How to Exercise with Limited Mobility

By Emily Buchanan
If injury, disability or age have affected your mobility, exercise is more important than ever. Whilst it’s easy to overlook the everyday activities that full mobility allows, be that a brisk walk to the corner shop or a good spring clean, these tasks can be hugely beneficial to an individual’s health and general wellbeing. After all, think of all the endorphins that are released during exercise. These hormones are the body’s opioids, lifting the mood, boosting self-esteem and triggering a sense of euphoria.

Depression is common in people who suffer from mobility issues. The daily battle between a flawed body and an unflawed mind can be maddening so it’s very important to address a low mood quickly, before it escalates. And what better way to stay in shape and improve your disposition than to exercise?

But, if you have a disability, a severe weight problem, a chronic breathing condition or any other ongoing health problem that might limit your movements, what’s the best way to keep active?
First things first, don’t push yourself to achieve the impossible. You need to accept what your body is capable of and exercise accordingly. Any attempts to do otherwise could result in serious injury, worsening the situation and perhaps reducing your mobility even further. Therefore, be sensible and consult your doctor before you try any of the following, particularly if you’ve been recently diagnosed or are unsure of your condition.

Simple Chair Exercises

If you’re suffering from a lower body injury or a disability that requires full-time wheelchair use, chair exercises are ideal. However, they are by no means exclusive to wheelchair-users. If you’re overweight, diabetic or trying to improve your confidence after a nasty fall, these tips might also be useful. These chair exercises can help reduce back pain, improve posture and alleviate sores. What’s more, you can do it whilst watching the television!

TIP: If you don’t already own one, choose a wheelchair that keeps your knees at a right angle when seated. If buying a new or second-hand wheelchair, it’s a good idea to insure it against damage, just in case something should happen whilst operating it. To make sure that it doesn’t, always, always apply the brakes when exercising.

Exercise Video for People with Intellectual or Physical Disabilities

For a more intensive workout, check out this 11 minute Cardio Chair Session.

Aquatic Workouts

The amazing thing about exercising in water is that it’s low-impact, low-cost and highly effective. If you suffer from joint pain, arthritis or swelling in the legs and ankles, a dip in the pool will cushion fragile bones. Plus, swimming is particularly forgiving to those who are overweight – the average person only bears 10% of their overall weight when submerged up to the neck in water. There are so many exercises that can be done, including water aerobics, resistance running, treading water and of course the traditional swimming of laps.

TIP: Be sure to invest in a good pair of goggles and a swimming costume that you’re comfortable in. For a lot of people, one of the main drawbacks of regular swimming is the distinct lack of clothes that it requires. However, these days there’s a huge variety of figure appropriate items for sale, so don’t feel like you have to wear something you don’t want to.

3 Aquatic Cardio Exercises

Adaptive Yoga

Anyone familiar with yoga will be aware of the flexibility and balance this type of exercise requires. If you have limited mobility or use a wheelchair fulltime, yoga might seem like an impossible task. However, the proliferation of adaptive yoga classes (also known was Whoga – wheelchair yoga) has meant that specialist groups are popping up all over the place, particularly in and around cities. Provided you have the means to get there, these classes can improve agility, strength, poise, and stamina. In addition, many people who practice yoga say that it reduces anxiety and stress, improves mental clarity, and even helps them sleep better.

Yoga can be beneficial for individuals with disabilities or chronic health conditions through both the physical postures and breathing. What’s more, each pose can be modified or adapted to meet the needs of the individual and a trained teacher will show you how to make the most of your condition.
Alternatively, if there isn’t an adaptive yoga class near you, why not try these simple stretches at home?
TIP: For a more comprehensive understanding of breathing techniques, check out this video before attempting any yoga moves. Proper breathing practices are as -if not more- important than the exercise itself, so it’s good to get this down before you start attempting the downward facing dog.

About the Author: Emily Buchanan is a writer living in Norwich, UK. She’s passionate about the environment, education and disability rights, which are the subjects you’ll find her mostly writing/ranting about. Follow Emily on Twitter for the latest.

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Techniques Used To Improve Your memory

As with the regular human tools of our mind, the more we practice with these tools, the more they will be effective in using them. Without practice and effort, one cannot have a good memory. Even though one does not have the time required to develop the quality of memory, most of our techniques are very useful in everyday living.

1. Mnemonics

One popular tool to improve the memory is mnemonics which are techniques to remember information that are very hard to recall. The general idea in using mnemonics is to instill hard-to-recall-information in a way that they can easily be remembered.

Our brains are very complex that they can encode and interpret sophisticated data such as colors, images, sound, tastes, positions, and language. These stimuli are used to create a visual image of our world and our memories are used to store these images.

1. Pictures - you can use microphone to recall your friend mike or wind for Wendy. Always use positive images because the brain tends to block unpleasant images

2. Words. You can use words that start with the first letter of each word that can represent the initial of what you want to recall. Musicians usually recall the lines of a staff E, G, B, D, and F by memorizing the words "Every good boy does fine."

3. Acronyms. These are initials that can create words. Musicians recall the spaces in a treble staff by memorizing the word FACE.

4. Rhymes. Most of us have learned that 30 days hath September, April, June and November.

5. Humor. By giving exaggerated symbols to associate facts and figures can be pleasing to brain coding because it is funny and it will be easier to remember.

2. Roman Room System

Roman Room System - this technique is usually employed in learning a new foreign language. You can easily learn words while visiting a town with common things that you can see. You can learn new nouns if you can visit the town square and try to be familiarized with the counterpart of common names.

3. The Peg Word System

The peg word system is used to help a person to remember a list in a specific sequence. However, before you can do this, you need to memorize a roster list of peg words. Generally, there are two major ways to do this. Take a closer study of these methods first, and then choose which one you want to use. Alternatively you can use a little bit of imagination and use both methods. The first method is very easy that anyone can use it. Just use numbers 0 to 10 and relate rhyming words with each of these digits.

The best method is to recall words for all numbers pegged from 0 to 99 using another system, the number alphabet. This will greatly help you to form a relation without having to recall a laborious array relation with number rhymes. Alternatively, if you can use peg words, you are ensured to get the right number by using consonant and transforming them to numbers. A longer list is more effective because you will avoid excessive recycling, thus your brain will be less likely to be confused.

But, it will take a longer time for you to memorize. However, once you recalled the peg words, you will be benefited by the list permanently, and you don't need to recall them ever again.

Built For Life: Motto for a New You

Built for Life.” Kind of an interesting title, if you think about it, because it has two meanings. The first is staying in attention-grabbing muscular shape for as long as you’re alive and able to exercise—you will remain “built” your entire life, never embarrassed to peel off your shirt at the beach, lake or pool. And as my colleague 60-plus-year-old bodybuilder Tony DiCosta so aptly put it, “You’ll usually be the best built guy in the room.” (Talk about a conversation piece!)

The second meaning is that you’re mentally and physically tough, prepared for whatever life throws at you. You’re “built” to withstand the stress, pressures and problems that come your way throughout your time on this planet—almost like you’ve created a bulletproof mental and physical fortress, able to deflect any negatives, that attitude-altering artillery shot at all of us every day.

Proper weight training can give you both of those—and contrary to popular belief, it doesn’t take joint-busting, spine-crushing poundage to make it happen.

In fact, training with max weights can be a negative, especially as you get older. Sure, if you’re a young ego-driven dude looking for a monster bench press, training heavy is where it’s at. Low reps and lots of sets will build your strength to the extreme—but not necessarily lots of muscle, as I’ll explain in future blogs—just be careful. There’s a cumulative cost. I’m still dealing with injuries I sustained during my powerlifting years.

I’m not saying powerlifting or power bodybuilding are bad training models—just that throwing around mega weights is NOT necessary for you to build an impressive bodybuilder-type physique, a body so muscular that people comment on the size of your arms or the width of your back or the vascularity streaking down your forearms. You can have a muscular look for a lifetime, and it doesn’t take soft-tissue damage or as much work as you think—if you train smart.

Whether you’re 18 (that’s Jonathan Lawson, my former training partner, in his 20s in the photo above with us) and just starting the muscle-building journey or a 50-something trainee who’s been lifting for decades (like me), lifting smart means training in the most efficient, safest and fastest ways to build muscle and burn fat.

I promise you that Old School New Body is a no-B.S. program—that’s because my sole goal is for you to have all the ammunition you need to own a physique that turns heads and raises eyebrows  and one that supports your health and well being. I want you to be able to keep that attention-grabbing, muscular look—and feel healthy doing it—for the rest of your days.

Stay tuned, train smart and be Built For Life.

Steve Holman

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