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Gym offers path to fitness
Race to Walk center serves people with paralysis
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Published: June 11, 2009
MOORESVILLE - The teenagers and adults who work out in Andy and Dawn Bricker's new fitness center have at least one thing in common besides trying to stay fit:
They're paralyzed, including founder Dawn.
Two or three times a week, Savanah Hinson, 15, of Salisbury, Hannah Martin, 20, of Mount Holly and a half-dozen other Carolinians with paralysis exercise on equipment at the Brickers' nonprofit Race to Walk center in Lakeside Business Park.
"I can stay in shape, and I have hope," Savanah said during a two-hour workout last week with an exercise physiologist trained to assist people who are paraplegic and quadriplegic.
Dawn Bricker, a mother of two and former substitute teacher at Lake Norman Elementary School, decided to open the center after visiting Project Walk, a center in California for people with paralysis.
She thought: Why not one in the Carolinas? Race to Walk is the first such center in the Southeast, the Brickers said. The closest is in Riverdale, N.J.
Bricker, 41, was paralyzed from her neck down in a nighttime pontoon boat collision on Lake Norman in 2006.
Bricker was the only person injured, after the impact broke a bone in the back of her neck and pinched her spinal cord between two vertebrae. She underwent emergency surgery at Carolinas Medical Center, then spent six weeks at Carolinas Rehabilitation before the couple's insurance denied further payments, the Brickers said.
Bricker said her paralysis happened for a reason. It not only made her more empathetic, she said, it led her to establish the Race to Walk center "to offer people hope when they're most hopeless."
The couple used money from a private out-of-court settlement in the wreck and numerous donations to open the center on March 1.
Their rent is $50,000 a year for the 6,000-square-foot space, said Andy Bricker, 43, who works in industrial sales.
He looked for online deals on workout equipment, both traditional and handicap-accessible, and got some donated.
Equipment includes everything from a "functional electrical stimulation bike" to a 30-foot-tall I-beam suspension system that raised Savanah upright as part of her regimen. Savanah's family pays $150 for each two-hour session -- $300 a week -- since insurance doesn't cover such exercised-based therapy.
The stimulation bike applies electrical current to evoke patterned movement of a person's legs. That enables the muscles to perform cycling work, even though the person has little or no voluntary muscle control.
Exercise benefits everybody, said Susan Howley, research director for the Connecticut-based Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation that funds research to find a cure for spinal cord injury. "If it's good for you and me, it ought to be good for people who are paralyzed," she said.
Hospitals also assist people with paralysis through community-based programs. Carolinas Rehabilitation has outpatient programs in physical, occupational and speech therapies throughout the Charlotte region.
Scientific research continues to reveal benefits of physical therapy for people with paralysis, Howley said, from improved movement to the ability to live more independently. Exercise-based centers such as Race to
Walk are valuable to the people they serve, she said.
Gains can be painstakingly slow, Dawn Bricker said. But intensive workouts since her injury have meant progressing from a power wheelchair with head and lateral supports to a manual wheelchair, she said.
Rhonda Martin said regular exercise has built muscle in her daughter's legs and arms. Hannah also goes to Phoenix Physical Therapy in Denver twice a week.
"I'm always tight," said Hannah, a rising sophomore at UNC Charlotte who was paralyzed in a 2007 car wreck. "I have really bad spasms."
Exercising "helps me relax my body," she said.
Brent Thomas, 27, of Bessemer City exercises for three hours twice a week at the center. He was paralyzed after falling off a retaining wall at Appalachian State University in Boone in 2003. He's stronger and has better balance since joining the center, he said. He feels better mentally being around other people with paralysis also working out, he said.
"We know that all people are not going to get up out of their chairs and walk out of here," Dawn Bricker said. "But being physically fit, whether able-bodied or in a chair, you're going to be healthier."
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