Hi, my name is Cosi Belloso.
I'm a physical therapist amputee specialist.
When learning to walk with a prosthesis, it's incredibly important to have strong hip A-B-ductor
(abductor) muscles.
Those are the muscles located in your bottom.
These next two exercises are going to help you focus strengthening those particular muscles.
Stay tuned.
When learning to use the prosthesis, there are several muscle groups in the human body
that need to be nice and strong.
One of the most important muscle groups would be the hip A-B-ductor (abductor) muscles.
The hip abductor muscles are what allow your leg to move out to the side and it also stabilizes
your hips while you're walking.
The muscles are located here in the bottom, underneath the gluteus maximus.
These two exercises are meant specifically to target those muscles.
For this first one, you can use a step like this one, or even a shoe box.
You start by keeping your prosthesis fixed to the ground, and then lifting the anatomical
leg up to step.
And then bringing the anatomical leg back down.
You want to do this in a controlled, slow manner.
The goal is not to put the weight on the anatomical leg, simply to tap it up onto the step and
bring it back down again.
As you're doing this exercise you want to be mindful that your hips are staying as level
and as steady as possible.
As you gain more confidence and strength in doing this exercise, then you can remove arm
support as long as you're being safe.
Good.
If you're doing this exercise correctly,
you may possibly feel some soreness in the bottom.
This next exercise continues to exercise these same muscles.
Same way.
Prosthesis stays fixed to the ground, and we're going to bring the anatomical foot onto
the tennis ball.
You're going to roll it back and forth for 10 seconds, trying to keep the pelvis nice
and stable.
After going forward and backwards,
you can practice side to side movements.
Ok.
Shake it out.
Once you feel comfortable doing forward and backward and side to side movements, then
you can do clockwise and counter-clockwise movements with the tennis ball.
I typically recommend starting off doing each one of these exercises for 10 seconds at a
time.
If you start to feel a burning or a soreness in the bottom muscles then you know you're
doing enough.
If not, go ahead and increase the amount of time you spend doing this.
Couple of things to remember: When you're doing strength training, it's
always important to remember that a muscle needs time to heal and rest in order for it
to get stronger.
So, I don't recommend doing strengthening exercises for the same muscle group more than
2 to 3 times a week.
Alright guys, go try these exercises out and let us know what you think in the comment
section.
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