How do you eat an elephant?
One bite at a time.
How do you learn to walk again?
One small step at a time.
Hi, my name is Cosi Belloso.
I'm a physical therapist, amputee specialist.
Learning to walk again can be a very complicated process, so I'm here to show you one exercise
that I like to use that starts you off by breaking your walking cycle into small steps.
I like to call it the "1-2-3 Step Cockroach".
When teaching my patients how to walk with their prostheses, I always like to break it
down to the simple parts of the step, with the 1-2-3 Step Cockroach.
For the first part, you can place the tape in front of your prosthetic toes.
You start by taking your prosthetic heel and stomping on the cockroach,
and then going back to the "square-up position".
Once you're able to do this consistently 10 times in a row, then start to focus on your
knee.
On bending and straightening out your knee before it hits the cockroach.
Once you're able to hit that cockroach 10 times in a row, while bending your knee properly,
then you're ready to move on to the second cockroach.
Start again with the square-up.
Take a half step with your prosthesis and then a full step and stop.
Then you move back to the square-up position.
Half a step with the prosthesis, full step, and stop.
And then back to square-up.
Good.
Once you're able to do this part consistently
10 times, then you're ready to add the full step in with the prosthesis with the third
cockroach.
Take a half step with the prosthesis, full step, and now a full step here.
Back to the square-up position.
Half step with the prosthesis, full step, and then full step.
The focus being in coordinating the bending and extending of that knee.
Always going back to that square-up position.
The key to learning a smooth gait pattern is making sure that you have all the small
steps in between done correctly.
So, go try this exercise and let us know 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