When you start to use our walking and running equipment, it may happen that you get sore muscles, sore skin or blisters on your feet.
All activity is hard on an untrained body and brain. However it is fantastic how quickly progress is made and a feel good mind is established.
Yes, you may crash if you are not sensible and run risks! Part of the challenge is to adapt force, speed and maneuvering to the terrain and circumstances.
Yes, you may get blisters on the feet and get soar buttocks! Good shoes, socks and bike shorts with good padding are a good help to avoid skin problems. When you are active and rub the skin, bike creme helps protect the skin. If skin get soar Helosan creme for the night is really good – but only once in a while – otherwise use a non antiseptic, non steroid creme.
How to avoid skin problem
Many of our users are not used to intensive physical exercise. They encounter skin problems faster than others and may be slow to feel the first signs of discomfort because of the excitement of being able to run.
Here are some good advice regarding how to reduce pressure on crotch/genitals, and to protect your skin:
- Increase training gradually. Increase running little by little for the skin to get more robust and check skin after training.
- Use bike shorts: with padding. Jeans are okay for a short stroll, but not for real training.
- Use bike creme to protect the skin. When your skin rubs against the saddle or your clothes it might get red and sore. Creme helps..
- Try other kinds of saddles. Saddles come in many shapes and materials – find the one that suits you – for example a unicycle saddle.
- Stay clean and dry. Use the toilet right before and after training.
- Run upright. Try to position yourself in a upright position by positioning the saddle closer to the chest plate and maybe raising the plate a little. Aim for a 95-105 degree angle between plate and saddle.
- If resting on chest plate in a very forward position the saddle the saddle may be pulled up and angled to allow a longer stride and less pressure in the pubic ares.
- Adjust saddle height. The right saddle height is important to avoid rubbing from side to side or forward and back.
- Do not sit too hard on the saddle: pull the body up on the chest plate and stand on your legs a bit more.
As much as we encourage activity, it is also important to remember that some users have weak sensory feedback to the brain or they get tired much faster than others. Therefor the care/assistant sense before the user his/hers discomfort, pain or fatigue. It is OK that it is time to change to wheelchair/resting chair. It is better with two small walks a day that 1 longer ride being passive most of the way!
It is also better to intensify training activity really little by little and give good time for recovery to give the body time to cope with the workload and to rest and get stronger.
Finally remember that many severely handicapped persons will need more time to recover between training sessions and also rest time within the training sessions -than other able bodied persons would need.