Mitch :

thats why I had created kind if routine for me two days of exercise & then one day of break in between, and usually on my break day I catch up on my home duties like laundry cleaning bathrooms & so on. I call my break day my lazy day. over last decade or so it has worked well for me & now I can do atleast hour of walking on my break day without any trouble. so give your body brea to recuperate.

Asha

Hi Mitch, I was concerned when I read the plan they'd put you on.  I wrote a comment but it seems to have not posted.  A good trainer or physio will do what they call a progression plan that works on the 2 steps forward one step back regime.  So you build steadily for a while and then you back off a level for a few days, and then you go back to what you did before the break and start increasing again.  The plan they gave did not appear to have enough back off for a fit person and certainly didn't make any allowance for or recognistion of stroke fatigue accumulation.

And that's the key you can't build as fast or for as long as a non stroke person, and then your back off time needs to be longer.  One thing to do in addition to your training is to keep a fatigue diary, rate your energy level at the start and end of each day (give yourself a score out of 10.) You should be able to see the pattern develop and how it links to your workload.  If you get a morning score of less than 4 for 2 days in a row back off until the score is back up to at least 7, during back off stick to your old 30 minutes a day stroll which should keep the muscles and joints moving.

After my last "bust" it took two weeks of gentle exercise (don't be tempted to stop completely) to get back to where I had been energy wise.  But that one took me about 5 weeks to build to before it hit.  I've been back on track although pushing/increasing more slowly for 2 weeks now.

I've also been working with a nutritionist on increasing energy through diet, and he's got me on pepitas,walnuts and flax seed oil, among other things.  You need a diet with increased omega 3s, magnesium, and calcium for muscle energy, blood flow and reduced inflamatory response.  I've found it works really well, my body composition numbers had been going up each month and then I overdid it and the inflamatory markers went sky high.

All excellent advice, Heather and Asha! Though it is depressing to see how long it takes you to recover, Heather.

I'm not stopping, but taking things easy at present. And I'll try omega 3, calcium and magnesium. Maybe I'll stop off at the health food shop.

The legs work ok, and the left arm is fine. The right arm isn't much good, the shoulder is still frozen, and the hand continues to deteriorate despite me trying to us it all the time.

It's the muscles in the back, torso and stomach that give me grief.