I find it so very hard to believe that almost everyday I mount my scooter/ kickbike and circle the neighborhood for at least 7 kilometres ,
Five years ago I was using a walking stick to help me get around and I had taken up using a scooter because it seemed a low tech way to begin to stolid advance to those electric scooters the aged and infirm drive.
I found my mobility was constrained and thought I was on a downward spiral.
However, I reviewed my scooter options and thought that if I chose to push, I'd need a broad running board. So my neighbour built the model below from a cannibalized BMX bike.
Should have kept this machine when I upgraded As despite its weight it performed very well indeed.
But folks: you don't need a broad running board -- regardless of how much pain or stiffness you wear -- because you spend so little time perched on the scooter board due to of the one leg on/ one leg off kick routine.
Since then, the scooter has been the core element in my exercise and transit routines.
Kickbiking
The Finnish Kickbike is normally promoted as a mean exercise machine. There are some personal trainers who build their training regimes around its use.
This pitch in fact turned me off the kickbike as that wasn't what I was after. This is also why I rejected the kickbike at first look.
Scootering: Jogging without weight bearing
Unfortunately the macho image of the kickbike and its intense competition credentials obscures the utility of the kickbike -- and scooters generally -- as rehabilitation and transit tools.
When I first considered scootering, in my mind the scooter was a lateral jump from jogging. I saw it as jogging without the weight bearing . So despite my weight -- or your weight -- when you scoot most of the burden is carried by the passive/support leg still on the scooter. You don't bear down on the road and shift all the gravitational forces onto the working leg as you do when you run or walk
In fact, the scooter demands much less of the knee joint than a bicycle peddle and while a peddle rotation may not always demand a lot of push down, there are times when you have to really drive the feet around the cog. You are going to work less because you have gears working for you more.
And scooters don't have to be mounted. If you are stiff and sore, mounting a bicycle is a challenge . Male cross bar or no, you still have to swing one leg over a hurdle.
With a scooter you step through and on. It's the easiest manoevre on offer.
My daily irony
So here's this machine that each morning I step onto. I may be constrained by such pain and stiffness and fatigue later that day that I'm in bed. But that morning window snaffled by exploiting this machine, enables me to run a daily exercise program regardless, most days, of my ill health.
I also shop and commute on/with it.
Each time I ride the scooter I stretch out my pelvis as the kick requires a broad carry through: throwing the leg forward and down, then back. I also flex my ankle much more obtusely than I would on a bicycle
When I plant my foot on the ground the primary forces are aggregated across the metatarsal bones although the tendency is to plant your foot flat on the ground rather than bend it downward like a ballet dancer. It's a full contact thing. You don't advance like a sprinter. It's flat foot jogging, but so light that you definitely don't want or need hi tech running shoes. All you want is a little traction and road grab .
That complete motion really works everything south of the ankle and is a great way to pump blood hither and yon in those far off extremities. I suspect that for diabetics the flat foot fall may be a nerve ending advantage, say, compared to jogging.
That complete motion really works everything south of the ankle and is a great way to pump blood hither and yon in those far off extremities. I suspect that for diabetics the flat foot fall may be a nerve ending advantage, say, compared to jogging.
You scoot or kick. Betwixt, you bounce.
Road fox trotting.
