From Bench to Practice: Translating Movement Science into Adapted Physical Activity

Thu, 26 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000

A recruitment curve fitted with a Boltzmann model, a detrended fluctuation analysis exponent, an interclass correlation coefficient between two candidate sigmoidal models — none of this means anything to a physical educator planning next week’s inclusive PE class, or to a physiotherapist deciding whether a patient is ready to progress a gait-training protocol. And yet that’s exactly who needs to eventually act on it.

The gap between finding and practice

Knowledge translation — the deliberate work of converting research findings into a form that clinicians, educators, and program coordinators can actually use — is not a side activity in adapted physical activity. It’s arguably the point. A biomechanical or neurophysiological finding that never crosses that gap stays a curiosity; it doesn’t change how anyone teaches, trains, or treats.

In my own work this has meant a few concrete things. It’s meant identifying a specific, measurable threshold for excessive step width variability in older adults, rather than stopping at “variability is associated with fall risk” — a threshold a clinician can actually screen for. It’s meant testing whether a simple, low-cost sideways-walking intervention can shift that variability, rather than leaving the finding purely descriptive. And in the context of transspinal stimulation research, it’s meant documenting stimulation protocols and their effects on gait characteristics in enough operational detail that they can inform future clinical trial design, not just contribute to a mechanistic model of spinal locomotor networks.

Why language matters here too

Part of knowledge translation is simply how findings are framed. Adapted physical activity research benefits from person-first, strengths-based language, and from being explicit about the practical, program-level implications of a finding — who it’s for, what population it applies to, what a practitioner should actually change because of it. That’s a different discipline than writing for a methods-focused journal audience, and it’s one I’ve tried to build into how I write about my own work, including on this site.

The two-way street

Translation isn’t only bench-to-practice, either. Some of the most useful research questions I’ve worked on came from the other direction — from a clinical or educational need identified by disability support staff, teachers, or clinicians, worked backward into a study design. Keeping that channel open, in both directions, is what actually keeps movement science relevant to the people it’s meant to serve.

Knowledge Translation | Andreas Skiadopoulos

From Bench to Practice: Translating Movement Science into Adapted Physical Activity

The gap between finding and practice

Why language matters here too

The two-way street