Meet Caroline

Meet Caroline.

I have been training with Caroline since August 2020. She wanted help improving her strength, flexibility and balance.

We started working on these goals together with a weekly one to one session and I would set Caroline additional workouts to do in between our sessions. The sessions would range from exercises to improve her strength to stretches that would improve her flexibility.

In March 2023, Caroline suffered a bimalleolar fracture – an ankle fracture that involves both the lateral and medial malleoli at the distal ends of the fibula and tibia.

This fracture resulted in Caroline having to have three plates, a rod and numerous screws to fix it in place.

In the first month after the fracture, the ankle and leg were in plaster, with the doctor’s advice of ‘totally non weight bearing’. This gave us the change to work a lot on her upper body, to ensure she didn’t lose this vital strength.

One month later, Caroline was placed in a half leg boot that allowed us to do some leg exercises in a chair. For example, squeezing a ball in between the thighs and pushing a band outward all while sat in the chair with her leg up. This ensured maintenance of some of her leg strength with the goal of not losing any more.

Once Caroline had the half boot taken off, we focused on the exercises from the physio. I would go through these with her to ensure she was doing them correctly and changing them if I felt she was able to do more or they were too difficult. Caroline did these daily. We also focused on stretching, as Caroline had found she had started feeling pain elsewhere as a result of having to sit more due to her lack of stamina. Over the last couple of months Caroline had been walking with one leg higher than the other due to the size of the boot. This led to back and hip pain. This was a strong factor to why Caroline had decided to keep using a walker and not a stick, as she was trying to reduce leaning onto her one side.

Over the next few months, we started improving her stamina and I started adding additional exercises to enhance her balance. This included more weight bearing exercises.

Throughout the months Caroline had been going to her physio appointments where they would check on her improvements. They were pleased every time she went.

In August, I filmed this video below. Caroline is standing on a balance board for one minute on the leg she injured. Remember how five months ago she was in a boot?

It is worth noting that the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital staff on duty all commented on her good balance and strength when she first had the injury. We both believe this is a main factor in how quickly she has returned to her regular routine.

Being strong before a freak accident or a fall can help improve recovery!