Solo testo.pdf - Fondazione Santa Lucia

Sezione II: Percorsi diagnostici e terapeutici
It is important to evaluate wheelchair basketball players not only to monitor
their functional status but also to plan training.
Wheelchair basketball is characterized by intermittent intense and
medium phases of play and thus can be considered an alternating aerobicanaerobic
sport. It has been estimated that during wheelchair basketball
games 64% of the players’ time is spent in propulsive action and 36% in braking
activity. During a match each athlete travels about 5 km at an average
speed of 2 m.sec-1 with a peak speed of 4 m.sec-1 (Coutts K.D. (1992) Medicine
and Science in Sports and Exercise 24(2): 231-234). From a metabolic-biomechanical
point of view, the intermittent nature of this activity is the same as
that reported in “ non-disabled ” basketball (Weineck J. (1999) La preparazione
atletica ottimale del giocatore di pallacanestro. Perugia Italy): Calzetti Mariucci
Editore; Dal Monte A. and Faina M. (1999) Valutazione dell’atleta. Roma (Italy):
UTET; Glaister M. (2005) Sports Medicine 35(9): 757-777).
Therefore, an evaluation of wheelchair basketball players should include
assessment of alternating aerobic-anaerobic capacity using a specific test. A
complete examination of athletes also includes the evaluation of anaerobic
power, anaerobic capacity, upper limb strength and specific wheelchair basketball
skills.
These parameters can be evaluated most easily using a set of field tests.
The main advantage of field tests over laboratory tests is that they are well
accepted by athletes. Also, they require little time and expense to administer
and can therefore be used more than once during the season to more effectively
monitor each player’s progress. Field tests are performed on a basketball
court. The testing materials are very simple: a stopwatch, a tape measure, a
heart rate meter (or heart rate can be measured manually), a whistle, plastic
cones and adhesive tape.
In this paper, we describe the field tests that constitute the functional evaluation
protocol routinely employed with the wheelchair basketball players of
CMB Santa Lucia Sport, an international elite team.
In the second part, we present detailed tables of our athletes’ results on
these tests. When possible, these results are compared with those reported
in the literature. We also present tables that report the highest and lowest
values obtained by each of our athletes on these tests during the entire basketball
season. These findings should provide useful parameters for coaches
and athletic trainers of other teams who wish to use these tests and compare
their data with ours.
292 2006