Don't let your amputation slow you down. Stay fit, healthy, and happy. With out your health, you have nothing.
About AmputeeFitness
Amputee Fitness is a site managed by a long term upper arm amputee. Amputee Fitness is dedicated to all the fellow amputees out there. Loosing a part of one’s body is equivalent to loosing someone you love. Amputation can bring along a tremendous amount of emotional pain and psychological and psychosocial problems. Amputation is an absolute tragedy and an individual who is going through it specially in the beginning tends to experience a wide range of emotions that include loss of self confidence, self esteem, anger, depression, anxiety, shame, and withdrawal. These emotional impacts of amputation are inevitable and natural. However, it takes a while for an amputee to come in terms with these problems. With the passage of time amputees learn to accept their new reality and figure out a way to deal with it. At leas that’s what I did. There are always those who react and rehabilitate differently.
One way to stay positive and happy in life is staying fit and healthy. As you know, once you loos a limb, you also start loosing muscle mass on that remaining limb and the entire side of the body. If you don’t exercise and stay active, you might risk of having one side of the body more developed than the other. This will exacerbate the look of the already disfigured body. When I realized that my one side of the body was getting bigger than the other, I refused to sit down and do nothing. I was determined to fix that. I started going to the gym with hope that the trainers will be able to help me. However, that was pretty much a disappointment. So I decided to experiment and figure it out on my own. With hard work and dedication i was able to balance both sides of my body.
The goal of Amputee Fitness is to encourage all the amputees out there to stay fit, healthy and happy. You have know idea how much joy, fulfillment and confidence you can experience when you have a fit body and when you feel good from within.
about 5 months ago
Hi,
35 yrs ago I lost my arm with playing with a machine at the farm I lived then. Untill the age of 6 I used a prothesis then I had one but hardly used it.
I always was looking for a way to get more strength in my amputated arm. My arm is amputated 10 under the elbow, so I still have my elbow. But doing excersises is very hurtfull when I use my prothesis.
Do you have some examples of exersises?
Thanks,
Jack
about 5 months ago
Hi Jack, you are fortunate to have the elbow. Mine is amputated right at the elbow. I also have a prosthesis that I barely use. I am so active that most of the times it gets in my way so I don’t use it at all.
I actually don’t work out my residual limb with the prosthesis on. I have tried and it is painful. When I work out, I have a valcro strap that I wrap around my residual limb. The strap has a ring and I latch that to a work out machine at the gym with the help of a clip on. Then I do lift ups. Very frequently, I use work out bands as well. You can get those at any sporting store for pretty cheap. I connect the work out band to my valcro strap with a clip on and work out. I intend to put up some videos in the future. Keep an eye for http://www.onearmamputee.com.
Hope this was helpful.