Incidence of injuries in wheelchair basketball players

Abstract

Adapted sports for people with disabilities has had great technical developments in recent years, which was
accompanied by an increase in the volume of training of athletes and the number of injuries. This study aims to evaluate the motor performance and the incidence of injuries in elite wheelchair basketball athletes. We evaluated 11 male wheelchair basketball athletes in the cities of Londrina and Maringa, with a mean age of 30.27 years (+ 6.51), with spinal cord injuries in the thoracic and lumbar levels. Motor performance was evaluated in the form of agility and speed tests. To verify the occurrence of lesions we used questionnaires, in which athletes reported pain intensity
and how this negatively infl uenced daily activities. Data were analyzed with descriptive statistics and it was used t-test to verify differences in motor performance between athletes with higher and lower levels of pain. It was also verifi ed the correlation between age, duration of practice and motor performance of athletes. It was found that the lesions were more frequent in the shoulder area, but these did not affect motor performance. What actually affected the performance of the athletes was the practice time, with more experienced athletes showing better results in the speed test. It was also highlighted the importance of a better physical training to prevent sports injuries.