Getting Seniors Back on Their Bicycle; a Pretest-posttest Case-control Study on the Improvement of Bicycle Balance Control

Not Applicable

Completed

• Conditions: Balance Control in Elderly

• Registration Number: NCT07195526
• Lead Sponsor: Donders Centre for Cognitive Neuroimaging

Brief Summary

This study investigates the effectiveness of an intervention that aims at restoring bicycle balance control skills in seniors that have quit cycling. The intervention will last 11 weeks and involves three components: (1) training on an exercise bicycle, (2) a balance control training on a bicycle simulator, and (3) cycling on the public roads with a safe start-and-stop technique that was practiced on the bicycle simulator. In the bicycle simulator training, the difficulty of the balance control will be increased gradually, slowly approaching the difficulty of bicycle balance control on the public roads.

Detailed Description

Not available

Study Timeline

• Study Start: 2023-03-31
• Primary Completion: 2023-10-06
• Study Completion: 2023-10-06
• Status Verified: 2025-09
• Study First Submitted: 2025-09-19
• Study First Submitted QC: 2025-09-19
• Last Update Submitted: 2025-09-19
• Study First Posted: 2025-09-26
• Last Update Posted: 2025-09-26

Recruitment & Eligibility

• Status: COMPLETED
• Sex: All
• Target Recruitment: 23

Inclusion Criteria

• Persons that stopped cycling at least six months ago and want to get back on their bicycle.

Exclusion Criteria

• Balance-relevant sensory disorders (peripheral neuropathy, labyrinthitis, vestibular neuritis, …)

Study & Design

• Study Type: INTERVENTIONAL
• Study Design: PARALLEL

Primary Outcome Measures

Name	Time	Method
Bicycle balance control skill and confidence	Pretest: Between the second and the third week of June 2023 Posttest: First week of October 2023	This outcome variable will be obtained from a questionnaire that evaluates participants' bicycle BC skills and confidence while riding on the public roads. For each of three environments (without traffic, little traffic, busy traffic), participants must indicate what applies to them: (1) "I did not ride my bicycle here", (2) "I rode my bicycle here, but I try to avoid it", and (3) "I rode my bicycle here without problems". The answers to every question/environment were converted into a score by assigning 0, 1, and 2 points to the respective options. Summing these scores over the three questions/environments results in a number between 0 and 6, which is the outcome variable.

Secondary Outcome Measures

Name	Time	Method
One-minute functional threshold power (1minFTP)	From the third week of June 2023 until the second week of August 2023	The 1minFTP is the highest power a participant can maintain for one minute while cycling at 60 revolutions per minute (RPM). The 1minFTP was assessed by having participants monitor their breath after a one-minute effort at some power level: if the participant can say only a few words at a time (a proxy for reaching the ventilatory threshold), the 1minFTP is reached.

Trial Locations

Locations (1)

Faculty of Social Sciences Research labs and Radboud University Sports Center; 🇳🇱 Nijmegen, Netherlands