​Everyone presents differently with their Parkinson’s disease it is therefore important that you are working on the aspects of these exercise principals that are pertinent to you.
 
Some people have trouble with tremor or anxiety or it may be that you have trouble with falls or bradykinesia. It is important to really think about what your biggest challenges are and apply the principals of exercises to help your needs not the persons next to you.
 
We try to teach you all the same information so that you can use it to help you, and tailor your exercises, so that way you do an exercise it will be different to how someone else does their exercises.
 
If your main problem is tremor, you may find it helpful to focus on the force component of the training so power and high effort principals. These principals help adapt your body to stress, which can be a factor that affects tremor, therefore if your body is better able to cope with stress it could help reduce your tremor
 
If your main problem is bradykinesia or small movements it may be helpful to work on the principal of amplitude, so focusing on big movements to help recalibrate the brain and change what the brain sees as normal movement.
 
If your main problem is co-ordination, it may be helpful to work on dual tasking as this will help you complexity of tasks.
 
If your main concerns is balance it may be helpful to complete more balance tasks and work on power to help with muscle strength.
 
Ultimately it is about you using the knowledge we give you to help empower you to make the choices for your exercise to help improve your daily living.

 
Have you noticed yourself feeling weaker? There is evidence that weakness is one of the primary impairments in Parkinson’s disease. The thought behind this weakness is that there is a signaling problem from the brain to your muscles.
 
In a normal muscle our brain tells a motor unit in our muscles to move and this in turn tells the muscle fibres to contract so we can move our limbs. It is felt in Parkinson’s that there is a weak signal to the motor unit which causes inefficient recruitment of the muscle fibres and a decrease in speed of muscle contraction. This over time leads to slow movements and a loss of power in the muscles and the muscles not being used to their full potential again contributing to the slow and small movements that occur.
 
So it is important that we are bringing power back into our exercises and generating force behind our movements. And this needs to be brought into everything you do.
 
A great example is racket sports or cricket since is current the cricket world cup. If you do not put enough effort in to swinging your racket or bat the ball will go nowhere.
 
Last week we focused on amplitude and today we are working on making our movements powerful and big so I want to see force behind your big movements it will be challenging and difficult but with practice it will get easier we are working to change your brain and be at your best.