Heart rates of participants in wheelchair sports.

The relative stress of participation in wheelchair basketball, volleyball, tennis, and racquetball were determined by monitoring the heart rates of wheelchair athletes. Heart rates were recorded for 5 seconds every 30 seconds during monitoring sessions of 10 min or longer under game or practice conditions. Subjects were volunteer paraplegic athletes with lesions below T5 or with equivalent disability according to an international sport classification system. Average heart rates were 89 beats/min for tennis 'practice', 96 for racquetball 'practice' 107 for volleyball 'practice', 114 for volleyball 'game', 127 for tennis 'game', 129 for basketball 'practice', 135 for racquetball 'game', and 149 for basketball 'game' conditions. The percentage of time when heart rates were above 140 beats/min, followed the same pattern as the average heart rates and ranged from 0 to 62%.