The Small Weights That Made Leg Lifts Count

The bucket of potatoes is what did it. I was 64, coming down the back porch steps with one in each hand, and my right foot slid off the edge of the second step. I did not fall, though for a second and a half I was sure I was going down. I caught the rail, the buckets swung, and I stood there with my heart going like a bird in a shoebox.

Joan came out to see what the noise was. I told her the buckets banged together. She gave me the look she gives me. A week later my doctor said the thing I did not want to hear, which was that my heart was fine and my legs were not. Leg strength and balance, he said, and clear anything new with him or a physical therapist first.

That is how I ended up in the spare bedroom upstairs with a cleared corner, a sturdy chair, and eventually a pair of Sportneer adjustable ankle weights in a basket by the door. Karen, our daughter, is a nurse and she is the one who pushed. A seated elliptical first. Resistance bands after that. A foam balance pad the first winter.

The routine settled at about 25 to 30 minutes, five mornings a week, after coffee. Pedal for fifteen or twenty minutes. A few band rows and chest presses in the kitchen chair. Two or three minutes of standing balance work with one hand on the dresser. Nothing heroic. The point was that I could do it on a Tuesday in February without having to talk myself into it.

Then came the leg extensions, and this is where the whole thing stalled. Sit in a chair, straighten one leg out in front of you, hold it for a count, lower it. Twelve of those and I felt nothing. Twenty and I felt nothing. My knee was not complaining. I was just sitting in a chair raising a foot and thinking about the garden.

Karen said to add weight. I told her ankle weights were for joggers and people in physical therapy. She pointed out that I was a person in physical therapy who could no longer feel his own leg lifts, which is the kind of thing a nurse can say to her father.

Twelve leg extensions with an empty ankle and twelve with four pounds on it are not the same exercise. One of them is a man sitting in a chair thinking about lunch.

I bought them about two and a half years ago, in the spring, when the knee had settled enough that I trusted it. They live in a basket by the spare-bedroom door now, which is where anything I actually use ends up.

What sold me is that the weight comes out. Each ankle weight is a sleeve with small sand packets inside, and you pull packets until you reach the number you want. Each side goes from 1 to 5 pounds in one-pound steps, so the pair goes from 2 to 10. The strap is hook and loop and it fits an ankle from 7.5 to 12.5 inches around. The outside is neoprene, which matters less than you would think until you have worn a canvas weight with a rough seam for twenty minutes.

I started at 2 pounds per ankle. That is two packets out of each side, and honestly the first three days it felt like nothing at all. Then on the fourth day my legs were tired in a way they had not been, and I understood that the empty-ankle version had been a warm-up I had been calling a workout.

I am at 4 pounds per ankle now and have been for most of a year. There was no morning where the clouds parted. What happened was a Tuesday in October when I carried two feed bags from the truck to the shed without setting them down in the middle, and then stood in the driveway for a second realizing that was new.

The other use is marching in place in front of the window in winter, and standing side leg lifts with one hand on the dresser. Both got easier to do with weight on. The side lift especially, because two pounds on the ankle tells you where the leg is going instead of letting you swing it out there and hope.

What these are not is walking weights. I have never worn them outdoors, not once, and I would not. The listing mentions walking and running and yoga and I am sure there are people who do that. A 68-year-old with a stiff knee strapping four pounds to each ankle and heading down a gravel driveway is a man booking himself an orthopedist appointment. Mine stay in the spare bedroom.

Two complaints, since I promised myself I would not write one of those reviews where everything is wonderful. The sand packets shift a little inside the sleeve, so the weight is not perfectly even around the ankle. And the strap takes a second to line up, which is fine sitting in a chair and mildly annoying if you are in a hurry. That is the whole list.

What I'd Tell You If We Were Sitting at My Kitchen Table

Start lighter than you think. I mean that. Two pounds per ankle for two weeks, then decide. Most people I know who quit on ankle weights quit because they loaded eight pounds on day one, felt it in the knee, and put the pair in a closet. There is no prize for the heaviest set in the basket.

And check with your doctor or a physical therapist before you start, the way I did. Not because the weights are dangerous, but because your knee and my knee are not the same knee and neither of us can see inside it. Keep the strap snug enough that the weight does not slide down onto your foot and loose enough that you can still get a finger under it. The Sportneer pair has held up for two and a half years of near-daily use with no stitching letting go, and I expect it will hold up a while yet.