- Hi, Bob Schrupp, physical therapist.
- Brad Heineck, physical therapist.
- And together we are the most famous
physical therapists on the internet.
- In our opinion. - In our opinion.
- So Bob, today we've got
a real important subject to talk about
and that's an assistive device,
or a walker,
and how to choose and how to use a walker properly
and safely.
So you get the right walker and you can do it safely.
- And quite often you're not choosing it for yourself.
- Yeah. - But I would say this,
I mean, our videos are geared towards those people
are 40 and over, but yet,
I would say a lot of people who are watching
are our age, 40, 50 years old.
And they're probably choosing for their parents
which both Brad and I have been doing lately.
- Right.
- And in fact, my in-laws too,
both of them are using gate aids,
and you want to use the right one
because if you choose the wrong one
there's a good chance that they're gonna fall.
And as I always tell my mom, you know,
there's the old saying,
pride comes before the fall
and it's never so true with walkers.
And if you're too prideful to use a walker,
we're gonna probably find you on the floor.
- Exactly.
- So...
- First of all, if you're gonna get a walk,
and you don't know if you need one
or if your parent needs one,
I really think the best thing to do
is almost basically see a therapist-
- Yeah, and have a balance test.
- And have a balance test on you.
They can guide you in the right direction
but there's a number of things you may not always get.
And some reminders are
what did that therapist say about the height of it?
Or, or putting wheels in the right location?
Whatever.
So this video is gonna help you
remind you of everything you couldn't remember
or should have remembered.
And some new things that you didn't know.
So a wheel walker, you decide that you need a walker,
some of the therapists suggest, "get a wheel walker."
- I would say we generally like wheeled walkers
better than standard walkers.
- Yeah.
- A standard walker's just a walker
with four legs and no wheels.
- Right.
- And the problem with those is
that first off you gotta pick 'em up.
And every time you pick 'em up-
- You gotta lift.
- There's a chance you could lose your balance.
- Right.
- I mean, you know, Brad, if you lift it up once,
show 'em how you can start falling.
- Oh yeah. Well, yeah.
Whoa! - Yeah, there we go!
- Yeah, I can't do a fall with that, Bob.
I gotta work that a little bit diff-
But a lot of times they,
people go like this and they walk through with the walker.
There are some instances
where standard ones are are useful,
but 90% of the time, it's a wheel walker.
- Yeah, if you have to-
If you can't take weight on one of your limbs,
it might be one of the...
You might wanna use a standard walker.
The thing that I hear about wheeled walkers,
especially the with the wheels on the front,
the vast majority of people
think that they're gonna roll away on it.
- Right. And they don't.
- These are fairly stable walkers.
I mean, they...
I've just never seen anybody, where the walker
just started rolling away on 'em, it just-
- And the reason is when you put weight on the back-
- It acts as a little brake.
- Yep, they brake, the more weight you put,
the more brake there is on there.
The resistance there works out just fine.
- Right. Why don't we talk about the height, Brad?
- Okay. Height?
Put the walker here,
have the person use it stand up and good posture.
Let them, let their arms hang down.
And right here, the handle should go
right at the crease of the wrist.
So here.
So if you're looking down here, if it's like this,
that means a walker needs to be lowered.
If the person that can't reach there-
- Then it needs to be raised up.
- So how you raise them?
That's the next question.
By the way, there's some latitude in that too.
I mean, generally about the risk
but we always go by people, their comfort level too.
- Yeah. You can go up or down a little bit.
- A little bit.
- That's a rule of thumb.
Right here, that's all that you do.
There's always numbers.
Almost always, anyways numbers with a thumb button there.
You just push it in. You can hear it click in.
You make sure all of 'em are at the same height.
So this one here is at eight.
I'm gonna put this one at eight and all the way around.
And you do that on all four.
Sometimes I see walkers
where they only adjust two in the walkers.
- Right.
- Tilted like this.
Don't do that, make sure they're level.
- Actually, and quite often the buttons,
may be a little bit different on the front and the back.
- Yeah. - Because of the wheels.
- I mean...
You can explain that a little better, but...
- Well, you know, if you do have a standard walker
with four legs without wheels,
well, can you order some wheels?
It'll cost you about 30 to 40 dollars,
I recommend the five-inch wheels,
not the two or three-inch.
- Right, don't get the small ones.
They just don't run well - No, no.
- over carpet or anything rough at all.
- Yeah. Just don't even don't bother.
- And these walkers, by the way,
do well, work well on carpet.
- Oh yeah.
- I mean, they, they glide along.
- Yeah.
So you just take it off, you take off the standard foot
and then you put on the wheel foot, if you will.
Now, this is a nice clue that I give to a lot of people.
So listen up close on this one.
Okay.
If you look at the width of these wheels,
when you go through doorways,
particularly into the bathroom, the bedroom,
and you go through,
they tend to bump here on your woodwork
and that puts you at risk for fall
kind of catches the walker,
plus it mars up the woodwork.
So I always just say,
take the wheels and put 'em on the inside
instead of the outside.
And don't start, you know,
if you're really ambitious you see the nut there,
go, just go get the wrenches and we'll put the,
take this wheel off, put it over there.
Too much work, just go like this and switch around.
And it works real nice.
And you put the wheels to the inside.
It gives you about two and a half inch less distance there.
And there we go, I've got this.
- Yeah, you're a little bit off there.
- Yeah.
And there you go, it narrows it up considerably.
Okay? And that works out well.
I do that with a lot of people in their home
and they really appreciate getting around the doorways
a little easier with that.
- Now the other thing is you can get attachments
for the walker too, like a basket,
or some people can even put their-
Attach their oxygen,
especially a smaller oxygen tank on these.
And it makes it very handy for, you know,
the person who isn't very stable
but wants to carry their kitchen utensils from, you know,
the kitchen to their dining room table or whatever.
You know, and wanna keep their hands free for walking.
- If you google "walker accessories,"
they're gonna come up.
There's also tray tables that fold up to here.
You can put a meal on there, your coffee,
there's a place for that.
And then they fold down out of the way.
A cage...
Like Bob was saying,
a lot of people make their own knitted...
- A knitted basket, yeah.
- They put the phone in there, there's, you know,
their cell phone or whatever they may be.
And they use that to carry things around.
- Let's talk about the back of the walker, Brad.
What helps it glide along?
- Right. Okay, can you go down here, Nancy?
We're looking at these.
Now, I call these skis.
The little nylon plastic boots or skis.
They put on the bottom of the walker,
and they work really well on carpet right here.
You can see it glide right along!
Now, if I go over here,
I might have to zoom down a little bit,
they go fairly good on a normally smooth surface.
But if you hear, when you catch a little piece of dirt,
that dirt gets caught in the plastic
and it puts a nice scratch
and it squeaks and makes noise, and it's very irritable.
So I don't like these skis.
If the person has hard floors,
or actually, in a couple of facilities or that
if we're caught with these on,
the maintenance people get really upset
because it's scratching their floors, so...
- What I also found is when people take these outside
and they'll start to scratch up that ski,
- Yeah.
- And so the ski becomes roughened itself.
- Yeah.
- And then when it goes on the smooth floor,
it scratches it up too.
So yeah, the skis generally are not an answer,
to be honest with ya.
- Right, the time I really recommend skis
is if they like this walker
and they want to use it outside a lot,
and they don't wear down so fast.
- Right. Cause when you-
The other alternative course is the tennis ball.
I got a ski in my pocket.
- Oh yeah, this is what the ski actually looks like,
if you go to the store and purchase it,
it looks just like this.
Can you zoom in on that, Nancy?
Nancy's upset, 'cause we wanted her
to throw us a ski, isn't she?
- Oh, that's right.
- She missed on it.
- Okay, so all you need
is a Phillip screwdriver on the bottom
and this ski we'll put in the bottom here.
Obviously, we'll take the plastic foot off that's on there,
and you just put them-
Bring the ski up in there,
and a Phillip screwdriver from the bottom,
tighten it down and you're done.
Same thing in reverse.
You wanna take it off, you do the same thing.
So they're they're easily...
- But more commonly
what people have been using is tennis balls.
- Yeah, now let's throw that in.
- All right, and actually, Nancy,
do you wanna give us that other walker, too?
That already has tennis balls on it?
- Yeah, let's just go ahead and show the difference.
- This is a decked out walker here.
And this also shows you
that the tennis ball got actually dusty.
They they're dust collectors.
- Yeah.
- You see that?
Oh, and this one, it's a good example too.
You can show how the tennis balls do wear out.
- Yeah, zoom right in on this one, Nancy.
- Now this, this shows it's still usable,
in fact, it's still gliding along,
but it won't be long before it starts catching.
- Here is the new tennis ball, the old one.
And how do you get the tennis ball out there,
you may ask.
Well, there's...
All you do is you gotta be careful with this.
You gotta have someone capable and handy
with a sharp, either utility knife
or a good pair of scissors.
And someone used the method of cutting an X in here.
I don't care for that method.
- I don't like that method either.
- I like the pack man method,
I call it, where you just cut one slit right across.
So it looks like a little pack man.
(Bob comically imitates pack man)
Yeah, there you go, it's fun-
Ah! Anyways, this...
- Yeah, the problem is, yeah, with this,
is these are really hard to get on
when you cut it in four ways like this.
You're going like this...
- Yeah, it's no good.
Don't, don't even try.
Just go like that,
and you put it on,
and voila, they stay on, lovely.
- But again, the problem with these,
you go outside, they start to wear off very rapidly,
they get wrecked. - Do not bring,
they get dirt and yeah, these are indoor things only.
You put this on the indoors, do not take it outside.
And here's what it looks like, a standard one.
And these are, these are really chatted.
This one's a rubber one
and had really chattered on the floor.
Make lot of noise.
This will silence it very nicely.
- Now this is cool.
This is what we do to our walkers here, by the way.
- Oh yeah.
- Wanna put that on?
- Yeah. Let's put this one back on.
See, I gotta flick with them, like that.
- Okay. - Okay.
- There you go!
- We like to deck out our walkers.
Look, it's got little fish on the side-
- Oh, yeah, a large, loud bass.
- Fish on both sides.
- Yeah.
And then on the front it says "life's too short to fish."
"Only on the weekends."
We are very popular with our residents
and we have a lot of fun with them.
- Carry on. But what about cost?
What is one of these-
- Oh, cost. You know, what, $130?
- Yeah, you get $130 for a five-inch walker.
And that may vary.
If you're 65 or older and you haven't gotten a walker,
you're Medicare available,
Medicare will pay 80% of the walker.
Your supplement will pick up the other 20%.
- If you get a prescription.
- From the doctor, which usually isn't too much
of a problem if it's needed.
I don't know, Bob.
I think we pretty much covered this.
- I think we did too.
- All head to toe, so to speak.
- So again, if you're 40 or over,
you're gonna wanna subscribe to our videos,
hit the little subscribe button,
and Brad, we can just about help you fix anything
in your health or your fitness, except what?
- A broken heart, Bob. (Brad laughs)
- We can't fix it a broken heart, sorry.
- It could've killed me when I say that.
(Bob laughs)