Resistance training with poliomyelitis

Hello,

I have a family member, a 64 year old lady, who caught polio when she was four. It caused permanent damage to her hip being a bit deformed and her right femur is shorter. She doesn’t do any physical activity as for now, she can walk without any kind of support and stumbles because of the shorter and deformed leg.
She is overweight and is diagnosed with hypothyroidism and hypertension, this is the main reason why I want to get her to resistance training.
Lastly, she also has knee arthritis and complains from pain in her shoulder joint.

Can you please give me some general guidelines on how to approach this and which movements would be best adapted to her condition ? Do you recommend any of your rehab templates ?
Also, should she wear a shimmed shoe to counter the imbalance ?
What about the squat, should we get her squatting at some point ?

Thanks a lot for your time

Hi,

This situation is unfortunately too complex to handle in detail via a forum like this, without any kind of direct assessment. I do not think the rehab templates would be appropriate here, though.

If she can sit to a chair and stand back up, that can be useful as a starting point for “squatting”, and may be a good starting point for that goal. I also did not see any reason why she would not be able to train any upper body exercises essentially normally (for example, dumbbell pressing / benching, any kind of machine or dumbbell row, pull downs, etc.), with loading guided by tolerance and shoulder symptoms.

However, this is the kind of situation that is often handled by Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation (Physiatry) doctors; depending on where you are located, you may or may not have access to this kind of physician, but they would be best suited to evaluate and provide recommendations to restore maximum function.