Physio has signed me off. Can I just join a normal gym, and will lifting weights do anything for a stroke arm?

#1keithb57(Joined Oct 2024 · 51 posts)May 21, 2026, 5:04 pm

Signed off from community physio last Thursday with a sheet of exercises and a handshake. Two years and four months post stroke, left side, walking unaided indoors, arm about 60% of what it was.

The sheet is fine but I've been doing versions of it for a year and I am bored to my bones with theraband. What I actually want is to join the leisure centre gym down the road, because I miss having somewhere to go and because I think I could work harder than a sheet of exercises in a bedroom.

Two questions. Is a normal gym a daft idea for someone who still lists to the left when tired? And the one I really want answered: if I get stronger, does the arm get better? Because everyone bangs on about repetitions but nobody has ever told me whether strength and function are the same thing or two different things.

#2davew1966(Joined Oct 2025 · 21 posts)May 22, 2026, 7:52 am

Not daft at all. I've been going to mine since about month eight.

Two bits of advice, both learned the hard way. Go at ten in the morning, not six in the evening, because the place is empty and the staff have time to spot you. And tell the induction person exactly what your left side does and doesn't do, rather than nodding through the form. Mine put me on a seated rower for six weeks before I admitted my hand couldn't hold the bar properly and I was doing the whole thing one-armed with a twist through my back. Sore for a month.

#3Dr Paul HutchinsClinical moderator(Joined Nov 2024 · 64 posts)May 23, 2026, 10:31 am

Keith, your second question is the better one, and the short answer is that strength and function are related but not the same thing, so getting stronger helps and does not by itself hand you back the arm.

The reason is that the core of motor recovery is task-specific and repetitive practice: the nervous system reorganises around the specific movements you rehearse, in the context you rehearse them. A biceps curl builds the muscle that flexes an elbow. It does not, on its own, teach the brain to sequence the reach, grasp, lift and release that picking up a mug requires. That is why guidelines put repetitive task training at the top of the evidence and why your physiotherapist kept giving you fiddly, unglamorous, real-world tasks instead of dumbbells. There is a further honest wrinkle worth knowing: repetitive task practice has a clearer effect on walking distance than it does on arm function, and the arm is the domain that recovers least well overall, so nobody should sell you a gym membership as an arm cure.

What that means in practice is not "don't go to the gym", it is "go, and keep the task practice as well". Strength, fitness and confidence are worth having in their own right, cardiovascular fitness matters after a stroke for reasons beyond the arm, and having somewhere to go is not a small thing at two years out. The site's pieces on task-specific training and physiotherapy after stroke set out where each approach earns its place.

One thing I would not do is design the programme from a forum. Ask your physiotherapist, even after discharge, for a written note of what to avoid and what to progress, and take it to the gym induction. Whether your particular balance and shoulder can take a given machine is a question about you, and it needs someone who has assessed you.

#4mattw_tbi(Joined Jun 2025 · 17 posts)May 24, 2026, 2:18 pm

Worth adding: check whether the leisure centre runs a referral scheme. Mine has one for people coming out of NHS rehab and it means the instructor has actually had training rather than just enthusiasm. Cheaper too. Nobody tells you these exist, you have to ask at the desk and look slightly awkward.

#5keithb57(Joined Oct 2024 · 51 posts)May 27, 2026, 7:40 pm

Dr Paul Hutchins said:

strength and function are related but not the same thing

That's cleared up something that's confused me for two years, thank you.

So the honest version is: gym for the body and the morale, kettle repetitions for the hand, and don't expect one to do the other's job. I can live with that. I was half hoping you'd say a heavy enough deadlift would sort my fingers out.

Rang the physio, she's sending a note for the induction and sounded pleased I asked rather than just cracking on.

#6Geoffswife(Joined Jan 2025 · 38 posts)May 29, 2026, 8:11 am

The having somewhere to go part is the bit I'd underline, from a carer's side.

When Geoff's therapy stopped the house went very quiet and very small, for both of us. He joined a gym mainly out of stubbornness and I think the two mornings a week out of the living room did as much for his mood as anything the exercises did for his leg. It also gave me two mornings, which I have never admitted to him.

#7keithb57(Joined Oct 2024 · 51 posts)July 14, 2026, 6:26 pm

Seven weeks in. Going three mornings, quiet ones, with the note from the physio in my bag which the instructor actually read.

Legs are noticeably stronger and I walked to the shop and back last week without the stick for the first time. The arm is exactly where it was, which Paul told me to expect and I still found annoying. Still doing the kettle repetitions, still hate them.

Leaving this here for the next person who gets signed off and doesn't know what to do with themselves on a Tuesday.