 In a previous video regarding injuries in the martial arts, I talked about recovering from foot surgery and how I coped with day-to-day challenges. In that video, I mentioned that I used the I Walk Free Knee Crutch. Now, I've had a lot of people ask me about the crutch, how it worked, how I liked it. Many people didn't even know it existed. I use it for six to eight hours a day, every day for six weeks. Everywhere I went, people were surprised to see it and had no idea what it even was. So, I thought I would take the opportunity to do a little bit of an in-depth review on it. This is just an earnest review for my own personal experience. This is not sponsored or paid in any way, so I'm going to tell you everything I liked about it and what I think can be improved and also who I think can benefit from it. I also have listed it below in the description, so if you are interested in picking one up, I highly recommend checking it out. So really quick to recap is back in 2015, I had a torn Achilles tendon in my left foot. The problem with that is I am very active in my work. I'm a video producer by trade, so I'm always doing studio work. I'm always on the field with cameras. I also teach part-time. There was no way I could afford to not work. And I can't run videos. I couldn't do any of this work on crutches. So I kind of panicked a little bit. I'm like, how am I going to do this? I have to have the surgery, but I cannot stop for three months. So I started to do a little bit of research. My first thought was, okay, well, they've got those wheelie scooters that people kneel on. Okay, that's an option. I looked at a few of them. They seemed pretty good, but there were still a few problems with that. One problem was, at the time, I lived in the second floor apartment. Wheels on stairs, those wheelie cars just don't work with stairs, and there were no elevators. The second problem was with the wheelie car, you usually have to guide it with a hand and kind of scoot on it like a scooter. That's great, but that left me tied up. I needed my hands free. If I was going to run a studio camera, you know, I run a camera crane, a jib, and you need two hands with that, and you need to be able to stand independently. And the scooters, you can't really turn without guiding and steering it. So I thought that was a good option, but it wasn't going to fit my needs because it didn't fulfill all the challenges. So I started thinking about, could I build something? Could I construct something? Thankfully, I had a little bit of time before the surgery to do some research, and I considered actually building the crutch of my own. So before I started looking at materials, I'm like, well, let me just take another look, see if there's something out there. And I did a random search on Amazon for knee crutch, and I found this. So I looked at it, did a lot of research, watched a bunch of videos. They have a whole set of videos online if people try it out for the first time. My first initial thoughts when I got it, first, of course, it doesn't come assembled. You have to put it together. And it's not too bad. The assembly is fairly simple, although the instructions aren't the clearest. So it might take you a few attempts. You might end up putting some rods in place and realizing, ah, I shouldn't have done that first. And you might have to take it apart a couple of times to put it back together, but it's not the worst thing in the world. Overall, it should probably take you about 30 minutes. Once you have it all together, you need to do a fitting and adjustment. This is a great tool, but if you're off balance with it, if it's not set to the right height, you will shortly start to feel a lot of hip pain in your other leg. So what they recommend is, and they have a whole series of videos on their website as well, and also the instructions, how to adjust it for the right height, because you want to be at the right level. So the last thing you want to do is be up, down, up, down. It's going to be very jarring on your joints, and it's not going to feel good after a while. So walk around with it for a while. It's going to feel weird at first. It's a little bit mentally scary, because when you first take your first steps on it, you're depending on another object. It's kind of like crutches. You got to lean on them, but it's weird doing it without your hands. So it's actually recommended that you just, there's a nice handle right here. Easy to grab. So when you're kneeling on it, you just kind of walk with it. Definitely when you first start out, use that. Get used to it. And I would say maybe after an hour or two hours of really walking with it, it starts to become second nature. Now, when you're practicing on this, practice stairs. That was one thing that excited me when I saw this. I saw tons of pictures and videos of people going up and down stairs. Be careful. You're not going to go flying up and down flights. Make sure, since your hands are free, make sure you hold onto your railing if there are any. Go slowly. You will be able to use stairs on this. It's actually pretty easy, but you still have to be careful. It was a total game changer. I had the surgery, came home. I was using it that night. And I'm telling you right now, if it's something you're going to have ahead of time that you know you've got surgery and you plan for it, get this built, get used to it ahead of time because the day of you're not going to feel like putting it together. Have it ready. I still had to take it easy and be careful, but this made all the difference in my day to day activity. I could use stairs. I was able to go on video shoots, carry gear up and down stairs. I was able to run the camera. Everything I was able to do beforehand, I was pretty much able to do on this. Even teach classes. It even got to the point where teaching class, I was able to throw kicks with it. I really shouldn't have done that. But with the kids' graduation classes, I was able to do the ceremonial kicks just by balancing on this alone. As far as taking this on and off, it's actually a pretty good build. They have built-in quick release straps right here. You just kind of pop them on and off. That easy. I would say that with these straps, it takes about 30 seconds more or less to put the device on and it takes about five to take it off. Now it's really good that it's so easy to take on and off because you're going to be doing it a lot. That's the one downfall I had with this is that you really can't sit down with it. It is too cumbersome. I tried and with the days I had some schedules, I was up and down, up and down. Again, I would be in the studio doing work. I'd be teaching class. I'd be going back and forth, getting in and out of the car. Thankfully it was on my left foot, so I was still able to drive with my right foot. But I was taking this thing on and off every day, one to two dozen times. So that gets a little tedious. But thankfully it's a quick release system. But you're not really able to sit with this. It's too bulky. It's too cumbersome. Plus you've got the still part that will be sticking out. You're going to have to take it on and off. So now let's get to the padding part and the comfort level of this. It's got a built-in knee pad right here. It's pretty good. It's a pretty durable pad. As you can see, this had a lot of use and it's taken some abuse, but it held up. The only thing is after a while, this padding gets compressed. And especially if you're using it every day like I did, I used it for six weeks nonstop. So at the end of those six weeks, the padding did start to feel a little compressed and hard. It's pretty easy fixed. Just honestly, if you feel it's getting too compressed, put a towel, something like that. It's easy to put other padding there. Although I do think that they should have made this a little bit more, maybe replaceable. Maybe it's like you could get a couple of replacement pads. It would have been nice to put in there or additional pads. That's my only real complaint is that after a while, it does get a little hard. Don't throw those crutches away. I would hold onto them because I actually found that they came in handy in conjunction with this many, many, many times. Now while you're able to walk on this, one thing you're not going to be able to do is go long distances on this alone. You're not going to be very fast. It does get tiring. If you're going to cross an entire parking lot, or you're not going to be walking miles, obviously, but if you're doing a long distance trek, this is not comfortable. For those long distances, you will get exhausted. I actually kept the crutches with me, and if I was getting out of the car and I had to go across the parking lot, the crutches I was able to fly with, while wearing this, you just lift your leg up and you go with it. When you get to where you're going, you can just put the crutches in your shopping cart, or if you've got someone with you to hold them and you go about your day. Now let's talk about durability. This sucker is tough. I mean, it's plastic and metal, and the plastic is really, really thick and durable. This thing got knocked around, dropped, banged around. It's got a few scratches here and there and a few nicks, but you could easily use this several more times if you had to. I mean, this is actually really good construction. I was very pleased with it. If you put it together right, at no point does it feel rickety. I mean, everything's nice and tight fit. It locks down tightly, nothing wobbles. You know, once you hold on the grip and you, once you make all your adjustments, the sucker is solid. So I give it A plus 10 out of 10 for construction and durability. You're going to feel very safe on this, and that is important. So with the I Walk Free, some funny stories though, if you wear this, be prepared for some funny reactions and brace yourself the pirate jokes are coming. It's unavoidable. It got old. No matter where I went, everyone's like, huh, you look like a pirate. It's basically a peg leg. But on the funny side though is, and this was my favorite, you can really mess with people, because when you're wearing it and you're facing someone front on, your knee, your leg is behind you, so it actually looks like you lost your leg. That was a little bit of a morbid joke I had walking around. It was kind of funny to see reactions for the first time. I would show up to a video shoot and I would see my client's face and get out of the car and walk towards them. They'd be like, what happened? And the second I turned around, I could see that wave of release. It was funny, because it really does look like you had an amputation, which is really not funny, but when you're strapped into a device like this, you take the humor where you can find it. One of my favorites though was the first time I came to class here to teach. I was in the parking lot walking and I saw some of the kids in the background and they're all like, I can see them whispering to each other and they're pointing to me and they're like, miss, miss, miss, miss. And when I turned around, they went, he has a leg. So it was really funny. So you're gonna get jokes. You're gonna get funny reactions. This is a bizarre contraption to most people. Most people haven't seen this. I went to a doctor's office and the nurses were like, what is that? That's awesome, it's amazing. So I'm actually surprised it's not more well known than what it is because, again, game changer. So that's my review on the I walk free knee crutch. This thing is tough, it's safe, it's comfortable enough and it will let you go about your day and minimize the inconvenience of being off your feet. So I have the link available in the description below. If you have any surgeries coming up or you've got any injuries, check it out. You won't regret it. Thank you so much for watching. And if any of you out there have any tools or martial arts products that you'd like me to review, please let me know and I'll check them out. I'm also really curious to know if anyone else out there has tried this and I would love to hear your thoughts. So thanks again for watching. Please be sure to subscribe and share.