Preparing You and Your Wheelchair for the Winter Weather

For wheelchair users the winter weather can be a tricky season to navigate. The ground can be muddy or frosty and compromise grip, your hands can become too cold to propel you chair, or staying warm can be difficult when staying seated. To help you prepare your wheelchair for those wet and soggy cold snaps, here’s a few things you can do.

Extra Grip Makes Pushing Easier

There are certain wheelchairs that are designed to be more capable on difficult terrain – like the Outlander All-Terrain – but having a wheelchair you might only use in certain seasons isn’t financially practical for most people. If you have wheelchair with smoother, less grippy tyres then you can add extra thrust to your pushes with a good set of wheelchair gloves. These Gel Padded Wheelchair Gloves can provide additional friction when propelling your wheelchair. This means less slip with each push and less wasted energy in those boggy moments. The gloves can also protect you from sores or grazes on you hands at all times of year, but with the dry, brittle hands that many get in winter this is especially useful.

Keeping Your Hands Warm in the Winter Weather

Grip and soreness isn’t the only thing that can make pushing a wheelchair even more difficult, the winter weather can also make you hands too cold to comfortably use them. Gloves are one solution, but fabric ones can become ripped with the wear and thicker gloves can take away too much feel for some people. They also prevent you from wearing specialised wheelchair gloves that would be best suited. However, the Comfi Fleece Hand Muff is a convenient way to keep your hands warm between pushing. The incredibly soft, fleece lined tube is suspended from a lanyard to prevent it from rolling off your lap. This means it’s always available when you need to stop and get the temperature of your hands back up. For added practicality, the outer layer is waterproof to prevent the fleece getting soaked through.

Staying Warm While Seated

For those who don’t use a wheelchair, staying warm when the temperature drops is just matter of wearing thick clothing and walking quickly enough to get your blood pumping. For wheelchair users, winter clothing can be cumbersome and uncomfortable to sit in, while being constantly seated makes it harder to stay warm generally. However, there are solutions to this inconvenience. The Comfi Wheely Cosy is designed to be more comfortable to sit in while still keeping you incredibly warm. The thick inner fleecing covers your lower body, while allowing you upper body to move unrestricted. This means you can stretch and lean without getting caught up in a winter coat. Like the Hand Muff, the exterior of the Cosy is waterproof for when the rain hits. Combined with some lightweight thermals for your upper body, the Cosy is the ideal way to be both warm and comfortable.