Exercise After Spinal Cord Injury: How to Adapt Equipment

[Music] access to exercise and people spinal cord injury is something that's always on our radar and that not all gyms are designed for people with spinal cord injury in mind that being said there are a lot of pieces of equipment that we can use in a typical gym so many people with spinal cord injuries may have difficulty with hand function so grip during exercise is an important consideration so you might use adaptations like using things really inexpensive would be things like a tensor band they're also commercially available grip assistance gloves that you can purchase answer bandages readily available you can find one at you know your local drugstore they're very inexpensive one of the ways that we can use a tensor bandage to assist with grip let's say for example we're using an arm or domitor you can wrap the dancer while the individual is gripping the bar I probably use the monarch that I recycle the most that I pretty much every time I come into at least almost 40 minutes that's my cardio because I've been I'm in the chair and plus I'm not pushing myself I have a power chair so make sure I get at least that to help stabilize the chair I might take things like free weights or blocks and wedge them at the front of the wheels as well as the back of the wheel is to keep the chair in place the race toque is really nice because it's art if available in most gyms but particularly useful if you're doing any sort of exercise with a bar perhaps if you're doing a single arm row with a handle attachment that also works with the the wrist hooks as well the chest straps can be helpful when exercising with an STI to help stabilize especially if an individual doesn't have that core stability for example oh for pulling a pulley we're not worried about the body pulling forward as at the same time the chest strap there can help stabilize and allow the individual to do the exercises it's meant to be done what's nice about the gripping gloves is you're a little easier and more fluid to transfer from machine to machine one important disadvantage to the Gripen gloves that can be expensive there are about $200 for a set of two the active hands and the weight lifting hooks would I would use primarily for exercises like rows where I'm pulling back and my grip is certainly compromised in that way I've just gone on it and bought my own just so I have use of them whenever I want and can get used to my own block similar to how we're using yoga is to help stabilize different postures perhaps we're having difficulty with the legs playing too far out so you might want to add the block to the side of the leg to help them in the lower body stay more secure when we're doing our exercises I'm not going to say posture is a problem that's particularly to just people with spinal cord injury but typically we do see a sort of rounding of the shoulders forward so postural ooh we're thinking about providing those cues to sit upright keep the shoulders down and back or some important postural cues that we provided you know another thing to consider with exercising with the spinal injury is that you don't have to go to a fancy gym there are a lot of things that you can do right at home for example doing things like resistance band exercises at home relatively inexpensive pieces of equipment you can do just about any exercise with you know come to a gym where you know you're gonna be comfortable you can be able to workout you know people that can help you they're both just accessing machines and even with knowledge on on exercise is that's invaluable

Channel: SCIRE

Views: 9,165

Keywords: spinal cord injury, exercise, adaptations, gym equipment, grip, hand wraps, hooks, fitness, SCIRE, SCI, exercise adaptations, tetraplegic, quadriplegic

Id: k7vTlHzYoug

Length: 3min 41sec (221 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 06 2020