RESULTS

The feeling like your feet are glued to the floor delaying or preventing you from walking

Trembling in your leg making it difficult to step

Stutter steps, delayed stepping, or inability to step when you want to

Difficulty starting or continuing stepping

Often proceeded by uncontrolled forward leaning and small, fast steps (festination)

Walking through a doorway or narrow hallway

Turning, direction changes or stepping backwards such as backing up to a chair

Stepping from one type of surface to another such as carpet to tile

Stressful situations such as walking in a hurry or in crowds

Multi-tasking such as walking and talking or walking and thinking

When tired

In addition to negatively impacting quality of life, people who experience freezing are at a higher risk of falling.

Understandably, people who experience freezing often report less confidence and higher fear of falling. This can reduce participation in exercise, social and leisure activities, which, in turn, causes more problems. Less movement and activity lead to disuse weakness and deconditioning, further increasing fall risk.

The earlier freezing of gait can be addressed, the better.

Before your first visit, you’ll be emailed a detailed survey regarding your experiences with freezing of gait. Your answers to the survey, along with the results of the Mobility Assessment that you will complete at your first visit, will guide Dr. Hershberger to build your personal program.

Anti-Freeze Bootcamp has several key advantages:

Specific: Freezing of gait is so complex! Each person experiences a unique combination of factors that contribute to their freezing. Rather than throwing everything but the kitchen sink at you hoping something sticks, our assessment helps tease out the factors that are most problematic for you (physical, cognitive, emotional or often, a combination). We then use that information as the foundation to design a program customized to meet your specific needs.

Safety: In order to improve freezing, its crucial to practice situations that trigger freezing, so that you can learn how to respond. This can be really difficult to do safely on your own because of the inherent fall risk. One-on-one coaching and guarding from a trained professional and access to safety a harness allows you to achieve high repetitions of practice required in your problem areas, without worrying about injuries from falls.

Expertise: Each visit is taught by an experienced physical therapist with advanced Parkinson’s training. Having a skilled eye coaching you, setting up each exercise for success, and providing anti-freeze tips and tricks along the way is a game changer.

Challenge: If it doesn’t challenge you, it doesn’t change you. Choosing exercise that results in the right combination of success and failure is a must to create meaningful improvements.

Progression: This concept is so important it’s worth repeating: if it doesn’t challenge you, it doesn’t change you. Doing the same set of exercises over and over again won’t cut it. We’ll help you understand exactly when and how it’s time to mix things up for maximum impact.

Let’s start by saying I am a big fan of group exercise! There are many benefits. However, in my experience, group classes probably aren’t your best bet if your goal is to improve freezing, especially if a much of the class occurs in a chair!

Take a look at the question right above about individual exercise. Much of that information applies here as well.

Additionally, group classes, even Parkinson’s group classes, are often “too diluted” to get enough repetitions of the specific type of practice required to create meaningful change with freezing. Depending on the structure of the class, your focus may be on strengthening, cardio, posture, balance, walking, or some combination. Although improving any of these areas is a wonderful thing, people often feel discouraged when they don’t see improvement in their freezing.

Take hope in knowing that freezing can be helped! The best results occur with personalized exercise that provides high repetitions of specific training at the right challenge level for you.

Absolutely! In our experience, people with freezing of gait require more frequent, targeted exercise than people without freezing of gait.

Dr. Hershberger recommends anti-freeze exercise at least 3 days per week to achieve the repetitions needed for positive change. If scheduling or insurance limitations are preventing you from being seen consistently at your Physical Therapy, Anti-Freeze Bootcamp can maximize your impact by serving as a powerful supplement.

In Dr. Hershberger’s experience, people with freezing of gait generally require more frequent visits and more repetitions of practice than their peers without freezing of gait. For this reason, the 15-visit package is usually preferred.

No. All our personal exercise programs are self-pay (not covered by insurance). We often receive grants through local Parkinson’s organizations which are used for partial scholarships to help reduce your participation costs. Make sure to ask if any scholarships are available when you sign up!

No. Simply call to schedule.