I just added a link in the “Stuff I Love” section. The MS Gym. I love it.
I paid for a three-month trial period, and I was ready for it to be a scam. It is not.
The owner/founder of The MS Gym, a guy named Trevor, is a movement specialist who specializes in the central nervous system (CNS) and MS. I have searched high and low over many years, and I have never found a personal trainer who understood my MS issues, limitations, or possibilities based on science or even experience. Personal trainers often either did not want to work with me because they did not want to hurt me, or they were condescending in the most well-meaning and frustrating way.
In one of his videos, Trevor said (and I paraphrase), “I have worked with people (those without MS) with severed spinal cords. A lesion in the brain or on your spine is not the same thing. The nervous system is amazing. Your CNS can find alternate pathways around a lesion.”
Trevor also tailors most (not all) of his exercises to people who have been in a wheelchair for years. In other words, he offers solutions to the exact people whom so so so many resources abandon. Really, half the torture of MS is that when one starts going downhill, even the best medical institutions say, “sorry, nothing more to offer.” He says from experience that the exercises will get these people to stand. And once they are standing, the exercises can get them to take three steps, which can evolve to 30…and 300 steps…and so on. His members post multiple times daily their success stories.
For me, I have been dumb-founded by the impact The MS Gym has had on my walking fatigue, with exercises (proper pelvic tilt) that seem so basic that I can’t understand how they could help me that much. I went from walking 30 min with 3 rest stops for years to walking 60 min with zero rest stops. I’ll be damned. I’ll gladly be a monkey’s uncle.
I am not in a wheelchair, but I think it is standard for anybody with MS to spend their lives in constant fear of how bad MS could become. The MS Gym provides a ton of hope through video testimonials and instructions that movement is medicine. There is also a closed FB page for members that gives me access to thousands of people who have MS and just.fricken.get.me.
Hope – based on science – is the best medicine. I am incredibly grateful to The MS Gym.
Blessed with MS 