Abstract
Manual wheelchair users are at high risk for repetitive strain injuries (RSI). And as high as 50% of manual wheelchair users have upper extremity pain. The purpose of this study was to investigate differences in the energy generated and upper extremity muscle activity between four common propulsion patterns. Propulsion energy, EMG voltages, and cadence were analyzed for ten strokes for both push and recovery phases, and compared across the four types of propulsion patterns. The arcing (ARC) pattern resulted in the lowest muscle activity for both phases but less muscle activity is needed per unit of energy for the semicircular (SC) pattern. These preliminary findings indicate that there may be an advantage to using the semicircular (SC) patterns by reducing the burden on upper extremity musculature, however future studies confirming these findings with a large group of wheelchair users are warranted.
