Understanding the mechanics of success

In this way, the coaches could identify weaknesses and help them make adjustments accordingly.

This kind of exploration covered all six sports at the Beijing Winter Paralympics and accounted for Team China's breakthrough on the medal table, compared to its performance at the Winter Paralympic Games in 2018 in Pyeongchang, South Korea, where it won its first medal-wheelchair curling gold-since the country's first attendance at a Winter Paralympics in 2002.

"We consider the athletes' physical and psychological conditions. We work with care," Ji says.

Researchers in his team spent plenty of time with the athletes, applying digital methods to monitor their body condition and training load, making sure they didn't overtrain.

Via meticulous observation, they found some amputee athletes were not very sensitive to body temperature while training outdoors. By the time they began to feel the cold, they might already be injured.

In response to this, the researchers developed a graphene-based electrical heating garment with thermal insulation materials to help the athletes maintain their body temperature at optimum levels and prevent them from getting too cold.

Sometimes, the Paralympians suffered from soreness in their back and lumbar region, or were unable to keep their body balanced when in action, even though they were not injured.

Ji and his colleagues figured out that it was because, with their physical challenges, only some of their muscles could be exercised effectively.

In particular, athletes with unilateral amputations are accustomed to using the strength of only one side of their bodies and are, as a result, prone to asymmetrical core muscle strength. If left uncorrected, it can lead to secondary damage in the longer term.

Therefore, researchers developed specific training equipment and experimented with different possible ways to help the athletes exercise the parts of the body that required the extra work to restore balance.