Relação entre o desempenho em testes físicos e parâmetros de carga externa em jogadores de basquetebol em cadeira de rodas

Abstract

Wheelchair Basketball (BCR) is a team sport characterized as a high-intensity intermittent activity that requires high levels of physical performance and technical action from athletes. In team sports on the court and field, practiced by people without spinal cord injuries, the use of external load parameters provided by GPS has grown in recent years, however, in BCR, little is known about the behavior of these parameters and their relationship with physical demands. in field tests. Knowledge of these demands, as well as monitoring the external load, is essential for controlling workloads. In this sense, the objective of this study was to determine the relationship between performance in physical tests and external load parameters of wheelchair basketball players. The study included 9 male wheelchair basketball players with spinal cord injuries, with a mean age of 40.6 ± 9.0 years. All were subjected to a battery of physical tests (upper limb power, 10 and 20 meter sprint tests at linear speed, 20 meter zigzag sprint test and aerobic power). Afterwards, everyone participated in the simulated wheelchair basketball game. During the game (four halves of 10 minutes) participants were monitored based on external load parameters through a Global Positioning System (GPS), obtaining the following variables: average speed, maximum speed, total distance covered and distance covered in different intensity ranges. The intensity ranges were defined individually based on the maximum speed reached in the game, following the following classification: (a) moderate intensity up to 60%, b) heavy intensity from 61% to 80%, c) severe intensity from 81% to 94% %, d) sprints 95% to 100%. For data analysis, normality was verified using the Shapiro-Wilk test, then the information was presented using descriptive statistics (mean and standard deviation). To evaluate the correlation between indicators obtained in field tests and external load parameters during matches, the Pearson test was used for parametric data. The simple regression test was performed for the variables that showed significant correlations. Statistical procedures along with analyzes were performed using SPSS software, version 23.0. and the level of statistical significance adopted was set at P <0.05. The results obtained showed that the linear test of 10 meters (p = 0.016; r = - 0.76; r2 = 58.5%) and 20 meters (p = 0.017; r = - 0.76; r2 = 58.4 %) were negatively correlated and even partially explained the average speed achieved in the game. Furthermore, aerobic power correlated with sprinting in the game (p = 0.025; r = - 0.72; 39.9%), but was not able to predict it. We concluded that performance in the 10 and 20 meter sprint physical tests correlated and partially explained the average speed variable, so coaches can use these tests in training sessions to improve athletes' performance for the BCR match.