How My Blindness Affects My Fitness Activities

The first order of business is to get out of the way: if by ‘fitness’ you mean lose weight, that’s not what this is about. Losing weight happens in the kitchen, not by exercise alone. Losing weight is not a bad thing to do at all. Most of us could stand to lose some.

At least in my experience with my visual impairment, we can do anything. There may be something I have not attempted, but everything I have tried has been somewhat successful. Some of the things I have tried were more difficult to learn than others or required a little more care on my part. Box jumps will be slower. Sometimes I have to feel around for something if I drop it. It’s another example.

I am deeply grateful that my parents raised me to think that I could do almost anything. My blindness never defined me. It was just a part of who I am. I grew up running, playing, riding bikes, and having fun.

Back after my dad died at a young age, and I wanted to do my best to get in good shape, I joined CrossFit. Some things we did took me longer to learn, and others went quickly. In the end, I was able to do almost anything except for a few skills totally unrelated to my vision. I’ll go over some here on how I make it work.

Lighting

Lighting is a very important factor to me when working out or in life in general. I like to have plenty of light if there are things in the workout that I need to see. Squatting and stuff like that, on the other hand, I can do with virtually no artificial lighting. For them, the bar is where it’s always going to be.

Sunlight coming in the window can be a huge problem for me in a couple of ways.

It is shining in towards me from a low enough angle that the brightness basically just illuminates the cloudiness of my cornea. When that happens, I can’t really see much of anything. I tend to keep the curtains on the west shut in the afternoon this time of the year for that reason. It’s also an issue working out on the patio when the sun is too low.

However, being positioned with the sun behind me is disadvantageous in another way. During bright, sunny days, things get lost in the shadows. The surrounding brightness messes with what I can see through my cloudy corneas. It’s not too bad if the sun is at an angle, but if it’s directly behind me, it can be a nightmare.

As far as artificial light goes, we have a pretty good setup in our garage now. The old fluorescent fixtures were going bad, so we got some LEDs. They are much closer to the ceiling, and we also placed them in a way that they do not really cause too much of a shadow issue for me. The old lights were right in the middle of the ceiling, so that was a problem at times.

Space

For me, with my visual impairment, space is one of the most important factors when working out. I prefer, or I guess it would be better to say that I need plenty of clear space. Depending on what I am doing, I tend to migrate a bit. It seems I migrate towards one side.

Back when we did Crossfit people would be all over, and more than once I got distracted by someone crossing into my space. I think the worst time was when a woman parked a stroller right next to me with a screaming baby while I was working out. I think I was doing shoulder to overhead.. That instantly screwed up the workout for me. It should have been common sense not to do that. Also, the coach should have told them all to stay out of our way.

Here at home, that stuff isn’t really a problem. Our space is a bit tight, but I do manage to work around it.

Another thing that goes along with open space. Consistently keeping my equipment in the same spot when I am working out is something I learned is very helpful to me. The barbell isn’t so bad, but dumbbells matter a lot to have them in the same spot. I don’t see them as easily. It is also good to have them lying in the same direction pretty consistently.

If the WOD is calling for hang snatches or something that doesn’t call for movement from the ground, I tend to put the dumbbell(s) on a box. I can see them a little better because they’re a little closer to me.

Running

Yes, legally blind people can run. It’s a little slower as I pay extra attention to my surroundings, mostly by listening. I don’t. That certainly slows me down a little, but at least I am doing something for these short runs that we do for Street Parking.

I always stop and look, and mostly listen, at the one intersection in our alley. One day, several years back, one of the trucks from the person who lives there came barreling around the corner through the stop sign. He was probably drunk.

Olympic Lifts

I sometimes run into the problem with these being slightly off-center on the bar. It really doesn’t make a difference for me until I get up near my max weight. If I could visually see it, I would have less of an issue. For some reason, I don’t feel the knurling as well as I should.

Split jerks did take me a little while to get down. Relying on my good eye has just made me favor one side too much, so when I’d do the split jerk, I would do the same. The catch is I’d visually favor my weaker side and tend to be unbalanced.

It took me watching many videos where I could see up close and much better than in person to understand some aspects of both the clean and the snatch. If I had a bar here at the time, I would have picked up on them faster, but I didn’t have the means to watch a video at the old CrossFit gym.

Box Jumps

When I first began doing box jumps at the old CrossFit gym, I placed the box next to a wall and jumped towards the wall. That way if I missed I could catch myself on the wall. I never missed doing that, and it helped me build the confidence to do them wherever was convenient. I did find that jumping on plates did not work for me because of the poorer contrast with the floor and the target is much smaller.

I prefer to jump onto a wooden box. It is nice and solid, and the wood is a very good contrast against the dark floor.

Another thing I discovered for myself is that the soft padded boxes do not work well for me. Since I am not really able to see where I am landing, I go mostly by feel. Those feel too unstable, and they tend to wobble. If that is the only option, I will either do just step-ups or jump over it.f

For me, doing step-ups is usually pretty problematic. With my lousy vision, I don’t often have a good idea of where I am in relation to the box that I am stepping up onto. That slows me down a lot, so I am not able to do them as quickly as my body would allow me to do them. That’s okay, though. I would rather be safe and working out than regretting that I hurt myself.

Step Ups

I do tend to misstep at times while doing them. When I step off, I have developed the habit of stepping back farther than I need to. My foot can clip the box when I am stepping down if I don’t do that.

Obviously, I need to make sure the area in front of the box is free of the stuff. When I am doing a workout with the barbell, our space is too tight, so I have to take the extra second or two to roll the bar back away from the box.

Also, I need to be extra aware of how I am aligned with the box. If I am at an angle, my foot can not be fully on the box. That has happened more times than I would like to admit. Another thing I do to help with that is take a split second to feel that my foot is planted well on the box before stepping up.

Street Parking has suggested stepping on a bench if that’s all you have, and I think for most people it’s a great suggestion. For me, it didn’t work. The bench has such poor contrast against the ground I couldn’t see where I was stepping. Additionally, the feet stuck out far, and I would trip on them or worse, step down onto one. I rolled my ankle once stepping on the wheen. Another thing is I would catch my foot under the bench when stepping up and nearly did a face plant on more than one occasion. The feel of stability is not there with the padding on the bench, so that throws me off too.fs