Rehab program helps cardiac patients pick up the PACE
Cardiac rehabilitation program participant George Wozny, left, speaks to master's candidate Denver Brown in the Physical Activity Centre of Excellence.
Floyd Cooper’s life has always been an active one – even after he underwent a heart transplant.
The former Hamilton Tiger-Cat and CFL official grew up competing in football, track and field, basketball and badminton.
“I’ve always been athletically active,” he says. “It’s important for your body and your mind.”
But heart health issues, followed by a transplant more than two decades ago, threatened to change all that.
Cooper’s post-transplant rehabilitation plan included lots of exercise, which he performed at home, but he soon found he needed more of a challenge.
“I did that for about a year, but as time went on I realized I needed some sort of external stimulus,” he says. “I couldn’t keep doing it on my own.”
That’s when Cooper first heard about McMaster’s Physical Activity Centre of Excellence (PACE) and its cardiac rehabilitation program, formerly known as Mac Turtles.
He’s been going twice weekly ever since.
His workout consists of arm cycling, running on the treadmill, lifting weights and bicycling.
“It’s just part of my lifestyle,” he says. “Both the exercising and the social side of the program.”
McMaster’s kinesiology department will celebrate Cooper and a dozen others who have been involved in the program for 20 years or more at an event May 14.
The event will feature a lecture, a special presentation with the group and a coffee and cake reception.
Other longtime participants include well-known musician and McMaster Alumni Gallery inductee Glenn Mallory and Bill Beesack, who has been in the rehabilitation program for an astonishing 30 years.
“Within six months, fifty per cent of people quit cardiac rehab,” says Kathleen Martin-Ginis, director of the Physical Activity Centre of Excellence and professor of health and exercise psychology. “These men have been with the program for decades. They’re living proof of the benefits of exercise.”
The centre will also host its ninth annual Walk of Life for Cardiac Rehabilitation May 25 at 10am. The 5 km walk around campus is open to all members of the community and supports the cardiac rehabilitation program as well as the MacSenior Exercise and Wellness Program.
