Laura Hall looked around the myriad of athletic equipment in motion at IM Sports-West's fitness center Saturday afternoon.
The second-year social work graduate student, who uses a wheelchair, had never exercised using the center's facilities before.
"I never thought they were accessible," she said. "I look around, and I don't see a whole lot that I can do."
Hall was at IM West this past weekend to help three of a group of four biosystems engineering seniors brainstorm ideas on how to make the arm ergometer, more commonly known as a hand-cycle machine, more accessible for people with physical disabilities as part of a senior engineering project.
The machine is most often found in rehabilitation settings and is a great cardiovascular exercise, said Luke Kane, a personal trainer at IM West.
"It's like biking for your upper body," he said.
Erin Robertson, a member of the group, said all engineering students have to work on a student project to apply what they have learned over the course of their college careers.
Robertson and fellow group members Eric Keller, Natalie Finkbeiner and Chad Sneller chose this particular project after deciding they wanted to focus on an innovation in the biomedical field.
The students teamed up with the MSU Resource Center for Persons with Disabilities and Jim Renuk, the IM Sports coordinator, after blindness and vision impairment mobility specialist Virginia Martz suggested designing a system that would allow wheelchair users to use the hand-cycle machine.
"We were toying with the idea of making one machine with a bunch of (accessible equipment) with it, but we only have one semester to do it," Robertson said.
The students constructed a small wood ramp that would allow a wheelchair to roll up to the machine without hitting the wheelchair's battery pack, which is located on the underside of many chairs.
That was just one of the improvements the group would work on for the machine, Robertson said.
"Different chairs have different problems," she said. "(Hall's) armrests move, but most don't. Part of the machine can obstruct the knees. It's hard to get started, even on lowest resistance.
"There's just a whole bunch of factors."
Patty Oehmke, assistant director at the IM facility, said the fitness center has a number of options for those with physical disabilities.
"There is an eight-station cable cross-over machine that can accommodate users," Oehmke said in an e-mail. "Some of the stations can be used from a wheelchair. There are several free weight machines that (paraplegics) and (quadriplegics) can use.
"If a person is able to transfer from their chair, there are more options," she added. "Due to extensive liability concerns, we are unable to alter or modify the equipment."
Robertson said the process of designing an accessible hand-cycle machine might take several years.
Hall said she would like to use the IM facility more in the future if it becomes more accessible.
"I would really like to (use the IM facility)," she said. "That's why I'm so interested in what (the group is) doing."
