Get Your Walk-On with Gait Training

When it comes to recovering from a spinal cord injury, doctors used to say there was no hope at all. But that is no longer the case, and gait training – the therapy treatment that suspends you in the air and helps you walk – surely proves this point.

Nearly every major rehab spinal cord injury facility now either has gait training or is trying hard to get the program going; that is how beneficial this treatment is. Creating new neural connections, preventing osteoporosis, increasing blood flow and more, the benefits are huge. For a quick look at gait training, check out our videos below.

Video #1: Neuroxcel Member with C4 Spinal Injury Rehabs with Robotic Gait Training

In our first video profiling the awesomeness of gait training, we have a C4 showing how someone with a high level of spinal cord injury can still partake in gait training. From Neuroxcel, a rehab space in Florida, they’re the first to make gait training available in Florida, and dozens of people are thrilled.

Their video showing a C4 doing his thing on the Loko Mat (the specific model name used for gait training machines) shows just how excited people are down there to try it out. Suspended as the gait training is in operation, you get to see just how fluid the machine is. Check out his gait training

Video #2: “Gait Training After Spinal Cord Injury” Symposium

In our second video, Karen McCain, a therapist from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, gives a 30 minute presentation on gait training after spinal cord injury, and she covers it all, from the benefits to the concerns of gait training.

The speech was given at the 2013 Rare Neuro-Immunlogic Disorders Symposium and in her speech, she goes over what’s absolutely necessary to get mobility return from gait training. Karen is thorough and gives a great explanation of the central pattern generator (CPG), which many believe is the core of how gait training works (it causes new neural connections to be made). Watch her speech and get up to speed on gait training

Video #3: Walking on the Lokomat at Shepherd

In our last video showing the amazingness of gait training, check out Katy Blake, paralyzed since 2010, as she takes her first steps post-injury on the Lokomat while she was a resident at the Shepherd Center in Atlanta, Georgia. In her video, you get to watch her as the thrill of walking again takes hold. It’s quite something.

What’s great about this video is that they show the entire process of using a gait training system, from suiting up on the mat to the correct way to move your arms as you “walk.” There’s also some great information bubbles smattered throughout the video sharing interesting facts on gait training. Watch Katy walk once more

It may seem a bit Frankenstein to some, the notion of walking by utilizing what is essentially a robot, but we got nothing to lose. Getting up on your feet again is consistently told to us by doctors as the best thing for us, and thanks to gait training, this is now possible.

Have you tried gait training?

Learn more: How Locomotor Training Works

Watch the videos

– Neuroxcel Member with C4 Spinal Injury Rehabs with Robotic Gait Training

– “Gait Training After Spinal Cord Injury” Symposium

– Katy Blake, a C5-6, walks using the Loco Mat