00:00orthotic boots are my lifesaver. A lot of people who've got CMT or muscle wastage conditions
00:07wear something called AFOS, but I wear these boots. I was given these three years ago,
00:14I think it was like late 2020, and what these boots do, the sole is moulded to the shape of my feet,
00:20so my feet are very arched, my toes curl in and my foot pushes to the outside, so the sole inside
00:27is moulded to that, and then around the boot, to stop my foot from rolling, it is reinforced with
00:34like a metal sheet down there. The boot itself is roughly about a size five and a half, because my
00:40feet pull back, where they would be around a size seven or eight, they pull back, they pull into a
00:46size five. It's got this heel on, it's hard to see, but this heel comes out, it's a wider wedge,
00:53which also stops the foot from rolling, and it also makes me about an inch and a half taller,
01:00which is always a bonus. From being young, we knew there was something very different about me,
01:06because I was falling over, couldn't fit into normal shoes, I was much weaker than the rest
01:11of the boys at school, couldn't run, I loved to play football but I just couldn't play it,
01:17you know, we knew that something wasn't right. It took quite a few years for me to get diagnosed,
01:22but at 12 years old, finally went to see a neurologist, who diagnosed me with this thing
01:28called CMT, Charcot-Marie-Tooth, and back in 1992, when I was 12 years old, there was no such thing
01:34as Google, and we were still dinosaurs walking around, so we couldn't go and, you know, have a
01:39look and investigate what Charcot-Marie-Tooth was, we just took the information from the doctor.
01:45Struggled through school quite badly, got bullied by, you know, people that were able, and they knew
01:50that I was different, I was walking very different, I remember getting called slug feet in an assembly,
01:56because we used to have to take our shoes off, and you'd walk on this hard floor, on the gym floor,
02:00to collect awards. I was very academic at school, so I was always winning awards, and I hated having
02:06to get up in front of the other children and walk. So then I left school, and I got my first job,
02:12and the world around me has somewhat changed, but I then quickly began to realise that the CMT
02:18was deteriorating, so I turned to drink and smoking, which I guess a lot of people do when
02:24they're 17, 18, and in their early 20s, but I think the drink and the smoking affecting me,
02:30and my peripheral nerves. Three years ago, I was given orthotic boots, which I will talk about on
02:35another video. I wouldn't have wore them in my younger years, but I wish I had, I wish I'd been
02:41told about them when I was in my teens, because the boots have helped me do so much more in life,
02:47that get me walking as near as normal as I possibly can. So here I am, I've always been
02:53embarrassed about having CMT, always tried to hide it, it's always been a conversation that
02:59I've always struggled with, but for the last three or four years, I've gone public with it,
03:04and I'm raising awareness, because people need to know, you know, these could be your friends
03:08and your family, but there are still people out there who have got CMT, who feel isolated,
03:14and nobody should ever feel like that. When I first started coming to the gym,
03:21I used to try and squat using a three-way bar, and it never went well, because I couldn't balance,
03:26I didn't have the orthotic boots at the time, and people would pass comment on to me saying,
03:31you're not getting deep enough, you're not getting low enough, you're damn right I wasn't
03:34getting deep and low enough, because I've got like really deformed feet and really weak ankles,
03:40and if the smith machine still isn't right for you, you can always use a leg press as an
03:46alternative, and if you still feel unsafe using a smith machine, you could put a bench underneath,
03:55so if anything was to happen, that will break your fall. So for me to use a smith machine,
04:03I like to keep my feet fairly narrow, just a little bit more narrow than shoulder width apart,
04:11slightly in front, putting more dominance onto the quads, keep your head facing forwards,
04:19lift the bar, and when you go down, nice and slow,
04:23legs parallel with the floor, and back up, keeping a nice velocity of movement.
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