Abstract
To our knowledge, few studies have examined the muscle power and performance of wheelchair athletes in para-athletics, and thus, neither the muscle power required for wheelchair racing nor the associated assessment criteria have been established. This study aimed to examine whether parallel bar dips are associated with performance in wheelchair racing by having wheelchair athletes perform a 30-s parallel bar dip test (PBD-TEST) and a 30-s wheelchair roller test (WR-TEST). The participants in the present study were 13 male Japanese wheelchair athletes. The numbers of athletes by class were one in the T52, five in the T53, and seven in the T54 class. The participants were classified into amputation/motor disability classes, including spinal cord injury, in para-athletics, with a smaller last digit indicating more severe disability. No significant correlation was found between the number of dips in the PBD-TEST and the peak wheelchair speed in the WR-TEST. Next, to examine differences by competitive performance, the participants were divided into an international-level group (ILG) and a national-level group (NLG). A significant positive correlation was found between the number of dips in the PBD-TEST and the peak wheelchair speed in the WR-TEST for the ILG (r = 0.892, p = 0.007), whereas a significant negative correlation was found for the NLG (r = –0.919, p = 0.010). In the ILG, the athletes with more dips in the PBD-TEST achieved a greater peak wheelchair speed in the WR-TEST, suggesting that they had the skills necessary to convert upper limb muscle power into wheelchair speed. These results suggest that the PBD-TEST is an effective performance-related measure for high-performance wheelchair athletes.