By Junhyuk Youn
June 7, 2026 · 3 min readA New York veterans' lab that once measured whether amputees could walk again now sharpens their golf swings and marathon strides, pivoting prosthetic research from basic mobility toward competitive athletic performance.
The pivot reflects how prosthetic care now borrows from sports science and engineering, a convergence poised to reshape Paralympic training and the standards clinicians use to fit artificial limbs.
VA researchers opened the Manhattan facility in 2010, naming it Biomechanics Research for the Advancement of Veteran Outcomes, or BRAVO, to replace anecdotal fittings with hard measurements.
Director Jason Maikos, a biomedical engineer, runs a seven-person crew of scientists, therapists, and technicians who study how veterans move on different prosthetic feet, knees, and sockets.
Before such tools arrived, prosthetists often judged a fitting by simply watching a patient walk, leaning on instinct more than data.
The lab's motion-capture system borrows the rigs that animate films and video games, with 11 cameras tracking 78 reflective markers across a veteran's body.
Four force plates set into the floor, two capped with glass so cameras can film from below, measure the push of every footfall against the ground.
Together, the cameras and plates convert each stride into a moving digital skeleton, exposing the wasted motion and uneven loading that wear down a residual limb.
Maikos' team pushes further with dynamic stereo X-ray, a technique that films bone shifting inside the socket itself, something surface markers can never reveal.
A peer-reviewed analysis of the method puts its precision near 0.1 millimeter and half a degree, sharp enough to expose socket designs that let the bone drift.
Biomedical engineer John Chomack now applies the imaging to nearly two dozen veterans and civilians, a step a recent profile frames as the path toward everyday clinical use.
The science feeds an adaptive sports program that has carried veterans through handcycle marathons, rowing regattas, and first golf lessons.
One participant, a double amputee left mostly blind on active duty, rebuilt his swing with the team so he could keep golfing through his thirties with far less pain.
Cesar Jimenez, a 77-year-old Vietnam veteran who lost a leg to machine-gun fire, credits the lab for tuning the feet he wears while training for the Boston Marathon.
The facility draws aging veterans of Vietnam and Korea alongside younger amputees from Iraq and Afghanistan.
William Alvarez, an 80-year-old Purple Heart recipient, rows competitively after the team built him flexing feet that let his ankles drive each oar stroke.
Another client, a professional wrestler who lost a leg after the September 11 attacks, walks on a microprocessor knee that catches a stumble before it becomes a fall.
Research engineer David Herlihy extends that customization with 3D printing, producing controller adapters that let a veteran with one working arm operate a video-game pad single-handed, part of a wider shift toward personalized devices.
That same printing trims device production from weeks to days, letting engineers retune a part after a single training session.
The hardware carries a steep price, with one computerized knee running about $35,000, yet VA clinicians prescribe it whenever medical need rather than athletic ambition justifies the cost.
Engineers across the field increasingly treat artificial limbs less as medical hardware and more as tunable athletic gear, matched to one sport rather than to general walking.
The approach edges adaptive sport toward the data-driven training long standard in Olympic programs, where coaches tune technique by the millimeter.
Maikos calls the lab's potential limitless, and its next studies will test whether motion data can predict which limb suits which athlete before a race ever starts.
