A Bibliometrics-Enhanced, PAGER-Compliant Scoping Review of the Literature on Paralympic Powerlifting: Insights for Practices and Future Research

Abstract

Paralympic powerlifting (PP), formerly known as “International Paralympic Committee” (IPC) powerlifting, is the format of powerlifting adapted for athletes with disabilities, and it differs from the version for able-bodied athletes in that it consists of bench press only. According to the mandate of the IPC, PP athletes should be enabled to achieve sporting excellence. As such, rigorous evidence is needed. However, to the best of our knowledge, there exists no systematic assessment of the body of scholarly evidence in the field of PP. Therefore, the present study was conducted to fill in this gap of knowledge, by conducting a scoping review of the literature enhanced by a bibliometrics analysis and by mining two major scholarly databases (MEDLINE via PubMed and Scopus). The aim was to provide a review/summary of the findings to date to help practitioners and athletes. Thirty-seven studies were retained in the present study. These covered the following thematic areas: (i) warm-up strategies (n = 2); (ii) aspects of training (n = 2); (iii) physiological aspects and responses (n = 2); (iv) psychological aspects and responses (n = 2); (v) biomechanics of bench press (n = 8); (vi) recovery strategy (n = 5); (vii) impact of the disability and type of disability (n = 4); (viii) epidemiology of PP (n = 6); and (ix) new analytical/statistical approaches for kinematics assessments, internal load monitoring, and predictions of mechanical outputs in strength exercises and in PP (n = 6). Bibliometrics analysis of the PP-related scientific output revealed that, despite having already become a paralympic sports discipline in 1984, only in the last few years, PP has been attracting a lot of interest from the community of researchers, with the first scholarly contribution dating back to 2012, and with more than one-third of the scientific output being published this year (2022). As such, this scholarly discipline is quite recent and young. Moreover, the community dealing with this topic is poorly interconnected, with most authors contributing to just one article, and with one single author being a hub node of the author network. Distributions of the number of articles and the authors/co-authors were found to be highly asymmetrical, indicating that this research is still in its infancy and has great room as well as great potential to grow. Reflecting this, many research topics are also overlooked and underdeveloped, with the currently available evidence being based on a few studies.

Variability analysis of muscle activation symmetry to identify indicators of individual motor strategy: a case series on elite Paralympic powerlifters

“…In this context, Paralympic powerlifting has witnessed a remarkable surge in participation and competitive accomplishments at the international level, becoming one of the fastest-growing sports within the Paralympic movement (1,2). This positive trend aligns with the increasing scientific research activity in recent years, which has delved into the biomechanical, physiological, and psychological aspects of this Paralympic discipline (3). Despite this, certain aspects that are more tuned to individual differences among para-athletes, such as impairment type, remain underrepresented in research (4)(5)(6)(7).…”

A Scoping Review with Bibliometric Analysis of Para-Rowing: State of the Art and Future Directions

“…Of interest, the most over-represented countries such as Croatia, Brazil, and Canada, did not qualify as top counties in terms of medals awarded. Recently, our group assessed publishing trends related to Paralympic powerlifting [ 15 ]. Compared with the Paralympic powerlifting community, the para-rowing community appears to be less connected, more fragmented, and dispersed.…”

“…Using ad hoc extraction, processing, visualization, and bibliometric software, including VOSviewer version 1.6.18, Gephi, and Cytoscape [ 15 ], data extracted from MEDLINE via PubMed and RIS reference manager files were mapped and visualized as graphs/networks and investigated from a quantitative standpoint, by computing a range of several graph theory/network-related indicators. Finally, the number of papers per year was also visualized as a time series.…”

“…Finally, the number of papers per year was also visualized as a time series. Further details are described in our previous publication, to which the reader is referred [ 15 ].…”

Analyzing the bibliometric progress of sustainable monitoring and analysis of sports training loads

“…2) CiteSpace Visualization. Research visualization in the area of social network analysis is an emerging subfield in bibliometrics [15]. The CS, invented by Chen Chaomei of Drexel University in Philadelphia, USA [16], is an opensource Java research software suite for the natural sciences.…”