Hi Saddlers fans, I hope you're all safe and well during this unprecedented time of isolation, lockdown and social distancing.
It's a strange but necessary situation that we are all having to deal with and I'm sure it is affecting people in many different ways, I know there have been some indifferent times in our house already over the last few weeks.
I have to admit I have found it hard at times to adapt. I've gone from life at 100mph running the Saddlers medical department, running clinics and conditioning at a gymnastics club, and ferrying the kids about to various clubs between myself and the wife, to pretty much nothing other than interacting via social media and performing a few necessary work tasks from home.
After about a week I started to find it really difficult. Despite enjoying the rest days, I was finding it hard to adapt. It started with poor sleep patterns and I was getting annoyed by the simplest of things which wasn't fair on everyone else in the house.
Personally there were days where I wasn't in a good place and the harsh reality of this crisis also hit in that my wife lost an elder member of her family due to complications related to this whole situation.
This is real and is affecting people on our doorstep.
All of her family are Walsall fans and some hold season tickets, it has affected our family and the Walsall family, and I'm sure that some of you out there have been directly affected by this pandemic and I hope you're all ok under the circumstances.
Therefore it is vital that we follow the government guidance, we stay in, we only go out if necessary for that bit of exercise, for food and medicine, or to deliver to those vulnerable people in need of assistance.
We need to slow the impact on the NHS resources as I've seen it first hand on ICU/HDU wards having spent ninw weeks at the Cardiothoracic Centre in Liverpool during my Physiotherapy training.
Trust me it is manic on these wards at the best of times, patients on mechanical ventilation, numerous nurses, specialists and physios moving around constantly, machines monitoring every aspect of the patient with alarms and sounds going off at all times, whether that be someone suffering from respiratory stress, recovering from cardiac or lung surgery, transplant patients, people seriously ill, people from road traffic accidents and many others.
Physios and other staff are reading blood gas reports to determine what is going on with the patient internally and I have been one of the guys inserting sterile tubes into the patient to remove sercretions off the chest to try improve their oxygen transfer capabillity. I honestly can't imagine what it is like now and how the staff are coping with such an overload of seriosuly ill, respiratory comprimised, and highly contagious patients.
I raise my hat to them all, we are lucky to have a service like the NHS and we should do everything to help them continue to provide the amazing specialist care they do.
Anyway, so what can we do at home to help ourselves feel a little better, i've played penty of games with the kids, done a bit of gardening, even a bit of development of my private work and things I've put aside due to the busy nature of life and work in general but the best thing has been to start exercising again.
I've got out on the roads a few times for a run (even had my eldest tag along on her bike) but one of the best things for us is strength training. Now I don't mean we all have to get weights out and worry about lifting heavy things, most of us don't have that kind of equipment at home but what we can do is a mixture of body weight exercises for our whole body to make us feel better.
I'm going to put a few videos together to show you some lower and upper body exercises that you can do without equipment, well you can maybe grab a tin or some water bottles for some of the upper body exercises but other than that we will use our own body weight.
Now don't feel you have to try all of these, or do them all in one go, you can pick and choose, I don't know what injury or pain you may have now so don't put yourself at risk in anyway but if you want to have a go then please do and try to enjoy the benefits of home exercise.
Firstly we will start with 10 lower limb exercises.
1. Bridging
2. Hip Thrust/Elevated Thrust
3. Drop Down
4. Squats
5. Split Squats
6. Step Up
7. Lunges
8. Good Mornings
9. Calf Raises
10. Hip Extensions
I will follow up with some Upper Limb and Core exercises (usually combined). These will be put out over the course of the next few days on our official social media pages so stay tuned for those.
Finally I've also been given permission to share some exercise programmes from the amazing Johnny Wilson (@johnny_wilson5), Clincal Director of 108 Harley Street (@108harley) and co-host of @shootthedefence podcast (and with numerous years of experience in football), and his colleague Paulina (@Paulina0295), Sports Rehabilitator at NTU and Nottingham Physio (@notts_physio) who have recently put out some exercise videos for Seniors and also a chair based exercise video. They both put out great content and if you want to follow or have a look then please do.
Seniors Exercise Class for Beginners with Johnny - click here
Seniors Exercise Class Medium Intensity with Paulina - click here
I hope you all enjoy doing some of this and we will be more than happy to hear any positive feedback, in the meantime please Stay Home, Stay Safe, Enjoy Exercise.
Rev