How Can Biomechanics Improve Physical Preparation and Performance in Paralympic Athletes? A Narrative Review

Abstract

Recent research in Paralympic biomechanics has offered opportunities for coaches, athletes, and sports practitioners to optimize training and performance, and recent systematic reviews have served to summarize the state of the evidence connecting biomechanics to Paralympic performance. This narrative review serves to provide a comprehensive and critical evaluation of the evidence related to biomechanics and Paralympic performance published since 2016. The main themes within this review focus on sport-specific body posture: the standing, sitting, and horizontal positions of current summer Paralympic sports. For standing sports, sprint and jump mechanics were assessed in athletes with cerebral palsy and in lower-limb amputee athletes using running-specific prostheses. Our findings suggest that running and jumping-specific prostheses should be ‘tuned’ to each athlete depending on specific event demands to optimize performance. Standing sports were also inclusive to athletes with visual impairments. Sitting sports comprise of athletes performing on a bike, in a wheelchair (WC), or in a boat. WC configuration is deemed an important consideration for injury prevention, mobility, and performance. Other sitting sports like hand-cycling, rowing, and canoeing/kayaking should focus on specific sitting positions (e.g., arm-crank position, grip, or seat configuration) and ways to reduce aero/hydrodynamic drag. Para-swimming practitioners should consider athlete-specific impairments, including asymmetrical anthropometrics, on the swim-start and free-swim velocities, with special considerations for drag factors. Taken together, we provide practitioners working in Paralympic sport with specific considerations on disability and event-specific training modalities and equipment configurations to optimize performance from a biomechanical perspective.