Rio, Tokyo Paralympic Games and beyond: How to Prepare Athletes with Motor Disabilities for Peaking
The level of disabled athletes’ performance also improved to a point that, in the present days, sport news and world sport movements focus on the potential advantage of artificial limbs among amputees and their integration in able-bodied competitions. However, amputees do not represent the totality of disabled athletes. Most of them show other motor impairments due to different deficiencies (visual deficit, paraplegia, tetraplegia, cerebral palsy or else). These motor impairments induce typical functional and physiological responses to exercise (e.g., hyperthermia among athletes with tetraplegia) and thus alter their performance. Environmental conditions may also add adverse effects on exercise performance capacity. These should be taken into account in the preparation of Paralympic athletes for the pinnacle of their career, the Paralympic Games.