Paralympic Preparation
The Canadian Sport Institute Ontario (CSIO) is part of a nationwide network of Sport Institutes that support high performance athletes achieve podium performances.
CSIO is located at the Toronto Pan Am Sports Centre, the largest legacy facility from the Toronto 2015 Pan/ Parapan Am games, and features a sport lab, a sport performance kitchen, an altitude chamber, and a 450 square meter strength and conditioning space including two motion capture areas.
The primary motion capture space consists of eight Qualisys cameras fixed to an overhead truss system, synchronized with four AMTI force plates embedded in a 200 m track. This setup allows for capture of athletes’ sprinting, running, walking, jumping techniques, and more.
The secondary motion capture space includes six Qualisys cameras and surrounds a custom-built wheelchair ergometer. Software synchronized with force-sensing hand rims, detailed assessments of wheelchair athletes’ push performance can be completed.
The sport lab features two mobile high speed Qualisys cameras that capture synchronized video for kinematic analyses. All of these spaces are used by biomechanists and researchers to assess performance and physical demands of sport.
Some of the projects that have been performed at CSIO include measuring the way in which wheelchair installation affects effectiveness and upper extremity joint loading of straight line pushing, Bilateral symmetry of maximal counter-movement jumps in elite athletes, and determining the efficacy of a novel Volume of Action measurement in discriminating between classifications in wheelchair basketball.
Beyond research, real-time motion, video and force data are integrated using these technologies into the daily training environment to provide real-time feedback to coaches, athletes, and sport scientists in preparation for the 2016 Rio Olympics and Paralympics.
Lindsay Musalem
