No matter how your physical appearance or lifestyle is, if you see a ball coming from a distance to you, you’d feel an urge to engage with it. Sports and games are definitely a beautiful part of a person’s life. There’s an extensive diversity of sports & games in the world and that is something that makes it special — there are different sports for different people with different interests and different physical knack to give to a game. Even if you happen to be in a wheelchair, there are loads of games that are no different from others for you. Low-impact sports that are for people with limited mobility.
Adaptive Golf:
Adaptive Golf tops the list because of the spectrum of disabilities it covers. Adaptive golf is a blessing for the lovers of golf who are suffering from issues like back pain, arthritis or even the major ones like loss of motor functions or loss of a limb.
Adaptive golf could be played while sitting or standing. People can learn about the adaptive equipment with the help of golf clinics’ and the Adaptive Golf Carts are used in stabilizing the body.
Tenpin Bowling:
This is a great indoor game and has mighty participation rate globally. Just as easy as you imagine, adaptive Tenpin bowling for disabled doesn’t have a very significant difference when we compare it with the regular bowling. It came into existence after the Second World War for the physically handicapped veterans.
It is a family-oriented sport and doesn’t involve much mobility or dynamic actions.
Para Table Tennis:
Para Table Tennis is also like the regular Table Tennis — it only involves slight alterations in the rules for the wheelchair athletes. Akin to Adaptive Golf, Para Table Tennis also aids a large spectrum of people with physical disabilities. There are total 11 classes of athletes which are divided into two major groups:
- Class 1-5: For people in wheelchairs.
- Class 6-11: For people whose disabilities don’t refrain them to play while standing.
Summer Paralympic Games and World Para Table Tennis Championships are some of the major events in of the sport.
Sitting Volleyball:
As the name suggests, sitting volleyball involves the players to play while sitting on the ground. In the recent times it has gained a lot of popularity and at club level, the game is available for both, the non-disabled and the disabled players. There are a few modifications in the game compared to Volleyball. While in regular Volleyball players are only allowed 3 touches to get the ball over the net, players in Sitting Volleyball can use as many hits as they want to push the ball to do likewise.
The same player can’t have multiple touches in succession while there isn’t any such restriction in Sitting Volleyball. Players can use additional taps to make the ball cross the net in Sitting Volleyball while in regular Volleyball, you have to make the ball get the past the net only in one go.
There are plenty of other sports and games for people with limited mobility too with varying impacts like Archery which doesn’t exact a lot of efforts from the participant. Wheelchair Basketball and Soccer are highly popular but couldn’t be included in the low-impact category.
Anyway, hopefully no disability should abstain people from participating in a sport. Sports & games prove that no disability is bigger than sports and it is something that transcends the physical barriers that people with limited-mobility face, and unites them with a sense of togetherness.