For people living with multiple sclerosis (MS), symptoms and behaviours may often be misunderstood, while emotional changes including anxiety, depression and stress can rapidly appear.

This doesn’t stop our gym member of seven years Derek Farrar from making the most of life and maintaining a positive and confident attitude. We hear from Derek on how he has been able to utilise the empowering support from Ability Bow staff and other service users to help manage his condition and why he feels the gym is vital to his life.

In November 2016, due to a lack of adequate government funding, we hit a funding crisis , and we were forced to reduce to a skeleton service losing half our staff and reducing services.  This means that currently the gym is open for people who are well enough to exercise independently after their 12 weeks of support , but is closed for people with complex needs who need continuing one:one help afterwards . Sadly that’s 60% of people referred here! 

Why is our gym important?

Ability Bow has been donated an FES Bike

Functional electrical stimulation is a rehab technique which applies an electrical current to paralysed or weakened muscles. FES is used to stimulate the lower motor neurons that connect the spinal cord to your muscles, and evokes patterned movement of the legs or the arms. FES therefore enables your muscles to be exercised, even if you’ve lost some or all voluntary control of them.