Hi everybody! This is Christina, the Amputee OT. in this video i am going to be showing
you how to do some exercises for above knee amputees in the early post-op period.
*Mechanical whirring*
Okay, so before you begin any type of exercise program, you need to consult with your medical team
to make sure that all the exercises that you are doing are appropriate for you and whatever level
you're at with regard to your amputation. There are a lot of reasons that you need to exercise
your residual limb after you get an amputation; and most of those reasons have to do with using your
prosthesis and being able to use your prosthesis. So the stronger you are, the better you'll be able
to use your prosthesis and control your prosthesis. It's important to cultivate whole body strength,
because using a prosthesis is not as easy as just walking on two functional limbs; and because I'm
an OT, I also want to show you several different ways of doing some of these exercises. There's not
really just one way that you can do them. It's really important to have good hip flexibility,
especially with regards to hip extension-- a lot of the times, amputees end up sitting a lot-- whether in
a wheelchair or on a couch-- and they end up with what's called a flexion contracture; and that can
negatively impact prosthetic use and fitting. I actually have some issues with hip flexion; and I
have my whole life-- even before i was an amputee-- because I'm always kind of sitting in a flex
position like this; and so when I stand, I actually have a lot of anterior pelvic tilt; which causes me
low and mid back pain. This curve here is excessive in me; I'm just kind of relaxing here-- So I have
lordosis; and that's due to my pelvis being tilted anteriorly. See, when I lay down on the ground,
if my legs are straight, then there's this gap here underneath my back. Most people, when they lay
like this, they're going to have a gap like that underneath their back-- that's just kind of normal .
To get rid of the gap, I can tilt my pelvis by bringing my knees up
And if i hold this knee, put that leg down, you'll see it doesn't go all the way to the ground-- it
does in most people who've got two limbs. This is a flexion contracture of about 12 degrees .
For this exercise, you want to extend your hips so that you get a good stretch of your hip flexors.
You can do that by laying on your back pulling your knee up to your chest and then having another
person push down on your residual limb. But of course you might not have another person that's
available to push down on your residual limb; in which case there are several alternate ways
that you can get this stretch without another person being present. This is actually my child's
play couch-- it's called a nugget couch; and I found that it is really good for doing
these exercises. But if you don't have one, you can use a yoga mat or even your regular couch.
a lot of the post-op written instructions you get might say to lay on your stomach for 20 minutes to
get this stretched-- this doesn't do anything for me because of the way my back is; because I have such
a lordosis curve to my back. So here's what I do. So I put my leg in front --residual limb in back
and then i get a good stretch this way . And i'll sit like this for 20 minutes
if you want to get more of a stretch
you can do this
And here's the weirdest but also effective way of getting this stretch done-- you have to have
couch that has enough space for you to get your nub under it. I stick my leg under here
until my bone is well under there. It's good to put a couple of towels under here-- that
gets a little uncomfortable on your leg. Okay, so for strengthening exercises-- when you first
start out, you don't want to use any weight of any kind; but after you are able to go through all the
exercises without any weight on your residual , and then you can go ahead and add some weight.
You might be wondering how you would add weight to your residual limb, because you can't use dumbbells
or barbells. So you can use TheraBand, which is a type of resistance band. I don't happen
to have any of that at the moment; or you can get two ankle weights. So in here are these weights
So you can start out with a low weight, and then progress up to a heavier weight .
You need two of them because one of them is going to be too small.
Hip flexion.
Tip and touch.
Hip extension.
For hip extension, this does not work; and i'll show you why: Hip extension
You couldn't do is hold it on
That's pretty difficult though; so TheraBand is probably your better bet for hip extension
or you can do it without any weight at all
Hip adduction
You can also do hip abduction with a pillow. You
stick a pillow between your legs, and then you squeeze the pillow like you really mean it.
You can also use a towel instead of a pillow. A lot of other exercises that you can do. One
I would recommend doing is a hollow body exercise. Lay on your back, bring your knees
up to your chest until your back is flat on the surface that you are laying on;
then you extend your legs-- extend your arms, slowly lower your legs
until you just feel like your small of your back is coming off the ground .
You don't want it to come off the ground-- hold it for 10 seconds; you should feel all of the muscles
in your abdomen tensing and squeezing and shaking. One Mississippi, two Mississippi. If you're new to
that exercise, you might be way up here with your legs-- that's totally fine. Partial sit ups.
All right so basically that's it! If there are any exercises that you want to do beyond what your
medical team gives you to do, just clear with your medical team first to make sure
it's okay for you to do them; but basically, more or less, any exercise is good exercise--
provided that you're not hurting yourself. Okay that's all for now! I hope you enjoyed
this video. If you have any comments, you can leave them in the comment section below .
Thanks for following my journey; and happy exercising! See you later! Byeee!