Francois Fried’s Journey to MYOLYN

Recently, an old friend of MYOLYN’s, Francois Fried, finally purchased a MyoCycle functional electrical stimulation (FES) bike for his home. For the past four years, Francois had been maintaining his health in Brooks Rehabilitation Hospital’s Neuro Recovery Center, where FES cycling was a part of his regular routine. We met Francois at Brooks during a demonstration of the MyoCycle. When Francois tried the MyoCycle, he “fell in love with it”, but he couldn’t justify the expense, as he had regular access to FES cycling at Brooks.

However, like many who have access to a great therapy program, Francois eventually moved somewhere without a program like the Neuro Recovery Center, making it difficult for him to continue his therapy. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic didn’t make his search any easier.

That’s when Francois decided to commit to getting an FES bike at home, where he could use it on his own schedule, without the risks and costs of traveling to therapy. Shortly after his purchase, we sat down with Francois to hear more of his story and record it to share with others in a similar situation. 

Many people with paralysis struggle to continue therapy and improve their health because of the tremendous barriers to physical activity for people with disabilities. Continue reading to learn how Francois is tackling this challenge head-on.

Francois Fried’s Interview Audio 

Francois, please introduce yourself and tell us how you got here.

Hey my name is Francois Fried, I am currently 23 years old. When I was 19 I sustained a spinal cord injury during a motocross race. During the race I ended up landing short on a jump which made me fall out of my dirt bike and then I broke my back between T8 and T9 which resulted in me becoming a paraplegic with no motor sensory function. 

Throughout my doing a lot of therapy I realized that there were two key equipment that were beneficial to me which was to stand and to use an FES bike to really help me stay as healthy as I could. To keep my muscles strong and really just help minimize how many complications I have due to spinal cord injury. 

We understand that you had access to this key equipment in the Neuro Recovery Center, but then you moved. How did you plan to continue your therapy, despite lack of access to the facility?

So then that is when I understood that I needed to get those equipment at home so I wouldn’t be relying on a therapy place and I could really maximize my health benefits and take care of all those needs at home. I ended up discovering MYOLYN and I got to try out the MyoCycle and fell in love with it. And that’s when I really realized that MYOLYN had something that I really liked overall that I felt might meet my needs better than what I was currently using through the therapy center. 

You had a couple options when choosing what equipment you would get. You weren’t using the MyoCycle at Brooks — you were using a different FES bike. Why did you decide to get a MyoCycle?

Compared to what I was using at Brooks, the MyoCycle is much more affordable and easy to use at home independently. What makes me the most excited about the MyoCycle is for me to have that independence again, to be able to use it first on my own, to be able to maintain my health as much as I can because obviously it just helps me minimize many of the complications I’ll have due to my injury. 

Would you recommend that others with lower-limb paralysis get a MyoCycle for use at home?

Absolutely. To me, through all the years I’ve used my FES bike I’ve realized that it makes a whole difference of less visits to the hospital, less worries just about overall complications, and really just to have more freedom. More independence that I can now do my therapy at home and focus on other things, focus on things that an average person just focuses on. Not to focus on extra health concerns, extra needs to take care of yourself, it’s just at home easy to use and continues to get used.