Post injury hiatus

Hello guys and girls, once again it has been a little while, my apologies. It has been eventful week and a bit.

In my last blog I mentioned that I had to take a break due to my eczema. Well, the following day I managed to have a skiing accident which wasn't too friendly on my head, neck and arm! According to my physio it did something to one of my ligaments near my sternum which my body wasn't too happy with. So that little break from walking and the gym became slightly longer! This would happen of course right before I go away on a skiing trip just to shake up my confidence but hopefully it will be fine.

If you are following me on social media you might have seen some progress updates in terms of the steering mechanism of my walker (if you are not then you can find me on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube). After much dillying and dallying with not only gear sizes but also programming, we finally got a working prototype this morning which you can see in the video below. I don't think I have spoken in a video for this blog before but for anyone that has never heard me speak these are my dulcet tones. Thankfully Cassie is there to make everything a little bit clearer, although I may have to upload it without subtitles but I promise there will be some soon.

Another thing that happened today was me getting back in my walker after what seemed like ages! I must admit I woke up this morning and wanted to take the walker outside and see how far I could go, it was just something I really wanted to do. That however might seem like running before you can walk, especially as I was bit apprehensive about what I would be like after two weeks of not getting in it. Fortunately I haven't forgotten too much and although it was not as pretty as previous walks, it wasn't half bad. I am hoping to get back in the gym on Monday and have a really positive week before I go away on my skiing trip to Andorra. So until then have a good weekend.

Power Steering... (Geeky blog)

Hi Ladies and Gents. Sorry it's been a while, I have been having really bad problems with my eczema and skin of late and have had to take a break from the training and fitness stuff. I made the decision after getting in the walker last week and in the end having to come out as the itching round my neck was immense.

I have taken the opportunity to focus on the steering of the walker and think up a way of taking the direction locks off and replacing it with something better. As you might remember the direction locks prevent the front wheels from turning so that I can focus on my walking and not worry about the walker going everywhere while I am in it. Unfortunately my walker had to have a different kind of locks which means that it is always on as opposed to ones that you can turn on and off. This poses a problem when I need to start to turn whilst in the walker as even when I walk in a straight line, the weight of my hips makes the back wheels of the walker slide and therefore turn into my desk. At the moment I feel that I am at a stage where I don't feel that I can do without the direction locks but the inability to turn (and fit through the door as the direction locks stick outside) is hindering my progress.

Here comes the geeky part. I have had an idea with the hope of creating a steering mechanism for my walker, so that it can go straight when it needs to and turn when I need to. They way that I aim to do this is by creating a rack and pinion mechanism on the front of my walker that I can use with a electronic servo, and two buttons to control it with. Basically this is kind of similar to what you might find in your car albeit a much more basic version. I am hoping to use my 3D printer to design and make the parts and, for the tech-savvy amongst you I will be using a Arduino Micro as a logic controller. If all goes well what will happen is I will be able to press a button on the left of the walker and the front wheels will turn left. The longer you press the button the more it will turn.

I mentioned at the very beginning of my blog that I often have crazy ideas, let see if this one pans out.

Somewhat disconnected...

Guten Tag to my German readers!

It has been a funny old week, a week of feeling disconnected from my body. I do have some days where my brain asks my body to do one thing and my body just says no thanks but usually it does not last this long. This made going to gym on Monday and skiing on Wednesday unsatisfying sessions. Fortunately my walking was still relatively productive and it is becoming easier to walk with my head up right. Next week I might try and move the second bar of my walker (the bar that is above my hips) forward more to help bring my bum in. I have a slight concern that this might make the walker more wobbly as I will be a little bit taller but we will see.

This morning's session at the gym was more successful as well and I felt like I did a fuller work out compared to Monday. One of the things I was keen to try out was trying to work on my core strength, as I had noticed on Wednesday that I find it difficult sometimes to lean forward into turns when I am skiing. By using a weightlifting belt around my chest I was able to use the weight machine to lean forward and lift the weights. Ideally sit-ups would be a great option but I don't really manage to do them very well. The video below gives you a better picture of what I mean about the chest exercises (as well as my pull-up method).

Have a good weekend!