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

NCT07195526 | Completed

• 1 other identifier: DCC.2024.00080
• Study Type: interventional
• Target: 23
• Locations: 1 country
• Sites: 1

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.

Conditions

Balance Control in Elderly

Keywords

Balance control; bicycle balance; motor skill training; mobility

Outcome Measures

Primary Outcomes (1)

• Bicycle balance control skill and confidence

  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.

  Pretest: Between the second and the third week of June 2023 Posttest: First week of October 2023

Secondary Outcomes (1)

• One-minute functional threshold power (1minFTP)

  From the third week of June 2023 until the second week of August 2023

Study Arms (2)

Bicycle balance control training

EXPERIMENTAL

The intervention involveds 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 will be practiced on the bicycle simulator. In the bicycle simulator training, the difficulty of the balance control was increased gradually, slowly approaching the difficulty of bicycle balance control on the public roads.

Behavioral: Bicycle balance control training

Control group

NO INTERVENTION

The participants in the experimental group are matched to the participants in the control group. The control group participants are selected based on their distance from the location of the intervention; control group participants live farther away from the location of the intervention as compared to the experimental group.

Interventions

Bicycle balance control training BEHAVIORAL

The intervention 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.

Bicycle balance control training

Eligibility Criteria

• Sex: all
• Healthy Volunteers: No
• Age Groups: Child (0-17), Adult (18-64), Older Adult (65+)

You may qualify if:

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

You may not qualify if:

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

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Donders Centre for Cognitive Neuroimaging: lead

Study Sites (1)

Faculty of Social Sciences Research labs and Radboud University Sports Center

Nijmegen, 6500 HE, Netherlands

Location

Study Officials

• Eric Maris, PhD

  Donders Centre for Cognitive Neuroimaging

  PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR

Study Design

• Study Type: interventional
• Phase: not applicable
• Allocation: NON RANDOMIZED
• Masking: NONE
• Purpose: TREATMENT
• Intervention Model: PARALLEL
• Sponsor Type: OTHER
• Responsible Party: PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
• PI Title: Principal Investigator

Study Record Dates

• First Submitted: September 19, 2025
• First Posted: September 26, 2025
• Study Start: March 31, 2023
• Primary Completion: October 6, 2023
• Study Completion: October 6, 2023
• Last Updated: September 26, 2025

Record last verified: 2025-09

Data Sharing

• IPD Sharing: Will not share

Locations

NL (1)