Project Walk®- Spinal Cord Injury Recovery

Our In-House program is the ideal program for those that are able to make the required commitment. As stated before 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 that takes. This is the program that all of our clients who have made the most recovery have gone through. Below you will find a full description of what this program entails and why it is becoming the standard by which all other programs are measured.

Phases of Recovery (The Dardzinski Method™)

Project Walk® developed and practices 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. Also, under each phase, you will find video storylines of our clients.

Our Staff

If you want to try to recover, you must work with someone with practical experience and the education to back it up. All of our staff come to us with a background in Exercise Science. Each then goes through a six month apprenticeship and an additional six months of supervised training before they are eligible to take the Level One Certification exam. It takes up to two years to achieve Level Two Certification and over three years for Level Three Certification. The bottom line: these are the best people in the world to help you.

For more details on the Certification program, please click on Institute.

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. Our program isn’t a one year, two year, or three year program. 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 human 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 formula 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, sits down with their supervising specialist to review their progress and chart a plan for the future. On average, our low C and high T clients work out three hours every other day. Our high C and very low T and L 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; we’ve done it all—right and “wrong”. Our learning sources have been tremendous. Over the last six years, 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. Our client’s success is the only thing that matters to us. We know that our program isn’t a cure, but we do know that it certainly helps and we are always looking for ways to better the long process. Project Walk® isn’t a stand-alone program, we are just one key to the solution. Our clients hire us to be their recovery coaches; those that follow our program and advice tend to do a lot better than those that don’t.

For more information on our research and collaborations, click here.

Benefits of our Program

Our knowledge of how an SCI can recover with properly sequenced stimulation

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
Deceased health problems associated with SCI
Reduced 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 of our Program

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
Greater independence
Reduced dependence on medication
Over 90 percent of our clients return to school or work

We are very proud that our clients are regaining use of their bodies and can start taking care of themselves. However, we don’t teach occupational skills. As function returns, so do functional and occupational skills.

Not everyone regains all of the above functions. One client may be able to walk but not feel pain; another may have bladder and bowel, but not hot and cold. 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 between is the time frame.

When to Start at 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.

Our Center

Project Walk® Spinal Cord Injury Recovery Center isn’t a hospital or a rehab center; it is a large training facility that works only with SCI clients trying to recover. Project Walk® has specialized equipment and the only specialized staff trained in the art of SCI recovery. Our program is the standard for those wishing to regain function. Don’t wait to recover. The human body won’t regain function without proper external stimulation.

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) 431-3481.