This article was taken from the September 2013 issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by <span class="s1">subscribing online.
When blind Arctic explorer Mark Pollock was paralysed from the waist down in 2010, his priority was to fight muscle atrophy. "If you sit in a chair for months, tendons tighten and your back hunches," says Pollock, who is preparing to walk using an Ekso Bionics exoskeleton -- a pair of battery-powered robotic legs strapped to his own. "Everything I now do in training stops that."
Get a trainer you trust
Putting your health and safety in another's hands is part of the programme -- it can't be done alone. Pollock recommends Prime Physio in Cambridge or Standing Start, which will train a friend for you. Pollock trains with Simon O'Donnell, one of the members of the team he travelled to the North Pole with, before his injury. It shouldn't be anyone too close, though: "The danger is your partner turns into your carer and trainer, and you stop having relationships."
Train regularly
Pollock walks for an hour in the exoskeleton; the rest of the work is designed to stimulate the nervous system. "First of all I learned to sit up, partly using muscles, but partly using my skeleton." These exercises have the benefit of strengthening the core, which is important for everyday life. "My stomach muscles are getting quite strong, so I can now eat at the table with my knife and fork. Before, I had to have one hand on the table, and scoop my dinner with my fork."
Get stimulated
Pollock has functional electric stimulation administered to his glutes, to help pedal a stationary bike, or done in time with squats. It contracts the muscle, pulling on tendons and ligaments to replicate pressures you'd get from a workout. "If I didn't do any of this training, where I could move would probably be somewhere around my midback," says Pollock
Don't become your condition
With any injury as serious as paralysis, there's a danger of focusing on it to the exclusion of all else. "If you become the injury, 100 percent of your life is the injury," warns Pollock. "If you can make life interesting and meaningful, then suddenly it becomes a smaller part of your life, because you're in the business of living."
*Read more from our <a href="https://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2013/09/how-to/make-the-impossible-happen"
title="Make the impossible happen">Extreme How To special here</a>*
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
