Hi, my name is Cosi Belloso.
I'm a physical therapist amputee specialist.
The exercises I'm going to be reviewing with you now are meant to help you with your proprioception.
Proprioception is your body's ability to know where it is in space and giving you a better
sense of being connected with your prosthesis.
Stay tuned.
Now with my patients I always like to start up with the "Square-up".
This is where I teach people how to put their feet in the right position.
When we're in standing our feet are meant to be no more than 4-6 inches apart.
This is how I like to teach it.
Go ahead and sandwich my foot between your feet.
There you go.
Now that you've got the right width, I want you to make sure that your feet and your toes
are aligned.
Good.
Once you've reached the "square-up" position, try to be conscious of putting equal weight
on both legs.
The important thing is to look down while you're doing this.
This gives your brain that visual input that it needs to starting learning where your foot
is in space.
Once you've achieved the "square-up" position, you can start by shifting your weight slowly
from side to side.
It's not a very large movement.
Just like so.
Every time you're putting your body weight into that prosthesis, your brain is receiving
input from your eyes, your inner ear, and the proprioceptors located in your muscles.
So, once again, go ahead and look down.
If you find that your feet are scooting out of position, stop the exercise and "square-up"
again.
Once you have mastered and feel comfortable doing side to side weight shifting, you're
going to check your alignment; "square-up" again.
This time we're going to do anterior-posterior or forward and backward weight shifting.
So, once again, it's a small movement and it's meant to be controlled.
This is really good because the brain starts to know what it feels like to go heel to toe
in preparation for walking.
Likewise, for my above the knee amputees, this gives them the opportunity to really
test the toe load and start to feel comfortable with that knee.
Once you feel comfortable with the lateral, side to side, and the forward and backward,
you're ready to start diagonal weight shifting.
I always recommend that you start with your stronger leg forward first.
So, Robin go ahead and put your left leg forward.
A little bit further back.
Ideally you want to align your feet so that they are an approximate step length apart.
Perfect, ok.
And once again, you're going to shift the weight to the forward leg and then to the
back leg.
Forward,
and back.
This one is a little bit more challenging.
For the above the knee amputee, you might have the knee buckle.
It's always good to have a chair nearby in case that happens.
Once you feel comfortable doing this with your sound leg forward,
then you're ready to go
ahead and switch legs.
So, let's go ahead and put the right leg forward.
Ok,
and then shift forward and back.
Forward.
This is a great way to start losing the fear of putting weight into that prosthesis.
Ok,
good.
Ok, go ahead and go back to the "square-up" position.
Once you've practiced the weight shifting in all the different directions: side to side,
forward backward, diagonals with both feet getting a chance to lead, you're ready for
the clock exercise.
So, as you can see, Robin is back in the "square-up" position and she's going to pretend that she's
in the middle of a large clock with 12 o'clock being right in front of her.
She's going to shift her weight forward to 12,
then 1 o'clock
then 2 o'clock,
then 3 o'clock
four
five
six
seven
eight
nine
ten, good.
eleven
and 12, and now we're going to go counter-clockwise.
eleven
ten
nine
eight
seven
six
five
four, good.
three
two
and one.
And then back to noon.
Good job.
These exercises are incredibly effective at helping establish stability and confidence
in a prosthesis.
So, go try out these exercises and let us know what you think!
We at Mission Gait are happy to have teamed up with Cosi to make this series of videos
and we hope that you find them helpful.
For more resources, definitely check out Cosi's Facebook page: Cosi Talks.
Every Wednesday night at 8:30 pm EST, Cosi hosts a Facebook live session where she discusses
a variety of topics for amputees and takes questions from viewers.
You can also check out her site for her physical therapy practice, Palanca PT.
Links are in the description below.
To learn more about Mission Gait, you can visit their webpage at MissionGait.org.
To see more of these videos and other videos from Mission Gait, you can click the link
in the corner to subscribe or visit their YouTube channel at YouTube.com/MissionGait.