Way, way back in the mid-seventies a tenth grade classmate of mine tore up his knee playing football and had to have knee surgery. Back then there was no arthroscopic surgery and after knee surgery patients would end up in a cast from their hip to their toes. He'd never been on crutches before this and the first I saw him after the surgery was when I walked into our Biology 2 class. He sat directly behind me in that class and he was already there, drenched in sweat and looked like he'd just run a marathon.
He said, "Man! I never knew using crutches was so hard. I've seen you using them and thought you made it look easy, but those things are killing me." I told him they weren't so bad and he'd get used to them soon. Towards the end of the class he asked the teacher if he could be excused early as it took him a while to get to the next class on his crutches and the teacher said fine. He asked me if I'd carry his books for him and I agreed. I picked up his books and my books and stood up walked towards the door. I then stopped and looked back for him and he'd disappeared.
This was a kid who was about 6' 3" then and was a good four inches taller than me and pretty much all muscle. I looked down and he was on these ridiculously short crutches that had him in a sitting positon with his long cast stuck out in front of him. He staggered forward a step or two on the crutches and was by my chair when I told him to stop and take a seat at my desk. He gladly did so as sweat was already beading up on his forehead from just those few steps.
I asked him, "What idiot adjusted your crutches?" Our teacher came over and agreed that they were set way too short. He said that was how the therapist gave them to him and they told him he'd have less far to fall using shorter crutches. I asked him how many times had he fallen so far. He said he'd lost count, he'd fallen so many times. I pulled out a pencil and marked where they had the crutches set and adjusted them to my height, which was still short for him and showed him how crutches were meant to be used. I then gave them to him adjusted to my height and had him try them out that way.
Even though they were shorter than I'd set them for him, they were a ton easier to use at that height. He rapidly agreed to keep them that way until he saw his doctor after school that day. His mom picked him up after school and she almost had a heart attack when she saw him on the taller crutches.She told him the doctor would be very upset and she wasn't taking the blame for it.
When the doc came in to see him she immediately told the doctor, "It wasn't my idea." The doc asked what she was talking about and she pointed to the crutches and said her son had let some kid at school change the crutches to a higher setting and she didn't know about it. The doc had him stand and try the crutches and said, "Actually they should be a little taller than they are now." He adjusted them higher still and had the kid try them out and pronounced them good at that height.
His mother was very confused. "But the therapist said to keep them low so he wouldn't have far to fall." The doctor asked him how many times had he fallen on the short crutches. The kid said a lot. The doctor then told the mother that he'd fall a lot less with them adjusted properly. The kid was in the cast for about four weeks and with the properly adjusted crutches he was arguably the fastest person in the school. He didn't fall once after getting them properly adjusted and once he got the hang of them, he was like lightning.
A normal human stride is typically about thirty one inches. With a tall crutch that stride length can be a bit longer making you faster on crutches than you are off of them. Instead of a thirty some inch long leg pivoting at the hip, you've now got a 40"-50+" long leg pivoting at the shoulder. When you get good on crutches people with you have to hustle to keep up with you.
Getting them porperly adjusted, using them together rhythmically (often the hard part for people who tend to move one ahead then the other) and just relaxing and trusting the crutches to do their job, and you'll find crutches aren't all that bad. I personally prefer a taller crutch as I find it makes it easier to roll over the top and you end up with a longer stride, but I've been using crutches off and on since I was two, so I'm pretty used to using crutches. You have to be careful on wet floors/surfaces and ice, but you do even without crutches so it's not much different.
As a rule people overthink using crutches when in fact they're very easy and quite safe to use. If you've ever done the butterfly stroke in swimming with both arms moving forward in time, that's the type of movement you want with crutches. A simple, rhythmic movement of the crutches, a quick hop forward from the good foot as you roll over the top of the crutches, land on the good foot, and repeat. It's not nearly as hard as people make it look. I'm not sure that using crutches isn't one of those life skills that everyone should be taught at some point in their early life. Sooner or later everyone will likely end up on crutches for a bit, so learning to use them at a young age is wise. It's something you never forget once you learn it and it's a good skill to have.
Fly!!! Eagles!!! Fly!!!
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