@Sasha,
Connie Sol, the exercise physiologist at INIM told me that many of the exercises at the
MS Trust are suitable for PWME. You'd definitely have to pick and choose, but I'd say these are more within our capability than a lot of those recommended for the elderly.
IIRC, she said no more than 5-6 minutes of exercise at a time, and one minute or less per exercise with rest in between. That's based on my test results, so YYMV, but all of us with exertion intolerance need to be very careful. The trick is not to use much aerobic energy. You want to use primarily your ATP-CP phosphagen system, not glycolysis-based systems. The point is to strengthen muscle while not overtaxing damaged energy systems.
Physical activities that last up to about thirty seconds rely primarily on the former,
ATP-CP phosphagen system. Beyond this time both aerobic and anaerobic glycolysis-based metabolic systems begin to predominate.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anaerobic_exercise
She also told me that if I feel I can increase exercise, I should do it by adding weight, not reps. As I understand it, as you exercise longer (add reps), you start to move into more aerobic energy use, so better to use weight and keep the time down.
As I understand it, we benefit from working the ATP-CP system so that it can take over a bit more of the energy-production work. Theoretically, we will be able to do more before reaching our AT if we have the muscle and other benefits derived from exercising in the ATP-CP range.
I confess that I'm not as good about exercising as I should be because it completely messes with my mind to exercise for only 5 minutes at a time. My intellect understands that this can indeed be beneficial, but my annoying emotional mind screams that this can't possibly be doing any good.
Consequently, I'm constantly fighting with myself to exercise. Unfortunately I'm losing the fight.
Maybe we need a 5-minute Exercise Support Group. "Did you do your 5 minutes of exercise today? Hurray, give yourself a gold star!
"