Adaptive Exercises for Chair Users Transcript
Alena: This is the warm-up portion, and in the beginning you should always warm up before you start to exercise so that you don’t get an injury. So let’s start with dropping our head forward and rolling it to our ears to our shoulder, and back to the other side. I’m going to do this back and forth in the front a few times to loosen up our neck. And then you are just going to raise it up and drop it to the back, and then take your ear to your shoulder, and roll it to the back, and to the other side, slowly go to the other side, back and forth. Loosen up your neck. And bring your head to the front. 
Next you want to loosen up your shoulders, just rolling them forward, and then roll them back a little bit. Shake them out. Next you want to reach your arms out. Now pinch your shoulder blades together, pinch them as far back together as you can. And bring your arms together like you are giving yourself a great big hug. And then take one arm over as far as you can use the other arm to pull the shoulder over. Use this hand to help pull it. Then you can do the other hand the same way. And you can drop your hands forward and shake your shoulders out again. 
Alright, this is a shoulder stretch. So this is using the elastic band and first you want to take it and put a little tension, get it a little lose so you don’t overstretch your shoulder. You want to take it above your head, stretch it, just going back as far as you can, you don’t want to put too much tension on your shoulder. Just gently relax it back. If you can, take it all the way back, all the way back, just as far as you can. Don’t hurt yourself, don’t overstretch. You don’t want to result in an injury. So just take it back and relax a little bit of tension. And just bring it forward, stretch it out, and just shake it loose. 
And if you don’t have a band, you can also use a straight stick, or an umbrella if you have around. You want to take it back. This you really don’t want to put too much pressure on your body because it doesn’t have that give. So you just want to take it back. You can also use it to move around so you can get that extra little stretch in your arms and in your shoulders. Take it around to the other side. Bring it back, and pull it forward. And then shake everything loose. On this exercise you want to make sure that your arms and wrists remain straight, and that you don’t shrug your shoulders into your ears. 
This next exercise is a dip. Doing this will allow you to gain the mobility to get out of your wheelchair, or if you happen to fall from your wheelchair, you will have the strength to put yourself back into your wheelchair. You will see that I place my hand on either side of the frame and then lift myself back into the chair. I will demonstrate it now.