Leg Amputation – Where To Find Your Physical Strength?

I’ve been thinking about this quote by Anna Freud, British Psychiatrist:

“I was always looking outside myself for strength and confidence but it comes from within. It is there all the time.”

When I wrote the Amputee Coach book, I put this quote not at the beginning of a chapter dealing with the mental or emotional side of recovery after leg amputation, but at the beginning of a physical one – Chapter 8, The Key to Moving More Efficiently- Your core stability.  This is because as an amputee physiotherapist and keen observer of movement and a student of improving my own personal movement (I go to a gym) and that of others (teaching amputees to walk, run etc)  I have come to realise that a strong core or physical strength within, is the way movement becomes easier, more efficient and safer.

Let me prove it to you.  Get up and walk up and down the corridor in your usual walking pattern and have someone watch you do it.  Then walk again and every time your prosthetic legs heel hits the ground make a strong hiss as you walk over your prosthetic leg.  I’m betting that both you and your observer will notice an improvement in your walking pattern.  It could be that you are walking quicker or that you have less shoulder dipping.

So you see, you already have “the strength within” you physically to walk better. You are able to walk more efficiently this way because as you hiss strongly you are activating your core muscles, and a stronger core means you get more bounce to the ounce for the energy you expend pushing yourself forwards against the ground.

The trick is to access this strength and use it without the hissing.  The ways to strengthen your core and put it to work in your walking pattern are described in detail in Chapters 8 and 9 of The Amputee Coach Book.  You’ll see by harnessing the physical “strength within” that you can walk for longer without becoming as tired, walk faster and protect your back as you walk.

Give it a go and let me know how you go.

Until next time….Cathy – The Amputee Coach