Motorized scooter vs. manual wheelchair: Which is better for the body in a person who has upper body mobility? The manual wheelchair, of course, and a new study adds to this fact.
I’m a certified personal trainer, and from time to time, I will see people in the gym who are confined to wheelchairs, but they work out with weights – some of them with heavy weights. A man and woman who use a wheelchair play one-on-one basketball.
If you’re making plans on getting a motorized scooter, rethink that – because the repercussions will be some atrophy (shrinkage) of the muscles in your upper body.
The new study, headed by David R. Basset, Jr., a kinesiology professor at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, reports that a substantial amount of calories can be burned while one uses a manual wheelchair.
Just pushing the chair at only 2 mph for 30 minutes will burn 120 calories. How many calories will a person burn while cruising the same speed and distance in a scooter? A sorry one-third as much!
Manual wheelchairs are designed to accommodate people with weak upper bodies and even no hand use, such as in partial quadriplegics. So, if someone with weak arms and limited hand use or even no grip at all, can push a manual wheelchair, this means that an individual with normal upper body use should not be using a motorized scooter.
When you go from walking to scooter-use, a significant reduction in daily calorie expenditure results. Fat gain then happens. Furthermore, the shoulder joints weaken and may stiffen quite a bit because gone is the arm swing of walking.
The shoulders and arms do nothing while one uses a scooter, with the exception of one hand operating the machine’s controls. The entire upper body becomes immobilized during motorized ambulation.
However, the use of a manual wheelchair means a lot of shoulder and arm exercise. Not only will this fight against fat gain, but all of that pushing and manipulating of the wheelchair will strengthen the upper body and keep the shoulders loose.
If you live your life out of a scooter, you will get virtually no exercise. This isn’t to say that a person who uses a scooter can’t lift dumbbells, shoot arrows at a target or play the piano.
But I’m talking about what happens to one’s body while using a scooter, vs. a manual wheelchair, for getting around. Just because you can no longer walk does not mean your upper body must become immobile, too.
Of course, while in a scooter, you can do all sorts of things with your arms, but a significant amount of our time every day is devoted to moving from Point A to Point B. That movement can either be done with the legs, or with the arms (manual wheelchair).
A motorized scooter eliminates the entire body from movement during ambulation, and the result will be fat gain, and muscle weakening of the upper body.
Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/10/111028115352.htm