Weekly Cup of Joe - Episode #23

Read the transcript for this video:

Happy Wednesday everybody! And welcome to your Weekly Cup of Joe. Last week we talked about total hip replacements, total knee replacements, and maybe some questions to ask yourself, ask the doctor, what the doctor might say. Those are our last weeks and you can get those, you can review that. I should say, by going to our website, the link to everything is www.ptadvantagepc.com. It's our website, up at the top. One of the headings is a blog all the old Weekly Couple of Joes are there. But I'll put that underneath this video and you can find everything there. This week we are going to talk about walking; looking at your gate and how you walk, before you go in for a total hip or total replacement. And then afterwards, what we're focusing on as a therapist, there's Walker, misconceptions and a lot of people want to alter that or what they're told before they go in or told afterwards.

So, I'm going to use a cane here, whether you're using a cane or a Walker, wheeled Walker, or a four-point Walker; doesn't matter, when you're standing up nice and tall, the height of the Walker, where your hands are at the height that you hold on or the cane should be right about your wrist height or where your watch falls. So it was a little bit big for me, but if I go down the sides, it's going to be too low. So that's what you're looking for. You're looking to try to keep everything nice and level. And now the other thing is when you're walking, especially with a cane, either a four-prong cane, three-prong cane, or a single prong cane is that you put it the opposite arm that the leg that's affected. So if you had your surgery on your right knee, your right hip, you'd be putting that cane on your left side. And why do you do that? Because when you walk your left arm and your right leg are dancing partners; your right arm and left; so opposites go together. So that's why you'll put this in your opposite arm. You don't want to put it in the same sight, because then people want to always lean on it. You'll see people do that all the time.

So what we try to do is try to create a normal walking style, a normal gate sequence. And we try to mimic that pattern beforehand to teach everything appropriately before you have surgery and definitely afterwards. So if my right leg, hip or knee had the surgery, I'm putting it in my left hand. And so, when I take a step out with my right leg, I put the cane down at the same time. So now I can put weight through my left hand and through the cane. And I don't have to put all my weight on the right leg. So you can replicate or mimic a normal walking style as best you possibly can.

The next thing is when you're walking, whether with a cane, any type of cane or Walker wheel or straight Walker, doesn't matter. every time you put weight on that foot; on your affected surgical leg, knee, hip, knee replacement, or hip replacement, doesn't matter if you want to think about tightening up those Quadriceps muscles. You want to think about tightening up your bum or your buttocks, and you may even think about trying to tighten up your abdominals, the same thing. So, you're trying to keep yourself upright and you're not trying to lean away from it. You put only the amount of pressure you feel comfortable with. The rest of it goes through the cane or through your hands in the Walker, but you're trying to stay upright and put as much weight on that as you can and fire those muscles and teach those muscles what to do. That's the biggest thing is you want to retrain it and teach those muscles, that every time you put weight on it, they need to fire and support you. A lot of times when people are in their walkers, they're bent over or even in their cane, even if they have the right correct hand, they're leaning over on it and they're not putting full weight on it or not even putting partial weight, the correct weight on there. And so, they're leaning away from it just like they do if they were beforehand before you had surgery, you're not putting full weight on it. We want to be able to teach ourselves to be underneath it, good posture. And we take that step instead of being bent forward, bent to the side, away from the surgery or injury or arthritis, whatever, and be as normal as we possibly can.

So I hope that helps everybody. It's a big thing. As much as you can do that and practice that before you're coming in or going into surgery, the better it's going to be, and then obviously afterwards, your therapist will be working with you afterwards to really try to tone that down in the first few weeks to a month so that when things are really feeling good, that wow! now I can walk normally and I can put the normal weight on there. And wow, that's a lot different than the way I walked before surgery. So, all right, hope that helps everybody.

Just a reminder too, that at the end of this month, January 26th, Tuesday night, Shay is doing a Total Knee, Total Hip Replacement Free Workshop here at the clinic. So also, be doing a little bit about zoom as well that, we will be having people in the clinic limited number. So there is a registration link down below; first come first serve registration wise. Bring a family member, bring a friend, bring a coworker, whatever you want to do, that'd be great and it's 6:30 on Tuesday, January 26th. As I said, the link to all the Weekly Cup of Joe's everything's stored underneath our website and our blog heading in that link will be down there as well. So, if you have any questions ever, (630)-892-8003. or if you want to register that way for the workshop, you can do that too. Have yourself a great week and we will see you next week for your Weekly Cup of Joe. Bye.