Background and purpose: Impaired sitting balance in people with spinal cord injury is related to defective motor performance. For individuals with paraplegia, most functional activities, such as eating, dressing, and transferring, is performed in a seated position. Thus ability to balance while reaching a variety of objects both within and beyond arm’s length is critical to independent living. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effect of long reach balance training and short reach balance training and to compare these training programs to see how these affect the functional performance of spinal cord injury patients.Methods: 30 subjects with low thoracic spinal cord injury were recruited into two groups randomly. Group one participated in long reach balance training and group two participated in short reach balance training. Functional performance of these patients was measured using seven items of the Spinal Cord Independence Measure including dressing, mobility in bed, transfers-bed to wheelchair, transfers-wheelchair to toilet tub, mobility indoors, mobility moderate distances, mobility outdoors. Modified Functional Reach Test scores for both the groups were also taken prior and after the training. Results: After training both the groups showed significant improvement in all the seven items of Spinal Cord Independence Measure and also significant improvement in Modified Functional Reach Test. Long reach balance training group was found to be better in improving dressing, mobility in bed, mobility outdoors and modified functional reach test score. In other four items of Spinal Cord Independence Measure both groups were found to be equally effective.Conclusion: This study provides evidence that both the training programs are effective in improving functional performance of patients with spinal cord injury. For improvement in dressing, mobility in bed and mobility outdoors long reach balance training is more effective.

Keywords: Sitting Balance, Long Reach Balance Training, Short Reach Balance Training