At the moment, I’m doing research in two sports – hockey and running.
My hockey project is looking at injuries that occur in U18 players, something I think is very important to look at as you are all the players who will grow up into the adult players of the future!
Several projects at the moment look at running, which try to understand how we run and why we run in a particular way. This is important because we still don’t really understand what the ‘best’ way to run is, or the best way to train our muscles for running. If we can understand this, we can improve a runner’s performance, or we can help them train so they don’t tire as easily or get injured. This research is also important for working with amputees, because it can help us understand what the best way to design a prosthetic limb is to ensure someone can walk or run to the best of their ability.
As part of my PhD I mainly looked at wheelchair rugby, also known as Murderball. It’s a great sport, if you didn’t see it at the Paralympics, try and look at some videos on YouTube. It is a full contact sport played by individuals that have an impairment that affects all four limbs. Players are often thrown onto their backs in their wheelchairs due to the force of the collisions. Plus teams are mixed with females and males playing together. The majority of players have spinal cord injuries so my PhD looked at the body temperature responses of these individuals as due to their injury they don’t sweat or are able to control their blood flow below their injury at the spinal cord. This means during exercise they keep getting hotter and hotter so i was looking how to overcome this also.
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Katy commented on :
As part of my PhD I mainly looked at wheelchair rugby, also known as Murderball. It’s a great sport, if you didn’t see it at the Paralympics, try and look at some videos on YouTube. It is a full contact sport played by individuals that have an impairment that affects all four limbs. Players are often thrown onto their backs in their wheelchairs due to the force of the collisions. Plus teams are mixed with females and males playing together. The majority of players have spinal cord injuries so my PhD looked at the body temperature responses of these individuals as due to their injury they don’t sweat or are able to control their blood flow below their injury at the spinal cord. This means during exercise they keep getting hotter and hotter so i was looking how to overcome this also.