But climbing stairs can be a bit hazardous when stuff starts happening in our legs and heads and other places. It made me sad and scared the bejeebers out of me when my younger, healthy friend fell down her stairs and now, three months later, is still recovering.
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| Ponce Lighthouse stairwell |
Climbing stairs when you have "issues" is dangerous. But refusing to climb stairs is worse.
Using the stairs is a great way to stay fit and release stress. When I used to spend hours and days in the hospital with my husband, Ken, using the stairs helped save my sanity. That's one of the reasons I'm taking a balance class. I don't want to quit climbing stairs but I don't want to be stupid about it either.
This past Thursday the class was primarily about the stairs. Our leader, Claudia, had some excellent suggestions. One was to realize that it's not going up the steps that usually causes a catastrophe. It's going down. If you stubble going up you can catch yourself on the next steps. If you stumble going down - you're toast.
So Claudia gave us some pointers such as staying erect rather than pitching forward and stepping on our heels rather that our toes. When Dave and I left our third floor class this morning we took the stairs as usual but I tried Claudia's tricks and they worked.
She also gave us pointers on how to use the stairs when one leg/foot is stronger than the other. She said you always ascend the stairs with your strong foot first but you descend the stairs with you weak foot first. And a good way to remember this is:
Strong to heaven
Weak to hell
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