Sports Seating

Mel Clarke...

...has excelled in her sport of archery, winning, along with her Paralympic Bronze Medal, a gold in the European Championships in 2002, becoming the first disabled archer in Europe to win a place on the national able bodied team in 2003 and two 1st world champion places in individual and team competition, along with many other accolades.
Despite this impressive CV Mel and her coach felt that there was still room for improvement and a necessity for upping her game if she wanted to stand a chance of winning the Gold Medal in 2012. Mel hoped we might be able to come up with a better, more supportive and stable seat and back support system…
I went to one of her training/coaching sessions and saw her shoot, trying to become acquainted with the usual biomechanics involved in archery, for able-bodied people. Mel’s technique by comparison was biomechanically quite different: she’s sat down, she doesn’t have feeling from her abdomen down, where the core stability comes from, which is necessary for holding the bow in the correct and steady position and she doesn’t have sight in her right eye (which should be her shooting eye!)

Mel’s wheelchair is a Quickie Helium, a very lightweight (6.5kg) rigid active user chair. She had a J3 back support for everyday use and swapped this for a custom-made back support, which utilized the J3 mounting hardware, for shooting. The back which Mel shot with was a rigid aluminium shell with a 1” evazote layer but with a 4” wide gap down the middle, this essentially gave two semi hard edges which helped to, not really support her laterally, but to give her reference points, so she knew where to position herself laterally when shooting. Mel doesn’t sit on a cushion but just uses the integral straps and canvas of the wheelchair. There were also various wedges used, lateral and medial to the legs. The problems highlighted by Mel and her coach were, lack of stability and reference points. It was also noted that the rules that apply to Mel’s physical ability grouping mean that thoracic lateral supports cannot be deeper than half the depth of the trunk and straps including pelvic belts cannot be used.

I observed that when Mel drew back the bow, which takes a lot of strength, her pelvis tilted down on her left by about an inch. Using the reference points of the back support Mel would make slight adjustments to her trunk to gain the optimum position for shooting the arrow. The reference points were used to adjust the trunk forward/backward and laterally. After the arrow was fired Mel’s pelvis gradually came back to a level position again.

Using a bean bag I moulded Mel in her wheelchair for a base cushion. I made the moulding of the bag very firm, tight and slightly undercut so it locked her in position and shaped the mould underneath as such to limit the dynamic pelvic obliquity. Mel tried shooting and felt more stable instantly. So I took the mould back to the workshop and we made a very firm carved foam cushion, in a plastic shell, which fitted to Mel’s chair with a drop hook interface. The finished cushion gave great stability and Mel tried shooting with it for a few weeks. Unfortunately the same wheelchair is used for every day and for shooting (this is mainly due to lack of funding for competing - the athletes are not allowed to take a second wheelchair with them). As a full time athlete shooting practice for Mel happens four times a day, so removing the straps and canvas from the chair to then fit the custom contoured cushion was just not practical. So we went back to the drawing board!

We improved on the wedges that Mel was previously using, which consisted of a pommel which was wedged very tightly in place and wedges which were very firm evazote backed with a very stiff plastic to keep their shape and to help slide them into place lateral to the thighs and hips. We also used an “active user” 10” high MaTRx Elite back support, we fitted it to the Helium in place of the J3. When Mel first sat back into the wheelchair she was amazed by the improved stability that the back provided, even though the mounting hardware used still allowed removal of the back. Additionally the standard 1” foam cover was removed and replaced with a ½” thick evazote layer, this characterized the back for stability rather than comfort. The finishing touch was the new reference points - two solid plastic cylinders which were rounded at the end, were bolted to the inside of the back support (Pic.3) and holes were cut through the evazote layer to allow the reference points to poke through. These points were high enough for Mel to feel where she needed to be precisely in every plane before firing an arrow. That weekend Mel shot 11 points higher than she had ever scored before! After that Mel inevitably made further changes herself, she removed the ½” evazote layer, which made the reference points even more severe and she added two more points for even more physical prompting and accurate shooting!

In summary I applied the same approach and theories that we apply every day that we see clients with seating and postural problems which need overcoming, it’s just that the solutions were more extreme and rigid and the outcome was instant improvement in function. We wish Mel all the best for London 2012 and her dream for Gold.