Walking the walk without walking - Old guy adjustments

In walking with the fat Man a couple years ago I encountered a problem that mad walking hard for me. I slipped on the ice and did the splits like a cheerleader. Right before that every month or two I would take a fall. There's nothing new about that for me having cerebral palsy. But my knees ache all the time. After the splits, muscles tendons as well as a joints in the knees needed to heal. 

I had to develop a no-fall strategy. Since I never had one before, Having lived the life pushing the limits, this was difficult for me. How can I write a blog Walking with the Fatman? I don't know about you but for me hitting the wall takes some time to figure out. If you been following me for a while giving up is hard to do. So back to the drawing board.

In the overall two years of recovery I certainly lost my aerobic health. I was encouraged by my cardiologist to not give up, my heart was certainly up for it. That is the good news of all walking that I have had done.

While my body was improving I carried on with my fat man exercises of adopted push-ups, adopted dips, lunges, squats, heal raises and daily stretching.

I also discovered TRX suspension training, exercise tubes and dumbbells for strength training.

Barbara and I removed the carpeting in the lower level of our house and this reduced falling by quite a bit. When I am out and about especially if I'm going to do a carpeted place I will use my cane. When I am on uneven ground walking in a park I use my walking poles. I cannot a eliminate falling, but I sure got it done. My knees cannot take ground contact which is one of the reasons why I adopt so many exercises. My knees right now feel pretty good. (Knock on wood)

My indoor incumbent bike is a Godsend. There are three types of biking that I do. 1. I like to call walking the dog. Here and do 20 minutes rotating to stress in the first three levels just coasting along listening to a book. It sounds easier and it is. But it gets the blood moving, burns calories and it has all the benefits of a 20 minute walk at the end of the day. 2. I like to take my bike out of virtual bike trail, I can be listening two other things but as I bike I challenge myself with intensity in other levels and then bring it down to control my heart to stay in a healthy range. Like real biking sometimes it's easy and other times you're going up hill or you're trying to increase your speed. This is a good aerobic workout. 3. Here I use my recumbent bike to join in spin classes. The differences their bikes and my bikes are different, but I try to keep the same cadence when I can. Here I'm not listening to anything else about the class. This is very aerobic activity. One more adjustment I keep my heart rate within limits that my cardiologist is set. 

I think this is a very important principle that I have learned in exercising as we get older. We have to know our bodies and do things that work for us. We can still push the envelope but we don't have to do it like we did when we're younger. I encourage everybody to be on the same page as the competent Health providers on your team counsel you. We were made to move so don't give up.

Right now I am also developing exercise classes or activities to expand my interest and challenge my development. I have explored shadowboxing, senior workouts, desk workouts, dumbbell workouts, and just this week I am been doing seven minute workout on a app. I actually found jumping jacks to be quite a challenge. I was awful at them, but I think I will be able to improve. I will let you know how that works. Keep walking

Cool site to learn TRX, band and dumbbell exercises 

http://traininghomeandaway.com