Yagesh Bhambhani as Sapienza Visiting Professor. Ricerca su Field Evaluation of Paralympic Athletes in Selected Sports: Implications for Training - Professori Visitatori Protocollo C26V064H89

Purposes: (1) to describe the acute cardiorespiratory and metabolic responses of Paralympic athletes participating in the following five sports: Nordic sit-skiing (NS, N = 5), wheelchair distance racing (WR, N = 6), wheelchair basketball (WB, N = 13), wheelchair fencing (WF, N = 6), and wheelchair tennis (WT, N = 4), and (2) to examine the relationship between their field test performance and laboratory measures of aerobic fitness. Methods: Each athlete completed an incremental arm cranking exercise (ACE) to determine ventilatory threshold (VT) and peak oxygen uptake (VO2peak). Subsequently, field assessments were carried out using a telemetric system to measure the cardiorespiratory responses in their respective sport. Results: VT and VO2peak (both expressed in ml▪kg-1▪min-1) of athletes competing in NS (38.3±5.76 and 51.0±6.92) and WR (35.5±5.96 and 48.1±6.35) were significantly higher (p<.05) than those competing in WB (26.0±2.13 and 36.9±3.70), WF (23.2±3.96 and 34.4±5.81) and WT (24.0±2.30 and 33.1±2.85). In the field tests, the average VO2, higher in NS and WR than WB, WF and WT, during NS, WR, WB, WF and WT were 79.4±3.30%, 84.4±2.10%, 72.1±5.72%, 73.0±3.10% and 73.0±1.91%, respectively, of the VO2peak. There was a strong linear relationship between VO2 measured during the field tests and the VT and VO2peak (R2 = 0.92 in each case). Conclusions: (1) athletes regulated their average work intensity during the field tests in the five Paralympic sports to approximate their individualized VT measured during incremental ACE and this intensity was within the range recommended by the American College of Sports Medicine to improve cardiorespiratory fitness in well trained subjects, and (2) performance of Paralympic athletes in these sports was highly dependent upon athletes’ aerobic fitness.