Our In-House program is the ideal program for those who live within driving distance or plan on relocating. This is not a six month, one or two year program. It is a program dedicated to pushing you as hard as possible to recover as much as possible, how ever long it takes. This is the program that all of our clients who have made the most recovery have chosen.
Below you will find a full description of what the program entails and why it is the standard by which all other programs are measured.
The Five Phases of Recovery™: (The Dardzinski Method™)
Project Walk developed and practices The Five Phases of Recovery: (The Dardzinski Method™), an intensive exercise-based recovery program designed to stimulate the nervous system. The method was created and continues to grow and adapt from years of experience working solely with spinal cord injuries. To learn more, please click on The Dardzinski Method™ link. This area of the website will provide detailed information on how a person with a spinal injury can recover using our method.
Our Staff
In seeking recovery, you must work with someone with specialized practical experience and education. Our Specialists come to us with a background in Exercise Science, go through a six month apprenticeship, and then an additional six months of supervised training before they are eligible to take our Level I Certification exam. It takes over two years to become an Instructor. Our staff is the best in the world to help you.
For more details on the Certification program, please click on Project Walk Institute of SCI Recovery
Duration of the Program
Everyone wants to place a time frame on recovery, and everyone wants to know if they will succeed. It is in our nature and our culture to want a guarantee. We don’t know how long it will take someone to recover, if ever, because every person is an individual and SCI is different for each person. No two injuries are alike. Recovery duration and workout programs will be completely different. What Project Walk and The Dardzinski Method offer is a long-term plan for recovery; one that is based solely on the individual and their goals and needs. We have learned that a developing nervous system doesn’t follow time frames but rather responds to external stimulation and thousands of repetitions.
Duration of the Workouts
A detrimental misconception is that you need to workout five or more hours a day, every day. The human body doesn’t get stronger while working out; it breaks down. Your body gets stronger through rest and recovery. So finding the balance between workouts and rest is the key. Each client that enters Project Walk goes through a week long evaluation of their function and strength. This allows us to determine the proper formula for maximal results. Each client is re-evaluated on a monthly basis, and every six months their supervising Specialist reviews their progress and charts a plan for the future. On average our low C and high T level clients workout three hours every other day. Our high C and very low T and L level clients workout one to two hours every other day. Workout schedules and durations are determined by the client’s function. As it changes, so do the workouts.
Recovery Coach
Project Walk is the only center with a long-term track record of taking a SCI client from having no controlled movement to creating movement on his own. Our whole program is founded on practical experience; our learning sources have been tremendous. Since 1999, we have had clients come from around the world that have been to the very best rehab and surgical centers and worked with the very best doctors. We have had scientists from all over the U.S. and abroad visit our center. We are always evaluating information provided by each person that we meet. By watching and learning, we know that it is difficult to speed up recovery, but on the other hand, it’s very easy to slow it down or stop it in its tracks. As your recovery coach, we can guide you through the process so you don’t slow it down.
Our Guarantee to You
We guarantee that we will match your work ethic and strive to continue to learn and work with the scientific community to better our program. We will continue to provide information on other successful adjuncts to help with recovery and to filter out those that don’t offer positive results. The success of our clients is what matters to us. We know that our program isn’t a cure, but we do know that it certainly makes a difference. Our clients hire us to be their recovery coach; those that follow our program and advice tend to do much better than those who don’t.
For more information on our research and collaborations, click here.
Benefits
In the first six to 24 months:
- Increased hope and improved mental state
- Increased central nervous system activity
- Increased muscle mass
- Increased or maintained bone density
- Increased controlled movement
- Increased functional gait
- Decreased pain
- Decreased health problems associated with SCI
- Reduced risk of pressure sores
- Reduced blood pressure issues
- Reduced depression
Some clients have seen these benefits
- Increased sensations (touch, hot and cold, bowel and bladder)
- Ability to sweat and control body temperature
- Increased sexual function
Occupational Benefits
We don’t teach occupational skills but as function returns so do functional and occupational skills. The majority of clients receive these benefits:
- Ability to roll over in bed
- Ability to sit up
- Ability to dress and feed themselves
- Ability to drive
- Ability to return to school or work
- Greater independence
- Reduced dependence on medication
Not everyone regains all of the above functions. While one client may be able to walk but not feel pain; another may have bladder and bowel, but not hot and cold sensation. Each person’s recovery comes with different functions. We can’t predict what, when, or if you will get everything back. However, the majority of our clients are regaining all types of function; the only difference is the time frame.
When to Start Project Walk
You should already have started trying to recover while in the hospital. This injury is like concrete; newly poured concrete is easy to work with and is moldable, but once it hardens, things become much more difficult. The success of our program increases for those that enter as soon as they are healthy enough and cleared for exercise by their treating physician. Each day, each month, the body adapts to its new environment making it harder to work with. For those clients who started right out of the hospital, the results have been amazing.
To schedule a trial visit, please fill out the application package and email it to applications@projectwalk.org or fax to (760) 431-1598. For more information, call (760) 431-9789 or email info@projectwalk.org.
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