Blaze MI AFO testimonial and strap adjustment instructions

In this Foot of the week, a patient explains his success with the Blaze AFO and Ian Engelman, CPO, describes how to determine and adjust the length of the AFO strap.

Video Transcript

Hi, Ian here from Insightful Products. Welcome back to Foot of the Week. I’m here with Jim and Jim is on his second Blaze Brace. And you’ve had some success, Jim?

 Yes. Yeah, I don’t even think about the brace when I have it on.  Once I put it on I just go about my daily activities including working out and I don’t even know I have it on.

I’m going to show you what a strap that looks like it’s too small and the problems you may have with fitting it. And then we’re going to show you how to cut the strap to the right length. So first of all, you have to take off the lateral pad. And if you notice there’s what looks like a loop on a belt.  And this weaves through and then back so that the middle part of this kind of belt loop part is over the top of the strap, like that. And of course, we have to put the lateral pad back in place here. Normally you would do this without the person in the brace, but this works fine.

This strap is too small, and you’ll notice that when we tighten it the seam is right along his shin here and that’s not desirable and a little uncomfortable. So, we’re going to go with the medium length strap. We’re going to be putting on the brace and checking the strap length and making that adjustment. So, the Blaze Brace fits into his shoe and maybe you can show everybody how you put it on from there.

You said you were using a long-handled shoe horn for a while.

Yes. 

But now you don’t need to, you developed that technique.

No, not when I can bend my knee.

The strap is slightly long, and you see how it’s not quite catching the Velcro so all we’ll do is cut that down.  Now it comes with this second piece.  And the reason we provide this is so you can get a finger under that edge and take it on and off.  I’m just going to cut it right about here. I’m going to put this back in place.  This goes basically on the last half inch there.  Okay, is that going to work for you?

Great now you’re off and running.

Yes, yeah perfect!

Thanks for visiting us at Insightful Products; we’ll see you next week.