Cardiovascular Endurance For Paraplegics: Canadian Paraplegic Association

Cardiovascular Endurance For Paraplegics

Free wheeling can improve your aerobic fitness

Brenda Loveridge, B.PT, Ph.D
Lloyd Tymchyshyn, B.Sc., BMR, M.Sc.
Helga Rempel, B.P.E, M.Sc., R.D

Endurance exercise is one key to improving your cardiovascular fitness.

A balanced fitness program should include exercises for both muscle strength and aerobic conditioning. Optimally you should be exercising 4-5 days/week, with a minimum of 3 days devoted to aerobic types of activities.

Exercise workouts more than 5 days/week have few advantages and may lead to over-training and greater susceptibility to injury. A healthy body needs both exercise and rest. When engaged in a very active lifestyle, rest days should be interspersed with exercise days to provide a rest day mid week as well as one at week's end.

If you are over 40 years of age and male, or over 50 years of age and female, and intend engaging in very strenuous activity you should obtain medical clearance first. If your doctor has indicated that you have cardiovascular disease, or high blood pressure at any age, seek medical advice before engaging in an exercise program.

Endurance Training

Endurance exercise is required for aerobic conditioning to improve cardiovascular fitness. To obtain cardiovascular benefits, exercise must be of a sufficient intensity, duration and frequency each week to induce changes.

Free wheeling is an effective form of endurance training, if an individual can wheel fast enough, or the terrain is such that heart rate can be increased to the target range and maintained there. For example, an unobstructed outdoor pathway, long stretches of wheelchair accessible sidewalks, or a track are suitable. However, wheeling in a crowded mall is unlikely to provide the increased and sustained work effort required to provide cardiovascular training effects.

Free wheeling is often associated with periods of coasting where heart rate may drop considerably and the effects of training may be less than anticipated. During free wheeling, develop a hand strike pattern which keeps your arms moving and limits coasting. Sustain an effort which feels moderate to moderately hard. If the wheeling feels easy then it is unlikely to be producing any cardiovascular training benefits.

Resistance wheeling on wheelchair rollers or wheelchair ergometers is an effective means of training. These devices allow both speed and resistance to be used to increase intensity of the workout. They provide a means of exercising in all weather conditions, and the use of resistance provides a strength training stimulus as well.

Wheelchair sports such as basketball, track and field, tennis, and swimming have all been shown to improve aerobic fitness, whereas weight lifting, archery, target shooting or table tennis have been shown to be ineffective. These latter sports should not be chosen for their ability to improve aerobic capacity. However, individuals engaged in any sports activities generally have higher fitness levels.

Arm crank training is a less specific exercise than wheeling training, but is an effective means of improving aerobic fitness and strength. In general, for the same workload, the heart and lungs work harder during wheeling than during arm cranking exercise. As the muscle activity is quite different between arm cranking and wheeling, where possible, choose a wheeling activity over arm cranking. Wheeling improves aerobic capacity and works the muscles in the activity they have to perform most.