Supervisors info:
Κουτσούκη Δήμητρα, Καθηγήτρια, ΣΕΦΑΑ, ΕΚΠΑ
Ασωνίτου Αικατερίνη, Μέλος ΕΔΙΠ, ΣΕΦΑΑ, ΕΚΠΑ
Summary:
Exercise has a special place in people’s daily routine, because it is a very important sector that affects someone’s life in many ways. The advantages of working out in people with intellectual disability are particularly important, because not only they improve their health, but it also helps them socialize and interact with other people. Additionally, it is educational teaching them functionality and self-service skills, which are really important for their independence and the quality of their lives.
The purpose of this survey is to help people with intellectual disability strengthen their muscles in order to be able to perform simple daily movements more easily than they did before. For this reason, we created a training program with strengthening exercises for the upper limbs, which lasted two months and the trainees had two workouts per week (45-50’). All the workouts took place on the yard of the center of daily care KEEPEA “Orizontes”.
For the extraction of useful and safe conclusions, 22 people participated in the survey (5 women-17 men), who were divided in two groups:1) the control group which was consisted of 10 trainees who weren’t involved in the training program and 2) the experimental group which was consisted of 12 trainees and were involved in the training program. There was an assessment before and after the end of the training program, and the control of their muscular strength, using the Lafayette hands-strengthen-meter, for safe and reliable results.
All the statistical analyses of the data were done with the version 24.0 of the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences ( SPSS) and the statistical importance for group comparing was done with level p <.05 (IBM, 2016).
According to the results of the assessments, which were done after the end of the two-month training program, muscular strengthening exercises for the upper limbs, increase the muscular tone of people with intellectual disability and they are also very important for the development in other sectors of their physical condition, such as balance and flexibility of the upper body.
