uOttawa students — and city fitness guru — making gyms more accessible

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When Angie Mintz first arrived at the Jack Purcell Community Centre by ParaTranspo last fall, she wasn’t sure what to expect.

Fresh off surgery last summer to relieve the pressure on her spine, Mintz wasn’t sure if a gym was the place for a person in a wheelchair. But thanks to the work of Brian Robitaille, a co-ordinator for the City of Ottawa’s fitness programs, and a group of enthusiastic uOttawa co-op engineering students, Mintz found her mojo on a specially modified rowing machine adapted for wheelchair use.

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Now rowing is a part of her three times a week fitness routine that includes a sitting elliptical machine and hand weights.

Mintz’s therapist at the Ottawa Rehabilitation Centre had urged her to give Jack Purcell a try. Born with spina bifida, Mintz was recuperating from surgery for spinal stenosis, a pinching of the spinal column, that had gradually robbed her of her ability to walk.

“She said, ‘Angie, I think Jack Purcell would be a good place for you,’ ” Mintz recalled.

“I thought, ‘OK, I’ll try it,’ and so she brought me here — and I haven’t left!”

Robitaille was working a the Richcraft Recreation Complex in Kanata before the pandemic when he began wondering what gym equipment could be modified for wheelchair use. Rowing machines — “standard fitness equipment in every gym in the world,” he says — seemed like a good choice. The machines come in two parts, with a detachable rail where the rower sits on a sliding seat to work out. But what could you do if that rail was removed, he wondered.

Robitaille engaged some uOttawa engineering students to try to come up with a working design, but without success.

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“There was nothing successful for years,” he said. “That was the most challenging part. Each year, it was, ‘OK, let’s try this again with a new group of students.’ ”

COVID put plans on hold for a few years while Robitaille worked at city shelters, but as the pandemic waned, he tried again with new students.

“This time I was a little greedier. I know I want the students to learn things on their own, to make their own mistakes, but this time I was a little more suggestive about what I wanted.”

The students brought their own skills to the table, like welding and an understanding of materials. The turning point, Robitaille said, was when they came to the gym to speak to differently-abled clients.

“It was, ‘That needs analysis.’ ” Along with some subtle prompts by Robitaille — “Don’t forget this” and “Remember, it can’t be too heavy” — the group was finally able to “cross the finish line with something that was commercial-ready and not just a concept.”

The students, Etienne Borm, Alyssa Carter, Noah Cummings, Abdullah Ramadan and Rémi Thomas Richard, are in a second-year engineering design course. Working with a few hundred dollars of material at the uOttawa Makers Lab, they came up with an adaptor that snaps into place where the seat rail is, that can be adjusted for height and arm length, and is cushioned to protect the user from injury.

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Hanan Anis, director of the School of Engineering Design and Teaching Innovation, called the prototype “a testament to the ingenuity and problem-solving skills of our students.”

At Jack Purcell, it takes just seconds for Robitaille to remove the rail and attach the adaptor. Then Mintz zips her electric chair into position and begins to row. No assistance required.

“There’s not a lot of purely upper-body cardio equipment that someone in a wheelchair can use,” Robitaille said. “Think of elliptical machines, stairclimbers, treadmills — they’re all lower body.”

Even a normal rowing machine depends about 80 per cent on the legs. But with the adaptor in place, for Mintz, every day is “Arm Day.”

“Because of the gym, I’ve gained a lot more strength than I ever thought I would,” she said. “It’s been great. Just the atmosphere here is so great. I love coming here.

“It’s not just people telling me that they see an improvement. I see the improvement myself,” she said.

In practical terms, a stronger upper body means she’s better able to transfer in and out of her chair.

“I can do more things for myself,” she said. “When I transfer, people will say, ‘Angie, is the chair too far away?’ and I can say, ‘No it’s not. I can do it.’ ”

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For now, Jack Purcell is the only city recreation centre with the adaptor, but Robitaille hopes one day it could be put into production to help make other fitness centres more accessible to all. And he has new ideas for engineering students to work on next year — ideas that, for now, he’s keeping under wraps.

As for Mintz, she’s keeping to her thrice weekly visits to Jack Purcell. And she’s adding a new activity to her repertoire by taking classes in adaptive sailing at the Nepean Sailing Club.

“I’ve come to the place where I think nothing is impossible,” she says.

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