Lifting with a disabled side

[Mulgere Hircum]

Hi, Andy. I think my dad is going to start lifting again. He's 80 and by now very detrained, though at one time he was quite strong with a lot of muscular endurance (doing full-time ranch work at 16 kind of does that to you). My brother will be up there for Christmas and could help him get started SS-style, except he actually can't do SS or anything particularly close: he had a stroke 20-odd years ago and his left side is crippled (leg is weak but supports him, arm is extremely weak and poorly controlled). For critique, here are my thoughts on dealing with the asymmetry and keeping it safer than not lifting at all:

He won't have a gym (the one gym in that tiny little town always seemed to have trouble staying open, so I have little hope that it is a viable option at this point), but I did leave him an old weight set (1" "substandard" weights, but he won't move enough weight to make much difference).

This isn't the kind of asymmetry that you can train out--the left side is never going to be even close to the right because it doesn't get the signals from the brain very well. I think he's better off pushing the right side as far as it will go and not holding it back like you would if it were correctable. He can bringing up the left at its own pace and hope for some cross-training effect from working the right. That suggests dumbells to me, which should work fine for press, bench, and rows.

He often has involuntary or semi-voluntary movements of the left side that are stronger than he can do at will, so I'm inclined to suggest he still do the symmetrical movements on the upper body as though he had a barbell (i.e. press both dumbbells at once rather than alternating). I doubt it can hurt, and I thought his brain might get some more work out of the left side with the right side being heavily activated.

Lower body presents a bigger challenge, especially since he can't work the left side so hard that it could collapse under him under weight. You could argue over whether it's even a good idea to try, except my suspicion is that he's at greater risk falling from lack of strength in the left leg than he is from lifting, if we can get the programming right. Back when the gym was semi-operational I had him leg pressing one leg at a time, as it seemed most foolproof, but that's probably not an option now.

For deadlifts, if he proves to have the strength my guess is that he should do them one dumbbell at a time with the arm path outside the leg. That way he can load the right heavier than the left would cooperate with. He might also need to have the dumbbell on something so it's kind of a rack pull. If left won't cooperate well enough, to load the right side at all, then we have the problem of bring him up to strength by other means without a gym. I'm not sure how to do that, frankly.

I don't have any good ideas for a squat-like exercise that sound entirely safe, so I'm inclined to just skip that. He probably can't get even close to a bodyweight squat anyway, and it *would* be nice to eventually get him up to one or at least closer than he is now. That was my hope with the leg presses in the gym, but we don't have that option now.

Any thoughts?

[Andy Baker (KSC)]

I'd have to really evaluate him in person before I'd be comfortable giving you a barbell based prescription over the internet. It just wouldn't be responsible on my part, especially since he's 80 and neither you or your brother are probably experienced enough to coach him effectively.

Get him into a gym that has some machines or pony up the $$ to buy something. Then get him to an experienced SSC that has direct experience working with seniors