of which present serious disadvantages in the mobility aspects of sport participation. For example, a person with a below-knee amputation will be at a substantial disadvantage when playing basketball while wearing a prosthetic leg but will be able to participate without any disadvantage in wheelchair basketball.
It can be important to know whether a disability is congenital (present since birth) or acquired (caused by an accident or medical incident). Someone with a congenital disability has never experienced the sudden loss of physical mobility that has changed the life of a person who now uses a wheelchair as a result of paraplegia caused by an accident. On the other hand, the person with a congenital disability may have experienced a lifetime of discrimination. From a practical perspective, the practitioner's commitment to getting to know each athlete as an individual will help the practitioner develop an understanding of how the athlete feels. The realization that each athlete may feel differently about his impairment and the notion of disability will help the practitioner establish effective channels of communication.
Wheelchair athletes strive for victory and take pride in their achievements just as any other athletes do.
Photo courtesy of ES Bressan.
When working with wheelchair athletes, remember that in addition to the normal competitive pressures experienced by all athletes, those who use wheelchairs face a number of unique challenges. A wheelchair athlete will encounter disadvantages in nonadapted environments. For example, a gymnasium without an adapted entrance (e.g., a ramp) creates a barrier for fitness training for athletes who use wheelchairs for all their mobility needs, such as someone whose impairment is tetraplegia.
There are other kinds of barriers that present wheelchair athletes with challenges not usually experienced by nondisabled athletes. Researchers have found that elite wheelchair basketball players suffer unique stressors not experienced by nondisabled players (Campbell & Jones, 2002a, 2002b), including worries associated with travelling (e.g., going to the toilet on planes, handling luggage) and a lack of understanding from the general public (e.g., airline staff, support staff). In addition to these general concerns, there may also be sport-specific stressors. For example, research has shown that wheelchair racers experience greater stress about the condition of road surfaces compared with nondisabled racers (Martin, 2005). In our experience, knowledge of the challenges that athletes face is best gained through open and honest communication with them. This knowledge can be enhanced by observing athletes in and out of sporting contexts and noting the challenges faced and the manner in which the person copes with those challenges.
Not all wheelchair athletes use wheelchairs for their day-to-day mobility. Athletes with leg amputations and some athletes with SCI or with cerebral palsy are able to walk. They are wheelchair athletes because they play competitive sport in wheelchairs. There are also people who play wheelchair sport who do not have any mobility impairment at all. They choose to play wheelchair sport based on an inclusive model for recreation or competition. They also may be motivated by a shortage of athletes with mobility impairments needed to form a team. However, athletes without mobility impairments do not meet minimum eligibility requirements for participation in Paralympic wheelchair sport and are not included in our presentation.
Familiarization With Wheelchair Sport
Beginner and elite wheelchair athletes want support from people who understand their sport. This requires familiarity with their sport. Sport familiarization is a continuous process, and the longer practitioners remain involved in wheelchair sport, the more sophisticated their understanding of how they can contribute.
The simplest way to become familiar with any wheelchair sport is to become immersed in the sport and actively observe the athletes in training and competition. Actively observing is more than just watching; it entails observing with specific objectives. For example, before attending a competition, practitioners could identify specific aspects of the sport on which they intend to focus, such as team tactics in wheelchair basketball or the biomechanics of serving technique and ground strokes in wheelchair tennis.
Often, observation alone is not enough. Using the previous examples, a coach may notice that one basketball team frequently uses the fast break after winning a defensive rebound whereas the other team tends to slow the game down when they get possession in a similar situation. Similarly, one wheelchair tennis player may hit the forehand from a more full-on position than another. Asking questions of people who have specialist knowledge is invaluable in understanding any wheelchair sport. This might include having conversations with existing coaching staff but more importantly speaking with the athletes themselves. Athletes generally enjoy talking about their sport. These conversations will also provide an opportunity to become familiar with the athletes as well as their sport.
You may also consider attempting the sport yourself. For example, a physiotherapist and a sport psychologist for a wheelchair basketball team tried playing one-on-one after the team had finished practice. The physiotherapist thought that this gave him a better understanding of the forces that the athletes' muscles were subjected to and the potential injuries that might occur, and the sport psychologist believed he had a better grasp of the attentional demands of the game. In contrast, the coach of this same team, who was an accomplished basketball coach but was new to wheelchair basketball, decided not to try playing the game. His reasoning was that because his wheelchair skills were poor, he would not have a realistic experience and might unconsciously lower his expectations for the players. For him, sport familiarization did not include actual participation.
In some instances it may be useful to experiment firsthand how athletes' lives are affected by their disability. Hanrahan (1998) suggested trying to complete simple tasks such as getting off and on a chair without the use of leg muscles, a daily ritual for an athlete with paraplegia. It might be helpful to take a trip using a wheelchair to increase awareness of the barriers that wheelchair athletes face on a daily basis. However, the knowledge gained by such exercises should be used for personal insight only. Some athletes may consider such efforts patronizing, so practitioners should not try to use their experiences as a basis for understanding what their lives are like. If you would like to know what any athlete is thinking or feeling, the best advice is to ask her.
Sport-specific knowledge is critical. Learning the rules of the sport as well as the system of athlete classification is central to understanding how the sport is played and how competitions are managed. However, given the various support roles when working with wheelchair athletes, there is some variation in the knowledge required. In some roles, such as coach, sport-specific knowledge must become more and more sophisticated. For the physiotherapist or sport psychologist, developing a good understanding of the sport may be sufficient. Both the coach and the sport psychologist will use an understanding of the areas presented in the next two sections in order to help wheelchair athletes develop their sport commitment and the psychological aspects of their sport.
This is an excerpt from Wheelchair Sport.
Sample skills and drills for wheelchair basketball
Learn more about the skills needed for wheelchair basketball, and get a sneak peek of some of the drills featured in the Wheelchair Sport.
A great deal has been written on basketball skills and how to teach these skills to athletes. Such is not the case in wheelchair basketball. Though wheelchair basketball has been played since shortly after World War II, very little has been presented in the literature specifically for the sport. As a result, most coaches and players of wheelchair basketball have taken what they learned from the running game of basketball and tried to adapt it to wheelchair basketball with varying degrees of success. Some of what is taught in the running game of basketball can be transferred to wheelchair basketball; however, the different levels of muscle function present in wheelchair basketball and the different movements resulting from using a wheelchair present some unique skills. This chapter will focus on some of those differences and emphasize the individual and team skills used in wheelchair basketball.
This is an excerpt from Wheelchair Sport.
Learn more about Wheelchair Sport, a new book from HK
Wheelchair sport can increase confidence and self-esteem, and it may provide people with a positive outlook on life. There is a wheelchair sport for almost everyone who wants to participate and for any level of expertise, from novice through to Paralympic competition.
by Vicky Goosey-Tolfrey, Editor
Each year thousands of men and women become disabled due to an accident or illness and thereafter use a wheelchair for locomotion. The statistics tell us that there are approximately 1 to 2 million wheelchair users in the United States and approximately 1 to 2 million wheelchair users in Europe. This means that approximately 1 in every 200 people in the United States and Europe are in wheelchairs.
In 1948, Sir Ludwig Guttman, a neurologist who was working with World War II veterans with spinal injuries at Stoke Mandeville Hospital, Aylesbury, in the United Kingdom, began using sport as part of the rehabilitation programmes for his patients. Since that time, participation in wheelchair sport has grown beyond a method to improve wheelchair users' physical capacity. Wheelchair sport can increase confidence and self-esteem, and it may provide people with a positive outlook on life. There is a wheelchair sport for almost everyone who wants to participate and for any level of expertise, from novice through to Paralympic competition.
High-performance athletes are high performance whether they have a disability or not. However, the journey to this level of sporting excellence is dramatically different for wheelchair sport. Wheelchair athletes need sporting opportunities that nurture, recruit, and develop them through to the national level. They need access to sporting facilities and the community, as well as effective disability sport organizations. Access and support are just some of the challenges that wheelchair athletes and nondisabled athletes do not share.
Although the unique challenges of wheelchair sport participation can present obstacles, there are more opportunities than ever before to compete at any level. Advances in wheelchairs, understanding of the classification system, training methods, pushing techniques, and psychological aspects of wheelchair sport should help people with disabilities to achieve their sporting dreams. At the highest level, wheelchair sports have a dominating presence at the Paralympic Games, and while the science, engineering, and sporting classification systems evolve we rely on evidence practice through scientific communities to keep up. Wheelchair Sport bridges the gap between sporting excellence to wheelchair sport at a grassroots level. Wheelchair Sport is an educational resource for coaches, physical trainers, sport scientists, rehabilitation practitioners, wheelchair users, and all those with an interest in the field of wheelchair sport.
The development and implementation of safe and effective exercise and technical training programmes for wheelchair athletes may be based on theory for nondisabled athletes. After appreciating the many differences between nondisabled and wheelchair athletes, the book highlights the practical application of conventional strength and conditioning principles, nutritional considerations, and aspects of travel in relation to the needs of athletes who use a wheelchair for sport or for daily locomotion. Many questions may be asked by coaches, athletes, and practitioners, such as, “Do I need to adapt my coaching techniques to suit athletes with disabilities?”, “How should I set up my sport wheelchair?”, and “What are the energy requirements of the wheelchair athlete?” There are obviously going to be differences to the conventional theories regarding nondisabled athletes; however, even among wheelchair users there is likely to be a wide range of answers to these questions based on whether the athlete has a spinal cord injury, at what point the injury is sited, when the onset of the disability occurred, whether it is complete or incomplete, and whether the athlete uses a wheelchair for a different reason.
In order to answer some of these questions, Wheelchair Sport is divided into two parts. The contributors of part I have all made significant contributions to sport science education through involvement with national sporting governing bodies and national Paralympic associations. The structure of this text provides a balance between a general overview of and details about classification; psychological, mechanical, biomechanical, and physiological factors; strength and conditioning; nutrition and body composition; and the travel concerns that may be experienced when participating in wheelchair sport.
The first chapter introduces the sports that form the basis of this text and familiarizes the reader towards classification. This is followed by a chapter that describes the importance of wheelchair selection and propulsion technique. The third chapter demonstrates the importance of understanding the physiological differences between nondisabled and wheelchair athletes and the physiological adaptations that result from training. As a natural progression from this, chapter 4 introduces the concepts of strength and conditioning for wheelchair sport. Optimum nutritional strategies for health, training, and competition are discussed in chapter 5, along with assessment of body composition. Chapter 6 provides some practical advice to the wheelchair athlete who is travelling and competing abroad. Finally, chapter 7 describes principles and considerations that should be incorporated into the practice of those working with wheelchair athletes.
Part II is made up of sport-specific chapters and covers the five main sports (wheelchair basketball, racing, rugby, tennis, and handcycling). Although their experience lies in a number of wheelchair sports, the contributors of this section are united by their passion towards each sport, a respect of other coaches and athletes, and a desire to further the status that wheelchair sport deserves. All the contributors in this section have personally coached or been involved themselves as either an athlete or part of the support team at a very high level (including the Paralympics). These chapters provide a brief background of the sport, tactical advice in the form of drills, and playing and racing strategies. There is a truly international flavour to this section, with contributions from Belgium, Canada, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
The authors contributing to this book include coaches, applied sport scientists, and specialists in sports medicine and physical therapy working within Paralympic sport, as well as four high-performance wheelchair athletes whose stories can only have enhanced wheelchair sporting knowledge. It was a pleasure to incorporate these brief insights of life as a Paralympian by Mike Frogley; the Baroness Grey-Thompson; Peter Norfolk, OBE; and Randy Snow. This text is designed to help readers gain the necessary knowledge to enhance performance while at the same time allowing people with disabilities to realize what it may take to achieve their sporting dreams at any level.
This is an excerpt from Wheelchair Sport.