Andrew Marr hopes gruelling therapy will help a full recovery following stroke

 
Josh Loeb15 April 2013

Andrew Marr said he is undergoing “exhausting” physiotherapy in his fight to make a full recovery following his stroke.

The BBC broadcaster said he hopes the gruelling therapy will help him get normal movement back in his legs after the attack left him with mobility problems.

Marr, who lives in Richmond, told the Standard: “I’m trying to keep away from further comment until I’ve finished the physio, which is totally exhausting.”

Yesterday he made his first television appearance since the stroke - on his own show, The Andrew Marr Show.

He said he felt “lucky to be alive” after the stroke in January which he blamed on overwork and an intensive rowing machine session.

The 53-year-old, said he had fallen into the “terrible” trap of believing stories in the media which encouraged people to “take very intensive exercise in short bursts - and that’s the way to health”.

He said: “I had been heavily overworking - mostly my own fault - in the year before that. I’d had two minor strokes, it turned out, in that year - which I hadn’t noticed - and then I did the terrible thing of believing what I read in the newspapers, because the newspapers were saying what we must all do is take very intensive exercise, in short bursts, and that’s the way to health.

“Well I went onto a rowing machine and gave it everything I had, and had a strange feeling afterwards - a blinding headache, and flashes of light - served out the family meal, went to bed, woke up the next morning lying on the floor unable to move.

“Beware rowing machines, or at least beware being too enthusiastic on rowing machines would be my message to the nation.”

Fitness expert James Lamper said the exercise technique he may have been referring to was one popularised by Marr’s own BBC colleague.

High Intensity Training or HIT was brought to prominence by Michael Mosley, who reported on it for the BBC’s Horizon programme.

Mr Lamper, who has worked with Gary Barlow and Myleene Klass, said: “What Andrew Marr is probably talking about is something called High Intensity Training, which has had a lot of publicity in the press and media.

“The idea is that if you do short and intensive bursts of exercise at maximum exertion it will have benefits to your physiology and can lower your blood glucose level and increase your metabolism.”

He said HIT was fashionable among people who worked long and stressful hours as it did not involve sacrificing much time and was seen as a way of achieving “maximum benefit for minimum effort”.

However, he warned that the technique could involve risks for older people, adding: “To put your body at such high exertion if you are not ready for it, if someone has high cholesterol for example, could be dangerous. If somebody goes from being a couch potato and progressively builds up and four months later goes into the High Intensity Training it is much safer than if you go straight into it.

“Especially if you are somebody who’s been quite sedentary to then just jump on a rowing machine obviously could have complications.”

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