Your Sport Is Walking. Somebody Owes You a Program.

Michael Lepp spent fifteen years as Senior Athletic Advisor at Joe Gibbs Racing, building the pit crews that won championships. The whole time he was also writing exercise prescriptions for cardiac and PAD patients and running a supervised walking group he called the Dawn Patrol. Forty years of doing both at once.

When he came on The Heart of Innovation, he told us the training plan he used to write for a PAD patient and the program, was similar to the one he built to win championships. Multifactorial. Individual. Built around a plan.

Then he said this:

"Everybody's an athlete. My cardiac patients are athletes. My drivers, my pit crew, they're all athletes. It's what is their sport. Just because you're walking doesn't mean the pain and discomfort you have to tolerate to develop that collateral circulation is any different than any athlete I work with."

Every athlete gets a program. A schedule. Somebody with a stopwatch who notices when you don't show up.

So we asked 122 of you on the registry form whether anybody ever gave you one.

Seventeen of you got a real program. Structured, supervised, somebody watching the clock.

Sixty-seven of you were told to go walk. That was the entire prescription. Go walk.

Twenty-nine of you were never told to walk for PAD at all.

No coach in any sport hands an athlete a training plan that says "go."

Then there's the harder number. Fifty-eight of you can't make it one block before the pain starts, and 33 of you feel it in the first few steps. You were told to walk more. You walked. It hurt. You stopped.

Nobody told you the pain is the point.

That burning and heaviness at your limit is the signal. You walk into it, you stop, you let it clear, you go again. That cycle is the active ingredient. It's what tells your body to open the small side branches that carry blood around the blockage. Collateral circulation. New blood vessels. Built by the work.

It's also why supervised exercise therapy is first-line treatment for claudication, and why Medicare pays for it under billing code 93668. Twelve weeks, three days a week, somebody writing down how far you got.

Which brings me to the number I love in all of this.

One hundred and five of you have never been handed the best treatment there is for this disease. It's still sitting there, in front of you, unopened.

You're early.

So ask your doctor for supervised exercise therapy, and say the code out loud: 93668. If they don't know where to send you, come to us. Our My Steps Walking Program is physician-monitored, three months, built for PAD legs, and more than 600 people are walking in it right now. Our Global Network, including our Facebook Groups, is 12,000 patients who show up for each other on the days nobody feels like showing up. That's the Dawn Patrol. It takes care of you on the days you can't take care of yourself.

And if something feels off with your legs today, call the Leg Saver Hotline at 1-833-PAD-LEGS. It's free. Someone will answer.

Twenty-nine of you were never told to walk. Would you consider opening up the conversation with your doctor about walking as medicine?