Push and pull

Occupational therapy

﻿Hi, I'm really looking forward to our lesson today. I hope you are too. Before we get started, this is just a little reminder. We're here to support any approaches you might already be using and any work you might have already been set. We know that this lesson is going to be going up so many different children and families. So if you're not sure about anything or have any questions, then please do contact our usual therapy team. Today's lesson is going to focus on pushing and pulling, using our arms as a way to improve the strength in our shoulders and our shoulder girdles. Because remember improving the strength and the stability in our shoulders and shoulder girdles will mean that we will have much better and more efficient, fine muscle skills. Why is it so important that we need to practise pushing and pulling? Well, when we are pushing and pulling things, we use lots of muscles in our shoulders and our backs. And this requires quite a lot of strength. So it's a really good way for us to get even stronger. And remember what we said, strong shoulders, means strong arms, which means really good fine muscle skills. When we're doing lots of heavy work, pushing and pulling, we're using lots of our muscles. And that actually helps us to calm and relax. Which can be really organising for us. In our lives, we'll find that we need to push and pull a lot through our lives. We have to open doors and that's either pushing the door or pulling the door. We have to move tables. We have to pull out a chair from under our table and push our chair back under. And we can have really lots of fun doing games, such as tug of war. So for today's lesson, you're going to need, a partner or adult and something for tug of war such as a skipping rope or some really stretchy material like some lycra. Once you've got everything restart and we can get going. So our first activity is called the wall push. So for this activity, I want you to stand in front of a wall and make sure that your further than an arms length away. And then place your hands on the wall. Your hands should be at about shoulder height with your palms flat on the wall opposite your shoulders. So not up there and not down here. Right opposite your shoulders. And then, I want you to try and imagine that you need to push that wall down. So push as hard as you can for as long as you can and see if you actually managed to move the wall. So a strong core strong tammy muscles, strong back muscles, strong in your legs. And you're just going to push that wall down. And then relax. And again, you're going to push the wall down. Now you can try this with your hands closer together or further apart. And that will give different muscle groups, different chances to work together. So there, you can see, a man doing a wall pushup. He is pushing and moving. Ooh the blue man is just pushing and holding and he's holding and he's holding and he's holding. And then he relaxes and he's going to do it again. So you can do either of those. Both are really excellent. So I want you to pause the video now to try a wall push. When you're ready, restart the video. So our next activity is a hand push. So palms of your hands, put them together in front of you with your fingers pointing up. I want you to press your hands together as long as you can, for as hard as you can, Which shoulder do you think is stronger? The left or right, which will push the other one. Oh my goodness. So you can try seeing, if you put some play-doh. let me get some Play-doh guys. If you take some Play-doh and you put it in between your hands. So it starts off like that. Nice big chunk. We going to put it there and our hands. Are you ready? Let's see how flat we can make it. And we're going to push, push, push. Remember, don't hold your breath. It's really important that you breathe nicely. Oh my goodness! That was exhausting. It's not bad. I think if I put the play-doh in different parts of my hands, it might get flatter. So the heel of my hand is really strong. Are you ready? Let's watch. Nice deep breath, strong tummy muscles, strong pore and push push push push. Awesome. So you can do that. Or you could also try and just take some, paper that you scrunch up. So we got a little paper there and let's see how much flatter we can get that. Are you ready? Ooh I'm not... I think I need to engage muscles. Ready and push push push push push push push. That was exhausting look a nice little pancake. Awesome work. Pause the video to try a hand push. Restart when you're finished. Right. For the next activity. I want you to go and get your adult or carer, a responsible partner. And you're going to put your hands together at shoulder height. Remember, it's really important that it's at shoulder height. Cause that's when you're going to get a really strong line of force. You need to go ready steady go and then ongoing push as hard as you can against each other. The trick is you're not trying to push each other over. It's actually quite hard to push hard enough that you're pushing, but not so hard that one of you falls over. So it's really a team activity. If I were to say stop you really need to stop. Or if you were to push me back, then we can see that actually you're pushing really hard and we need to stop. Okay. So, pause the video and give that a go. Restart once you're finished. The last activity is called tug of war. So I want you to get your skipping rope or something stretchy. Stand opposite, your partner, your activity partner, or an adult. And you're each going to hold on to the last say that, 50 centimetre like a ruler of the rope or the skipping rope. Don't hold right at the end. So give yourself to hold it. And then there must still be a little bit hanging off. Again, you're going to go ready, steady. And when you say pull, you're going to pull as hard as you can against each other. And what would be really good is if you took small little steps backwards and forwards. But don't pulls so hard so that your partner falls over. And if they start to fall forwards or backwards, or if there's a stop, then you need to stop. Watch this video of my new puppy Buddy, playing tug of war with Busta. Look at them go pull pull pull. Restart the video again. But he's trying really hard. He's yielding all his muscles and Busta though is using his legs and his back, which is really strong. So Busta is going to win that one. And there you can see a picture of some people pulling a rope, doing team sports of tug of war. Pause the video and have a go a tug of war restart once you're finished. So if the pushing is too tricky for you, then you can try putting your hands just a little bit lower down. And other ways that we can work on pushing is getting a wheelbarrow and helping your parents or grandparents or carers, when they are doing gardening. When anyone's doing some vacuuming, you can do that on a thick carpet. Really good for your shoulders, mopping, sweeping, pushing a friend or sibling on a swing, really good activity for you. And as I said, some nice stretching material. If you had just a little piece, you could do it on your own by simply pulling, pulling pulling and relax. Pulling are you going to break it. Remember do the best for you. Practise, practise, practise. Please be very careful and make sure that you don't push or pull so hard, that your activity partner gets hurt or that you hurt yourself. Thank you for listening as always. If you'd like to, please ask your parent to carer, to share your work on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter, tagging @OakNational and #LearnwithOak Bye.

Push and pull

Push and pull

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