Light exercise I can do at home?

fishiewishes

I could really use some advice guys - I used to be fairly active, would try and walk 3miles a day minimum, went swimming three times a week and went gym once a week. However, in August I slipped and fell down a flight of stairs straining my left knee and right ankle in the process. My ankle is constantly in pain when I walk and if I have to bend down or get up from a chair my knee is in a lot of pain. I am taking painkillers and I have been referred for physiotherapy but this is not scheduled to start until late November.

Now, the ankle and knee issue kinda rule out the amount of walking I did as sometimes going up the stairs is enough to put me in pain - on good days I try and walk at least 30minutes during the quieter parts of the day and wear headphones to block out external noises. "But why stop the swimming?!" I hear you ask! I continued with the swimming for a few weeks but then my actual disability decided to kick in and it's getting worse for me - I suffer with NEAD (http://www.neadtrust.co.uk) and have epileptic like seizures with no warning. These are normally triggered by things such as sudden noises, loud garbled noises (such as multiple people talking at once - Ive been set off just from a group of three friends talking like this before), crowds, being touched without warning (even just a small bump)... interesting stuff which is hard to avoid in public, especially in a swimming pool. My anti anxiety medication is no longer helping and I've been getting very severe NEAD attacks in recent weeks with several trips to A+E due to falling while doing groceries and Christmas shopping. So obviously I can no longer go swimming.

Is there anything people can suggest for light exercise I can do at home that won't put too much strain on my ankle or knee? Even if its just something I can do for 5 minutes a day to try and stay fit.

melaniecheeks

Oh my, I do hope you're on teh road to recovery!

How about some seated arm exercises - biceps curls or triceps extensions behind your ehad?

LanaeCarol

Seems like you should be able to do lots of seated things. It would be heavy on the arm work - punching, curls, bent over triceps lifts, etc. Maybe you could even find workouts you could do on YouTube. It looks like you should be able to do some body weight exercises to and some crunches.

tinamartinson

Search "seated exercises", "chair exercises" or "chair boxing". There are a lot of ideas out there.

I wish you luck in your recovery!

sgarrard01

I'm not sure i'm the best person to answer this (and i dont meant to take the p, so please dont take offence), but how about exersizes for the elderly which are based on sitting down moves, or see if you can speak to a physio through your doctor that specilises in people with weelchairs, may be worth seeing if theres some information on-line. Lets be honest there are some incredably fit wheelchair users out there (just look at the paralympics)!

For the swimming, i dont know if the touching part is more of the problem, but im sure the loud noises is.... would an underwater MP3 player help so you could block out the noise? If not there's may also be aquarobics classes at your gym which would take the preassure of your knee, and is usually in the kiddies pool (and with an instructor), so if there is a problem its can be dealt with..... or take a friend

Also, given my hobby (see photo), have you thought about taking up scuba diving.... on a days diving i can burn up to 600kcal in an hours dive!...Its as peaceful as you can get underwater, and can be done in controlled enviroments such as swimming pools with more than one instructor... I've worked with people with disabilities before scuba diving and you can get all of the kit on in the water to save knee trouble!

Hope that helps

Simon x