ADLs Are Where the Repetitions Are

Rebecca Dutton
Home After a Stroke

November 3, 2013

Barb's post expressed how I feel about exercise.  Barb said exercises "console survivors that they are working as hard as they can when they are not."  The reality is that rewiring the brain requires thousands of repetitions (reps).   Activities of Daily Living (ADLs) are a great way to get the reps needed to retrain the brain.  Four examples show why two sets of ten cannot compete with ADLs.

1) Twice a day I open my hemiplegic hand to grasp a tube of toothpaste so my sound hand can remove the cap.  In nine years I have opened my hand over 5000 times before brushing my teeth.

2)  I have to turn 14 times to prepare cereal with a sliced banana.  I have made this same breakfast for nine years so I have made over 45,000 turns.  Add making a sandwich for lunch and preparing a hot meal for dinner and the number of turns I have made in the kitchen are in the hundreds of thousands.

3)  Shopping is therapy for my hand.  I open my hemiplegic hand to let go of the cart and reach for items with my sound hand.  My hemiplegic hand opens a 2nd time when I grab the cart to move on.  I open my hemiplegic hand to let go of the cart so my sound hand can empty the cart in the check-out lane and again to load food into my car.  Buy 30 items + empty cart + load car = open hand 64 times.  64 x 2 visits a week x 9 years =
I have opened my hemiplegic hand 59,904 times in the grocery store.

4)  The distance I have walked at the grocery store is huge.  I step away from the shopping cart and bend down or reach up to get items I want.   The S-shaped curves I make to detour around people and other carts require more steps than walking in a straight line.  According to my pedometer I walk 2,000+ steps each time I visit the grocery store.  2,000 x 2 visits a week x nine years = 1,872,000 steps!

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ADLs Are Where the Repetitions Are

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