Hello Everybody,

Hard to believe that this year is almost over and we are getting so much closer to 2020, which will also be the year that I plan to have my Masters at UBC completed.

Since my last post I have completed my literature review for KIN 530 and have also created an implementation plan for my research on tire pressure on racing wheelchairs. During the final stages of the literature review I definitely appreciated the guidance of my supervisor David Hill. His feedback and comments helped me greatly to focus on my review and make sure all the articles I reviewed related to what I wanted to achieve in my research. I can’t shake off the feeling though that I have not truly completed the review and everyday I come across new studies and themes I feel I could have included in my review…..however I’m happy that we did have a deadline for the review and feel if there was no deadline it probably would have become a never ending task.

After I submitted my lit-review i shared my findings and thoughts with my expert group of researchers and kinesiology experts. I got some great feedback that included being more precise in my terminology for example distinguishing between rolling friction (includes all the parts that contribute to friction, including bearings) and rolling resistance which is only the friction that is produced between the wheel and the ground surface. I also was happy to hear that i will not need an ethical approval for my research, which will make the research proposal approval a bit easier.

My next step is now to work on designing the actual research proposal over the next couple weeks. I have already contacted my supervisors Maria and Carol for the last part of this Masters. I have asked them to give me an example of previous students to get a better idea of the format etc.

As we are going into the final phase of this Masters I constantly see my self finishing up this chapter in my professional development and will for sure have a party once the final thesis is approved. Looking back a year ago one of the gaps that I identified during our Graduate Certificate was the knowledge of equipment and being confident in making coaching decisions regarding the right choice of equipment. The last years process has helped me to scientifically identify the factors that are important in wheelchair racing and I’m more confident that I can guide my athletes to make evidence based decisions when it comes to equipment factors. I’m hopeful that I will have some ground breaking evidence on ideal tire pressure that I will be able to share with my athletes and other national team coaches.

For now this will be my last entry for this course but I have a feeling I might come back after all is completed and do a final report.

Coach Ueli

Over the summer I emerged my Self’s into the academic literature and collected well over 30 articles on Wheelchair Racing and Equipment design. I especially was interested in Rolling resistance of the racing chair on a rubber track. I did not find any study that tested the rolling resistance of a racing wheelchair on a rubber track (Mondo Track) however I did find a lot of studies testing day chairs on various surfaces and with various types of tires at various loads of weights on the wheelchairs.

During my Lit review I discovered many additional things that might influence rolling resistance such as tire pressure, type of track, hardness of track, type of tires, width of tires, type of wheels, temperature of the tires and track, camber of the wheels, style of pushing, curve versus straightaway pushing. I realized in this process that it is not just as simple as tire pressure and weight of the athlete to determine ideal tire pressure. A very important measurement tool I was introduced by Dr. Colin Higgs was a hardness tester. The rubber hardness tester tells me how hard a track is. During this season I have discovered that some of the tracks are as low as 45 out of 100 and some as high as 80 out of 100. This is a significant difference and I will have to integrate this within my research. During the literature review I have gained so much more appreciation for all the factors that play in just for choosing the ideal tire pressure and it made me realize that sport science is more complex than it seems at first and we Coaches can benefit from trying to really understand the sport by looking at every little detail that might make a difference in making our athletes better.

I plan to write the Literature Review based on the themes that have arisen during the readings. I’m not fully sure about all the themes that I will be covering but it will be in line with the factors that influence rolling resistance and how to measure rolling friction to apply the best set up for an athlete. There are also similar approaches how to test for friction and the goal will be to figure out the best way of measuring rolling friction to discover differences in racing wheelchair set up.

Hello Everybody,

Things have been moving fast and I was very busy finishing up research methods and psychology of leadership. Both courses are complete and I now have more time to focus on my research project.

Since my last blog post I had a great conversations on the phone and on email with Dr. Colin Higgs. Dr. Higgs is one of the leading researchers in the para-sport world and did some amazing pioneer work in researching optimal racing chair design. We talked about some of the challenges and gaps that exist within Paralympic research. It was so interesting to hear about all the projects that Dr. Higgs was and still is involved in. He suggested to me to look at ideal tire pressure for racing wheelchairs. There has been research done on bicycles and every-day use wheelchairs but the fact that racing wheelchairs are propelled on a synthetic track changes the demands for tire pressure and it might be depending on weight and also the hardness of the track.

Dr. Higgs and I discussed the potential use of an accelerometer called raspberrypi. https://www.raspberrypi.org. This micro-processor that can act as a 3 axis accelerometer could detect acceleration and deceleration and give me data on the rolling friction on the racing chairs for different tire pressures. We also discussed the hypothesis of having different ideal tire pressures for different body weights. Instead of using the same athlete we could replace the subjects by sand bags and explore the relationship of different weights and tire pressures.

A study done by Barbosa et al. in 2019 looked at using a smart phone accelerometer app to collect acceleration and deceleration data for wheelchair racing. They concluded that the smart phone had a 16%-22% error margin and that the smart phone might not be a reliable instrument to assess wheelchair racing performance.

To be honest I’m a little bit intimated using a technology I have never used before. When I started this masters I did not think that I would be delving this much into using technology in order to collect the data. However this will be a great opportunity to learn more about accelerometers and data collection which is widely used in the field of exercise science and I’m looking forward to it.

Coach Ueli

Happy New Year Everybody,

January is already almost over and we are back in the swing of work and school. It has been an exciting start for me as I decided to refocus my energy in building my coaching business.

I spent a lot of time towards the end of last year applying for position with national and provincial sport organizations in an attempt to gain more stability in my income and lifestyle. It was a bit of a stressful time with preparing for interviews and getting myself excited about a position that I might potentially end up in.

During the process of applying for positions I realized that I have many qualities that are very beneficial to my business but don’t fit in with the sport organizational structure. I’m very driven and can work independently with anybody telling me what to do.  What I’m looking for is flexibility and potential for growth and making a big impact in the sport world. I realized that being employed might force me into a position where I might not have the impact that I would like to make and it would take away from my creativity.

So what does that have to do with my studies?  Let’s just say since I have realized that the best way of making an impact is through my coaching practice, I have also realized that I need to become even better in my coaching approach and also putting my knowledge out there for people to be seen. I have a clear vision of what I want to do for my thesis and hopefully will be able to directly apply this with my coaching business. It will be a great tool to increase my credibility as a coach and educator for Wheelchair Racing.

I believe that there has not been much research when it comes to wheelchair racing and I’m determined to become a world leading expert when it comes to wheelchair athletics. Spreading the knowledge about wheelchair athletics has become a integral part of my coaching business and I will be creating content on youtube and social media.

I have a wide network of experts and coaches and I’m looking forward to connect with the people to discuss my research ideas and practices and potential get some guidance on what would make sense in terms of research design and methods. Again using my resources to further educate people about wheelchair racing and become the go to person when it comes to wheelchair racing.

I’m excited what 2019 brings and will keep you updated.

Coach Ueli

Over the last month I have researched some different studies for both of our current courses in research methods and the psychology of leadership.

I have also started working with the university women varsity cross country program which you can read all about in an earlier blog called “Running with the AXEwomen”.

When I first started in this program I felt I had a good understanding of what high performance coaching looks like and what a good program looks like. Over the last year I realized that there are definitely many different ways of leading a program and there are different styles of leadership and program success cannot always be measured purely by the performance of the athletes.

I think one of the biggest “aha moments” I had in our research methods class was when our teacher taught us the concept of the null hypothesis.

“The null hypothesis is a general statement or default position that there is no relationship between two measured phenomena, or no association among groups.^[1] Testing (accepting, approving, rejecting, or disproving) the null hypothesis—and thus concluding that there are or are not grounds for believing that there is a relationship between two phenomena (e.g. that a potential treatment has a measurable effect)—is a central task in the modern practice of science; the field of statistics gives precise criteria for rejecting a null hypothesis”

When I apply this theory into the coaching world to see if a program produced the outcome for a certain athlete we cannot say with confidence that it was due to the actions of the coach unless it was tested against a control group. In other words, there is no scientific reason to believe that there was a relationship between the program and the outcome unless it was tested against a random sample control group.

In our daily coaching environment, we often assume that because a program produced good results the coaching also must be good. I’m sure there must be some relationship but often it also comes down to what population base the coach is working with and what the previous history of the program was like. If a program was already successful it will attract more successful recruits and that reinforces the strength of the program. In other words, a coach can never say with full confidence that his or her program is strong because of their coaching unless the athletes were assigned in a random sample order and a control group was run at the same time to compare against the null hypothesis.

This revelation will help me in choosing a thesis topic so that it will make true impact on the development of my own coaching practice and environment.

One common theme that keeps on coming up is the concept of transformational coaching and creating a task oriented supportive training environment. As mentioned earlier I had the chance to work with the Acadia Varsity Cross Country team and it gave me a really good chance to look at a program without actually being the head coach in that program. It gave me perspective and I quickly started to understand how being in a consultant role can be beneficial for the program. Although I don’t really like the term of High Performance Consultant or Advisor it does make sense if the coach is willing to reach out and willing to accept feedback and make necessary adjustments.

In my case I was very fortunate to work with a coach who is very open and willing on brining on change and making sure he improves on his coaching practice. Having a growth mind set and being open minded for new ideas is an important building block to create a task oriented supportive training environment.

At the beginning of this term I was pretty sure I was going to do a wheelchair study exploring the relationship between the 400m and 800m for T53 male wheelchair racers and I might still go down this path. However, as I start thinking more about potential topics I’m being pulled more towards coach interventions and applied sport psychology within the varsity program environment. In any ways, I’m following my passion of high performance coaching either within Para or Varsity and it will not matter what I decide in the end as long as I can make sure I get appropriate subjects and feasible data collection.

The goal for me is to learn how to do research and if I can increase my network of coaches and academics along the way that will be an added bonus.

Coach Ueli