Adapted Physical Activity & Disability
This project spans the biomechanical assessment of motor function and postural control, and the design of assistive equipment, for individuals with cerebral palsy, Down syndrome, and other physical or intellectual disabilities.
Biomechanical assessment of motor function, postural control, and equipment design for individuals with cerebral palsy, Down syndrome, and other physical or intellectual disabilities.
Motor control and postural stability in cerebral palsy
Early in my career, working with Kostas Gianikellis at the Universidad de Extremadura, I studied the biomechanics of movement in persons with cerebral palsy: a biomechanical analysis of the vertical countermovement jump (I Conferencia Internacional sobre Deporte Adaptado, CIDA 2003), and an evaluation of postural stability and its relation to isokinetic performance in 23 individuals with cerebral palsy — combining bilateral knee isokinetic testing with Romberg force-plate assessment — first presented at the 23rd International Symposium on Biomechanics in Sports (ISBS 2005, Beijing) and subsequently re-presented at CIDA 2007 and the XXVIII Congress of the Sociedad Ibérica de Biomecánica y Biomateriales (SIBB 2005). This program of work was funded by the Consejería de Educación, Ciencia y Tecnología of the Junta de Extremadura, under a project applying biomechanical analysis to the motricity of individuals with physical disabilities in daily-life and sport activities.
Postural control and coordination in Down syndrome
Using stabilometry and gait-coordination analysis, I examined postural control in individuals with Down syndrome: a Romberg-test study of the contribution of visual input to postural sway (European Workshop on Movement Science, EWOMS 2009), a stabilometric decomposition of center-of-pressure trajectories into Rambling and Trembling components (II Congreso Europeo Deporte y Discapacidad Intelectual, Lleida 2008), and a phase-plane analysis of bilateral intralimb and interlimb lower-limb coordination during running (5th Portuguese Congress on Biomechanics, Espinho 2013).
Equipment design and assistive technology
At the 4th Congress of Sport Science (Athens 2017), I presented the design of a prototype manual wheelchair instrumented with accelerometer, wheel-rim force, contact-pressure, and EMG sensors to capture the biomechanical and physiological parameters relevant to propulsion technique, lumbar spine safety, stability, and performance — criteria for the ergonomic design of manual wheelchairs. More recently, I gave an invited talk on the role of assistive technology in promoting the participation of people with disabilities in sport, as part of a seminar of the Northern Greece Physical Education Teachers Association (EGVE 2026), and an invited talk on adapted physical activity and applied biomechanics at the 5th International Conference on Sport Sciences (ICSS 2025).
Rehabilitation and accessibility
This work also extended to posturography as a methodology for evaluating learning disability (CIDA 2003), a review of the relevance of human-movement biomechanics for motor control in adapted sport — covering sport performance, training, and accessibility (CIDA 2007 Open Forum), and, through a collaboration with the Asociación de Zooterapia de Extremadura, a presentation on biomechanical processes for evaluating motor function in people with disabilities to facilitate equine-assisted rehabilitation in Extremadura (IV Jornadas Extremeñas de Terapias Ecuestres y Actividad Física, 2005).
