a day or so ago I was at Pushing Boundaries practicing with my braces. I was talking with my trainer about stairs and whether it was possible to use stairs with the braces. He mentioned that they had some stairs and back that I could test. He has both 3 inch stairs and 6 inch stairs. 6 inches is basically this has standard height for a set of stairs. 3 inches is ridiculously low. However, 3 inches and is a height that I have handled in the past and might reasonably expect to handle. I decided to give them a try.
The stairs were narrow and handrails on both sides which gave you maximum advantage because you could push all of the very solid surface in order to get whatever leverage was needed by the arms. Once again, these conditions are fairly unrealistic because the stairs are narrower than anyone would ever reasonably make them . Is also the case that you use the rails I had to leave my crutches behind and, of course, the moment I got the top I would find that I need my right choose again.
Getting up was not terribly difficult as you can see. Getting down was another story entirely and barely worked. After thinking about this for a while I realized that what was happening was this: When going up you unweight one foot, swing it up to the higher stair and transfer weight to the higher foot. Then you raise the lower foot and move it up. All well and good and the fact that your weight is on a higher foot helps in raising the lower. Down is different. You unweight a foot and move it to the lower stair. When you put your weight on the lower foot, there is a significant force down on the upper foot. This force makes it difficult, near impossible to raise the higher trailing foot.
I need to review videos of how people in braces descend stairs. I recall a strange gait where both feet swing as a unit and what I felt may explain why.
