I have no updates about progress on my wheelchair order (I might have more news later today) but I’m making some changes to my exercise routine and I ought to write about that. My first attempts ranged from haphazard to potentially lethal, so I know I’m in the right ballpark.
The main issue is that since I can’t use my legs properly, and can’t gain any leverage using my legs, they are difficult to exercise. But exercise is good for them and for the rest of me. It might conceivably help bring back some function in my upper legs. Exercise has certainly increased my stamina and balance. But since I have received no physiotherapy at all due to COVID, I’m having to make it up as I go along.
The short story is that I’m trying to use my weight bench to do squats (or, rather, sissy-squats). It has a seat built in partly for that very purpose. I can’t stand up at all without taking most of my weight on my arms, so the trick is to:
- try not to use my arms too much and take as much weight as I can manage on my legs,
- keep my back straight and pull with my abs, and
- try not to let my arms slip, fall over and kill myself
It was mostly point 3 that caused me difficulty this morning and there was a certain amount of being killed. I need to contrive a wider bar to hold onto, rather than the narrow seat back of the…. squat…thing. The annoying part is that if I could stand properly and use heavy tools in the first place, I could make the equipment I need to exercise because I can’t do those things. I can weld, I can make stuff.. And I have some designs in mind… I know people who have the right tools… We’ll see, I might rope in some friends to help me build something. I’d advise them to stand well clear when I’m tottering around using an angle grinder with one hand, though.
As an encore, I tried to lift a barbell while standing. I can not emphasise enough how bad an idea this was.
For now, I’m going to stick to my under-desk elliptical trainer, which I can manage for short periods of time by using what feels like all the wrong muscles, but which exhausts me very quickly. In the meantime, I’ll try to work out a slightly less lethal way to do squats without dangerously using power tools to build something even the A Team wouldn’t dare to go near.