Lesson video

Hi, Mr. Wnuk here again, and today's PE lesson, we're looking at balance.

Let's do it.

If you're unsure about doing any of the activities in this lesson, make sure you have a trusted adult nearby when you start them.

This session should take place in a space indoors, such as your living room.

Ensure there is space for you to work safely, including overhead.

Use bare feet, not socks.

Make sure the floor is not slippery.

Wear comfortable clothing, put your hair up if needed, and remove any jewellery.

Pause the video now if there's anything you need to get ready.

In today's lesson you don't need anything specific, however, I would advise you to be wearing your normal PE clothes, shorts and T-shirt, and just bare feet 'cause we will be doing this inside, so you don't want to be slipping over on anything.

Make sure, equipment-wise, you might want to use a mat or a towel just to lay down on the floor while you're doing these exercises, and a safe space, one and a half metres around you is fine.

It's time to do our warm up now.

As you've already done a few warmups with me in previous lessons, you should know what to do.

But please remember to do the pulse-raiser, the stretching mobility exercises, and a skill-related practise.

I'll see you in a few minutes.

So what's this session going to look like? Well, first we have already completed our warm up, so we're going to work on some basic yoga balancing poses on our feet.

We're going to do some yoga balances on our hands and feet.

We're going to do some basic gymnastics balancing.

And then we're going to design our own yoga training session followed by exit quiz.

So some of the keywords that we've already touched on today is passive stretching.

Well, this is when the stretch is reliant on external forces.

So you might use gravity or a coach to push your limb or your joint through that stretching motion.

We've looked at active stretching, and this is where your stretch is completed using the performer's own muscular force.

So you might pull on your feet and pull your head down.

It might be picking your foot up and stretching your quadriceps.

Static stretching is when the stretch is held still in position and you just hold it.

That picture on there is called a child's pose and it's a typical static stretch.

So which of these is a correct explanation for an active stretch? Is it a stretch that is reliant on gravity? A stretch that is reliant on a partner to help? A stretch that is reliant on its own muscular force? And a stretch that is reliant on an external force? If you said option three, well done, you're awesome.

Yes, an active stretch is where you use your own muscles to create that stretching motion.

So we're going to start looking at the skills, particularly focusing on yoga today.

So what is yoga? Well, it's an activity that involves a series of postures and breathing that focuses on strength, flexibility, and balance.

Sometimes the postures are called poses and we're going to learn a few of these poses today.

So what poses are we going to look at? Well, we're going to start looking at balances, and balance is used in basketball, football, volleyball and all sorts of sports.

Balance is used all the time, okay? It could be in any sort of team sport or any individual sport.

So today we're going to look at our basic balances using your feet, and we're going to look at these poses, a warrior, a tree, arabesque, aeroplane pose, followed by some basic hands and feet drills.

So poses.

So the downward dog, the tabletop, variations of those tabletops with 90 degree extensions and plank variations.

And then finally we're going to look at a few advanced balances where we're introducing gymnastics, where we look at the headstand and the handstand specifically.

Okay.

So we're going to start our balance training with yoga.

Make sure you've cleared the space around you.

You don't need huge space, around about one and a half metres around you is fine.

You need to make sure you've got bare feet 'cause we'll be doing this inside, and also dressing in appropriately loose clothing.

Make sure the area around you is clear and we're ready to go.

We're going to start off with our feet balances, on our feet and poses balancing on our feet.

So yoga, we call them poses.

So the first pose is going to be called a warrior pose.

So with this, you're going to start with your feet together and you need to breathe in and out.

So deeply breathe in and out.

Breath in, nice and deep, and out.

Okay, you got a big breathe, and as you breathe in, try and push your belly out, and then breathe out while sucking it in.

All right, the first step is to take a lunge forward.

So you're going to step forward with one foot and backwards with the other foot into a lunge position.

You want to divide your feet to one side of a line.

So my right foot is in the right side and my left foot is on the left side.

Put my hands down on the floor, And just lean forwards over your front knee.

Okay, from there, we're going to curl our back up and stretch your arms up in the air, and sink down into this pose.

So we're sinking into the lunge.

Keep your back straight, lift up from your shoulders and sink into your hips and try and hold that balance.

And hold it, breath in, and out.

And relax.

That's the warrior pose.

We'll do the next one from the side.

So you can see a different version.

So left foot forward, right foot back.

Draw an imaginary line so your left is on the left side, your right is on the right side.

Lunge forwards and reach down with your hands.

From there, curl your back up and reach up.

Keep that balance and lift up your arms and hold that pose.

Now what factors can affect our balance? While holding just breathe in and out.

So the first factor is core stability, okay? The ability of our muscles, our core muscles of the torso, to hold your body still.

The next is muscular strength.

You need strong muscles to hold your body still in position.

We call it a base of support.

So a good base of support which is your feet nice and wide.

The wider the base of support, the better the balance you're going to have.

At times we're going to move our centre of gravity.

So our centre of gravity may move forwards, it might come out of our body since gravity is the point of balance the gravity is sort of centred in your stomach or any part of your body really, and if I'm leaning forwards, it may move out just to keep me balanced.

And finally, flexibility.

If you're not very flexible, it might be hard to get in some positions, which might put you off balance.

One of the key things is to try and keep that centre of gravity over your base of support.

So I'm standing upright now, my centre of gravity is right in the middle by my navel, my belly button, and it's right over my base of support, my feet.

Pause the video and have a practise of the warrior pose.

Have a few minutes' practise and then come back to me.

Excellent.

The next pose we're going to work on is called a tree pose.

And again, we're working on it by standing up just on our feet.

So for this one, you're going to use balance on one foot.

So choose whichever foot you want to start with, you're going to do it on the other foot as well.

So with this, go flat feet to start with.

The foot you're going to lift up, is going to go onto tip-toe.

So just tip-toe with your foot, then lift your knee up high, okay? So your knee's up.

Squeeze your abdominals, your core, to keep your core stability strong.

Move your knee out to the side.

Oh, now my balance is going.

This is where your balance may go.

Knee up, hand stretched slightly, knee up to the side.

Just spread your toes to keep your balance and then put your foot against your leg.

Now, I'm not the best at yoga but I'm giving it the best I can and so I expect the same from you guys.

Put your hands in a position called a prayer pose.

And a prayer.

And just try to hold that position.

Try and use your abdominals to keep that balance and just breathe.

Oops, I'm going.

I've fallen.

Have you fallen? Try it again if you have, like me.

So I put my foot up.

How is that prayer pose? Now if you can balance, to make it harder, try and reach your arms up above your head.

I'm not going to do it because I haven't got the greatest balance for this one.

Just really spread your toes and squeeze your tummy muscles, your abdominals, and try and balance and breathe.

So what you'll be finding is probably the muscles in your very bottom of your leg, around your ankle they're contracting hard and your tummy muscles, your abdominals, are also contracting hard.

And that's the tree pose.

Try that on both legs and then pause the video and then come back to me.

Okay, so the next pose we're going to work on is a gymnastics pose called an arabesque, or a dancing pose.

With this, start with your feet together.

Okay? Squeeze your body as tight as you can to start off, getting that core stability working.

Then at that point, I want you to lean forwards at your hips, tilt in your hips.

At the same time I want you to lift one leg backwards.

So lift one leg up so we're balancing on one foot.

Then reach your hands forwards as far as you can for the balance.

And we're going to hold that position.

You're really tense in your abdominals at this point but also now we're working on the gluteus maximus, which is your bottom muscle.

Okay, I'm going to show you from the side.

Okay.

Now change your feet this time.

So I'm going to balance with my left leg.

Feet together.

Okay.

Tilt the hips, reaching my arms forwards, and lifting my leg backwards.

Now I haven't got the greatest flexibility to lift my leg up, but if you can, that would be awesome.

I'm losing my balance, see I'm wobbling around.

Now I'm focusing, I'm squeezing my abdominals, squeezing my gluteus maximus, and just trying to spread my toes as wide as I can, that base of support.

Now, my centre of gravity is still around here, but it's right over my base of support which is helping it maintain this balance.

An arabesque.

Before we practise that I want you to just think about this true or false question.

If your centre of gravity.

If the centre of gravity is above the base of support, you'll have better balance.

Is that true or is that false? Is it true or is it false? It's true.

Your centre of gravity, your centre of mass, needs to remain over your base of support to maintain good balance.

I want you to practise your arabesque now.

Pause the video and have a go.

Okay.

Welcome back.

We're going to do one more balance.

And this is very similar to the arabesque, it's called an aeroplane.

Instead of reaching our arms forwards, you're going to reach into the sides like wings.

So I'm going to straight away start you from the side.

I'm going to start with my right foot.

So feet together and put my arms out to the side as I tilt forward, and this time lifting my leg up again.

Now your arms are out like an aeroplane and use your gaze to try and keep your balance.

So just pick a point, stare at it, fix on it, and you will hopefully maintain your balance.

Now while we're in that position, deep breath in, and deep breath out.

Deep breath in, and out.

Now what you'll find is this will slowly relax your body.

It will help your mind calm and it will also help reduce anxiety and stress.

That's one benefit of doing any sort of physical activity, but particularly things like yoga, to help you control your mental health.

Great stuff.

I want you to practise that aeroplane balance, pause the video, and then join me again.

So one of the words you've heard me speak about a lot is balance.

And balance is the ability to keep our bodies stable.

Now, this can be static balance when we are stable staying exactly still, or it can be dynamic balance when we're moving, 'cause you still need to keep your body stable while you're moving.

We've also talked about flexibility and that's the range of motion available at a joint.

For this series of yoga poses we're going to look at using our hands and feet for balance.

And we're going to start off with a downward facing dog which is quite a traditional yoga pose.

So copy me and we'll talk our way through it.

Start off on your hands and knees, just like this.

Feet slightly far out, about shoulder width apart, and push your bottom up a little bit so your back's quite flat.

You need to take a deep breath in and a deep breath out.

And as we breathe out, we're going to push up onto your toes, pushing your bottom into the air.

Now, so you're going to take a deep breath in a deep breath out, and push up, put your bottom in the air.

Now, as you go, you want to try and drive your knees backwards and push your head down so it's in line with your shoulders.

You'll feel stretched on the back of your calves, your muscle called your gastrocnemius.

So try and hold that pose, push backwards into the movement and just hold that pose.

You'll feel the stretch just here on your calf muscles.

You need to push your bottom right up in the air and tense your abdominals and just keep breathing slowly, in and out.

And that's a downward dog.

I want you to pause the video and keep practising that downward dog.

So the next pose we're going to look at is called a tabletop pose and it's slightly easier than the downward dog, slightly less stretching, but it's more about core stability for this one.

So the balance position, our knees need to be hip-width apart and your hands need to be shoulder-width apart.

Now, what you want to aim to do is keep your arms at a 90 degree angle and the angle at your hip at 90 degrees as well.

So stare down in-between your palms and just hold that position.

Lay your toes flat and tense your abdominal muscles.

And this is a table pose, very straightforward.

Now, it feels quite easy, however, if you were to hold this position for a significant period of time you'd start feeling it around your abdominals.

Now you can make this a lot harder by taking one of the bases of support away.

So we could start by stretching your arm out forwards.

So do that now with me.

And that automatically starts changing the whole feeling of this movement.

You feel tension across the entire torso, around your pectorals, abdominals, just to keep your balance.

Change hands, and the other.

So we're holding this position.

You can do the same, if I get into a different angle for you, with your legs.

So I'm in the table pose, stay in that table pose, and lift one leg backwards, okay? At 90 degrees or.

Yes, it is 90 degrees to the leg but 180 degrees to the floor.

Okay, we can change other leg and we can hold that position.

So the more you get into these positions and hold them, the more core stability is going to be tested.

You can then make it even harder by reaching one arm and one leg up, okay? And you can change your arm and leg.

So we have variations of that tabletop pose.

Pause the video and practise the tabletop and different variations, and then come back to me.

Excellent stuff.

So what are the benefits of us doing regular yoga practise? Well, one of the benefits is obviously physical health, 'cause it is exercise.

It will improve your fitness as well.

So you would manage and cope with the environment you're living in, a lot more easily.

It'll improve your strength.

All of what we've been doing, these balances require the muscles to tense for a significant period of time to hold your body still.

It will help your balance 'cause this is all balance training.

And it will also help your flexibility.

Some of the poses require a greater deal of flexibility.

But the main benefit that we're really looking at, is improved psychological health.

So how well you can deal with information that's coming to you.

How you can cope with stress.

How you feel about yourself.

When you do any form of exercise your body releases a chemical called endorphins and those endorphins act in your brain and make you feel good about yourself, they make you feel good.

So the more exercises you do, the more endorphins you have, and the better you feel about yourself.

So the next pose we're going to look at is called a side pose.

And I'm going to start off with going down to my left hand going down to the ground.

You can go to the right or left, it doesn't matter.

So start on your knees and just reach one hand down.

Put your weight on that hand while your knees are on there.

So make sure your arm is strong enough to support your weight.

It's the first thing.

Now I'm going to stretch my knees out so that my body can make a nice straight line.

So I've essentially made a triangle between my arm, and my legs, and body, and the floor.

Now, from there, you can reach your arm up and just hold that balance.

To make it harder, you can stretch one leg out and take your weight on that leg.

To make it even harder, if you're up for it, two feet out and balance your feet on top of one another in that position, and balance there, squeezing your abdominals.

Your obliques are working here now, your abdominals, your shoulder muscles.

Remember that deltoid we talked about before a few lessons back? And hold it.

That's a side pose or side plank.

Try it on both sides and the variations I showed you that build up into it, and pause the video and then come back to me.

Okay, welcome back.

The final set of hands and feet balances we're going to do are just simple planks.

Now first is a plank on our knees and our hands.

So, I have my hands a shoulder-width apart much like the tabletop, but in this sense, rather than being in a square, I'm going to be leaning forwards so my knees are further back than my hips and I'm going to hold that position there.

Now the next plank, some call press-up shape, I'm going to lift off the knees off the ground and hold that position.

Some people call it a hover.

I'll show you another hover in a second.

And you'll just hold that position and stay off the ground.

The longer you hold it, the more your tummy and your abdominals are working, the more your gluteals are working.

Lots of muscles are working right now.

So two simple planks.

From there we're going to do a variation so we can move our feet or our hands much like we did in the tabletop.

So you get into that plank position but this time what we're going to do, we can lift our foot up if we want like we did in the tabletop and various exercises, or we can just start by tapping our foot out to the side and back, and the other foot out to the side and back.

Out to the side and back.

And we can do that with our hands in much the same way.

So we can practise by just holding a plank and moving your hands and feet in different positions.

And all of that is working your core stability, your abdominals, making them contract really hard to keep you in that position.

The final variation you can try is called a hover.

Very similar to the plank but it's on our elbows.

So you can start on your knees and your elbows, make sure your arm is straight underneath your shoulder and you can be on your knees or you can be on your toes.

And much like we looked at the plank, we can move our feet, lift our feet up, we can move our hands out, all the time working, we can move our arms out to the sides, working our abdominals.

So what I'd like you to do, pause the video, practise planks and different variations of what you can do while you're in a plank or a hover.

Have a go now, enjoy yourself and I'll see you in a few minutes.

So when we're doing yoga, which of these statements explains the psychological benefits of participating in yoga? Is it improved flexibility? Is it improved heart strength? Is it reduced stress and anxiety? Or is it increase the chance of depression? Well, if you said reduced stress and anxiety, you're right.

That's psychological.

That is right.

Flexibility and heart strength, well that happens in your muscles and in your body.

That's physiological.

Which of these is the correct definition of flexibility? Is it the range of motion at a joint? Is it the ability of a muscle to overcome resistance? The ability to keep the body stable? Or the ability of the muscle to sustain repeated contractions? Which one do you think it is? Well, hopefully you said option one.

Flexibility is the range of movement available at a joint.

So one of the other keywords that we've talked about today is core stability.

It's the ability of your abdominals and the muscles in your torso to assist in the maintenance of good posture and balance.

So the exercises that we've been looking at today really strengthen up those core muscles to help you stay in a good posture.

And muscular strength we talked about today as well.

Which is basically the amount of force applied when a muscle contracts.

And it can vary.

So obviously if you contract a muscle really hard you're going to produce a lot of strength.

If you contract a muscle lightly then you're not going to produce a lot of strength.

And that varies on the size of the muscle as well.

So which of these statements best explains muscular strength? Is it the ability of a muscle to generate force? The ability of a muscle to be stretched? The range of movement at a joint? Or the ability to keep the body stable? Well done if you said option one, the ability of a muscle to generate force.

Well done guys.

So another key word that we looked at today is abdominals.

They're the muscles in your stomach, in your lower torso.

So that six pack, that's what our abdominals are called.

And they're really important.

Throughout all of these PE lessons you've probably heard me referring to the abdominals.

So which of these is not a correct example for an isolated abdominal contraction? So which one is not an abdominal contraction? Is it the upward phase of a sit-up? Is it the downward phase of a sit-up? Is it holding a plank position, or is it a shoulder press? If you said a shoulder press, you are correct.

You may use your abdominals to keep your posture upright but it's not an isolated abdominal contraction like a sit-up when you're going up or down in a sit-up.

Okay, so you've come down to the ground a bit more now.

We're going to work on a few more advanced sort of balances and we're just going to build up the basics of some gymnastics balances.

So we looked at arabesque earlier, which comes from gymnastics.

So we're just moving from yoga to to this gymnastic balancing.

First is a headstand.

Now some of you may be able to do headstands.

I don't need to do a full headstand.

We're not going to do a full headstand today.

But firstly what you need to do is make sure the area around you is perfectly clear.

Make sure there's nothing in front of you that you could fall over onto and hurt yourself with.

And we're going to be very careful.

You must listen to my health and safety instructions as we go through this.

So I'm going to start on my knees.

My hands are going to go down onto the floor and open my palms of my hands.

I'm going to create a fairly big base of support here.

I'm going to put my head onto the ground.

And this is where you got to be careful because you don't want to get any neck injuries.

The part of my head that's going off the ground is this, my big sloppy forehead, okay? Now, it's quite easy to see my forehead, but it's generally the point where your hair stops.

And that point is where you're going to put your head down.

Now, obviously my hair stopped ages ago.

So I'm going to put my hands down flat and I'm just going to tip down and just rest my head on the ground forwards.

Now, I'm aiming to create a triangle between my hands and head.

So I put my down, I got my triangle shape now.

That's the first step.

What I'm not doing is putting the back of my head down.

I'm putting that forehead down just where the hairline starts.

Once you can do that, we're going to lift off on your toes and we're just going to hold a pike shape with our toes and arms. We're having four points of contact for this setup with our headstand.

So my head is down, my hands are down, one, two, three, and my fourth point of contact is my legs, and I'll try to drive my bottom up and over in line with my head.

I'm going to come from the side so you can see.

One, two, three.

Three points of contact, bottom up in the air, four.

And I'm just pushing on my tiptoes now so I'm trying to drive my bottom right up so it's just in line with my head.

Okay, as you're doing this, push into the ground a little bit so your feet are slightly coming away and you're just taking the weight off of your feet.

That is preparation for a headstand.

Don't practise it for too long because you'll start getting blood rushing to your head and you'll feel a little faint and light-headed.

You can't keep going too long on your headstand, your neck muscles need a break.

So I only do it for a few seconds and then come down.

Pause the video, have a go, about three goes, just holding that shape for maybe five seconds maximum then come back down.

Pause the video, have a go.

Okay.

How did that go? Right, we're going to be working on our handstand buildups now, or preparations for handstands.

We're not doing a full handstand 'cause we're not a gymnastics class.

We haven't got the facilities to do that.

We're just working the basics to be able to hold our body weight on our hands which is a very basic balance.

So again, start on your knees, just sit back on your knees and your toes, with your hands down, about a shoulder-width apart.

You want to lean forwards, take your weight on your hands.

Just push down so you can feel that weight on your hands 'cause in a minute you're going to take the whole body weight on your hands.

Spread your fingers nice and wide and just push your bottom into the air.

So we're sort of in a downward dog shape.

From there, you need to bend your knees and just do a mini bunny hop.

And bend your knees if you need to when you're bunny hopping so your body weight comes up and over your shoulders onto your hands.

Have a few goes at that.

I'm going to do one more.

So we're practising supporting our hands.

Now you can take that a little bit harder by instead of bend your knees just keep your legs straight.

So from here, my hands are down, my legs are up, and I'm going to bend my knees and I'm going to keep my legs straight.

As I lift up, I'm tensing my abdominal muscles as well as my shoulders to try and keep my body stable and still and balanced.

So from here.

Now you can count in your head how long you're holding that for, how long it lasts.

It's a good practise to strengthen all of your muscles of your arms, your shoulders, your abdominals and some of your hip-flexing muscles as well.

Pause the video, have a practise of these gymnastic skills, but not too many, 'cause you'll start getting tired and you don't want to crumple down and hurt yourself.

Have a guy now.

Good luck.

So you've tried the headstand and the handstand.

But when we're setting up a headstand, how many points of contact should you have on the floor? Think back to what I was saying.

Is it one, two, three or four? It's four, yes.

You've got two hands, one head, that's three, and then your feet or if it was when setting up a headstand.

Before we go on, let's look at this true or false question.

Yoga involves exercise that combine running, jumping and boxing.

Is that true or is it false? It's false.

You're right.

It doesn't involve those elements.

They could be used in the warmup but not in the actual yoga training session.

Yoga involves exercises that combine breathing, flexibility and balance.

So what is balance? Pause the video whilst you write down your answer using this sentence starter, balance is.

Well I hope you've written balances is the ability to keep your body stable when still, which is static, or when moving, which is dynamic.

So which of these poses is not a yoga pose? Is it the warrior, the bus, the tree or the aeroplane? Yes.

It's not a bus.

It's all the other moves that we've looked at today but we didn't look at a bus.

So this is an example of building a yoga training session and basically involves creating a list of poses.

So I've gone for the downward dog, followed by an aeroplane, followed by a tree, then a plank, then a child's pose.

So I want you to pause this video now and complete this task where you're going to build your own yoga session.

Your aim is to improve your balance.

And I want you to use some of the poses we've learned so far.

If you want to, you can go away and research some other yoga poses.

There's tonnes out there and you'll find lots and lots of examples of different yoga poses.

Some you'll be able to do, some you won't be able to do.

But have a look.

So to get started, the first pose in the session could be a downward dog, which is a very common pose in yoga.

Once you've finished, resume the video.

It's time to do our cool-down now.

Hopefully you can remember the stages that we've gone through in previous lessons.

But I'd like you to do a pulse-lowering exercise such as walking around your living room, followed by some stretches, and ideally static stretches, which means stretches you hold.

So what is balance and how can we train it? Well today we've looked at balance, and balance is the ability of keeping our body stable while either being still, which is our static balance, or while we're moving, which is dynamic balance.

So yoga is a specific way of training it.

And we looked at improving our core stability of our muscles to try and improve our balance.

And we looked at some of the factors that affect balance such as your centre of gravity and your base of support.

We also looked at the importance of doing yoga and the effect it has on your mental wellbeing.

And perseverance, about just trying to maintain focus on trying to reach those balances.

Now yoga is a great way of improving your health and fitness without really putting too much strain on your muscles and your joints.

So give it a go regularly.

You'll find it improves your mental wellbeing as well as your physical health.

I hope you've enjoyed today's lesson and I can't wait to see you in the next one.