Sports ‘n Spokes Magazine, May 2012
Your mom may have been on to something when she told you to sit up straight.
When Marni Abbott-Peter was 17, she sustained a spinal-cord injury from a downhill skiing accident that left her paralyzed at the third thoracic vertebra, with no motor function from the chest down. But within ten years she became one of the world’s best wheelchair athletes, eventually winning her third gold medal at the 2000 Paralympics in Sydney.
When Abbott-Peter thought her high-performance basketball career was finally coming to an end, her personal trainer, Steve Ramsbottom, made an observation that changed the culture of their thinking. He told her—Don’t slouch, sit up tall, and practice good posture!
Abbott-Peter extended her professional basketball career another four years, eventually being named Canada’s BC Wheelchair Sports Association’s Female Athlete of the Century.
Before she learned how to make changes to her body alignment, Marni Abbott-Peter thought her basketball career was over.
“Poor body alignment and muscle imbalance lead to inefficient movement patterns and decreased athletic performance, especially for people with spinal-cord injuries,” says Ramsbottom, who has been training wheelchair athletes (and A-list actors like Hugh Jackman and David Duchovny) for more than a decade. He has also served as the strength and conditioning coach for a number of professional wheelchair teams and associations.
Because of the repetitive nature of pushing and sitting in a wheelchair, people with spinal-cord injuries (SCI) often have overused shoulder muscles, weak trunk muscles, and tight hip flex- ors—all of which lead to that damaging slouched position.
“When your body is out of proper alignment, your muscles are unable to function properly,” explains Ramsbottom. “This is why the ‘science of exercise’ can make incredible advances to help those in wheelchairs.”
One such advance is the concept that to improve overall posture, underdeveloped muscles—for example, the external and internal shoulder rotators, which are critical for balance and good posture—need to be strengthened and stretched. The potential benefits are huge for wheelchair athletes and will ultimately aid in injury prevention, more power, stability, and endurance.
At his training facility in Vancouver, British Columbia, Ramsbottom and his team work with wheelchair athletes to improve strength and flexibility in underdeveloped muscles by challenging balance and posture with exercises that readjust the body’s natural alignment.
“Without a proper support system—that is, your stabilizing muscles—you won’t move as powerfully, effortlessly, or efficiently as you should, and you’ll increase the chances of injury,” he explains. “Too often people follow the same circuit they’ve been doing for years, but athletes must first address their weaknesses through corrective exercises.”
Check out the complete article in the May 2012 issue of S’NS.
To read more about this, order the May 2012 SPORTS ‘N SPOKES, Click Here.
