Balance activity (Part 4)

Physical therapy

﻿Hello there, my name is Sophie Brazier. I'm a children's physiotherapist, thank you for joining me today for our lesson. So we are on unit five and this is lesson 10. And today in this lesson, we are going to be looking at a balance activity. And what we will be doing is we'll be having a little recap on why balance is important. And then we'll have a further look at an activity for some balance and that will be marching on the spot. So please don't worry, there will be options for you to simplify the activity and also if you want a little bit more from it, there'll be options to extend it as well. So all you'll need today is just yourself. You don't need any equipment for the activity. And if you need some help from a parent or carer, you might want to ask them now. And then we can get started with our lesson. I would just like to give you a little message from our team. We as therapists, have tried to think of the best way to continue to support children, young people and their families. So you may be watching this as a child by yourself, or you might be with a parent or carer. We will be exploring topic areas that we regularly provide advice and support on across all ages and abilities. And each lesson, we will aim to give you some ideas and activities that can be carried out either at home or in school. You may already have specific programmes that you're using, or advice that has been given to you by your child's school or therapist. So please make sure that you're using any information I'm giving you alongside anything you already have. And if you do have any questions, or would like help tailoring this to their needs, then please make sure you get in contact with your local therapy service. So let's recap on what is balance. So balance is when you're able to remain upright and steady. And how does this happen and help? So we maintain balance through information from our eyes, our joints, through our muscles and skin, as to where our body is in space. So we get given all this feedback from our joints, and that can help our balance. And also from our inner ear as to how our head is moving. So those will work well to give us feedback, and that can help our balance. And our body uses this information to change the muscle activity, the muscle tone, known as equilibrium reactions. So this information is really important that it's fed back, so that then we are able to respond to the environment or the position that we're in to then use our balance to accommodate how we're moving. And it also helps because it can change our posture, move our body parts to keep us in the middle, known as righting reactions. And it can help us to focus our eyes more. And why is balance important? So balance provides the body with the stability we need to maintain postures and to move. It helps keep us steady when we want to move a body part, such as our head, arm and leg to do something. And it can keep us in a position that is better for us. So when we're eating, drinking, seeing things we're listening, we're communicating, and we're learning. And it can help prevent us from falling, and from getting injured. So balance helps us keep both feet on the ground. So I'd now like you to try this activity and the activity is marching on the spot. So you're going to stand with your feet directly below your hips, so you're stable and balanced. And you're going to lift one knee up, and then down, and then the other slowly and in a controlled way, so you're beginning to march. And I'd like you to repeat this for about 30 seconds to start with. And just see what's happening to your weight transfer as you're moving leg to leg and have a little think about how you're feeling balance wise. Do you feel balanced? Do you feel unsteady? And just try that for a small amount of time to begin with. And if you pause the video now, have a go at that and then rejoin me, and we'll go through some ways to simplify and extend and we'll have it written down. So here is a demonstration of marching on the spot. So you can see that my starting position is a good stable base, and then I'm starting to lift my knees, so I'm doing one leg at a time, up and down, and I'm starting to march a little bit like a soldier. Then here, I am taking it to the side so you can see what I'm doing from a different angle. And I might then introduce a little bit of movement with my arms. So I'm extending the activity and I'm changing my balance as I'm doing that. So I'm introducing my arms, and I'm doing opposite arm and leg, and then I'm introducing now some movement to my marching. So this is changing the speed of my marching and also I'm lifting my legs up a little bit higher, which can change my balance as well. And then I'm introducing forwards and backwards marching. So there's some options there for you to try. So if you go in have a go at those, then you can rejoin me afterwards, and we will talk through the options. So for some ways to extend or simplify that activity, you can make it more challenging by increasing the speed of your marching. So this might change your balance when you're increasing the speed. So you saw in the video that I was starting to march a little bit faster. So you could play around with marching faster and slower and see how that affects your balance. You can add your arms in as I showed for more whole body involvement. And again, this is going to maybe affect your balance, it might make you more stable, or if you're moving your arms fast, it might make you a little bit wobbly. So just see how you notice, if you notice any difference when you add in these variations. And then you can travel forwards and backwards to make it more dynamic. So that just means more movement involved. And you can, I didn't demonstrate this but you can turn it into a skip. So you're then lifting off the ground and you're making it more active and obviously then your balance is going to be tested even more. So, a way to simplify that activity, and make it a bit easier, is you can slow it down to really decrease the speed and that will make you more stable. You can do the exercise for a shorter amount of time. And you can try some seated knee lifts, so exactly the same thing but do it in a seated position and just lift one knee at a time. And when you're doing this, really think about transferring your balance so your weight transfer from side to side when lifting each leg. So there are a few options for everybody. And just please take the one that works best for you. And if you pause the video now you can have a go at those and then rejoin me for the end of the lesson. Now that brings us to the end of our lesson today. So thank you for joining me and taking your time to do that. I hope you found it useful and you enjoyed the exercise and you were able to build up as you needed, and you can see how it can help improve your balance. So please join me next time for lesson 11 in unit five, where we will be looking at coordination. So we'll be moving on to that topic within this unit and we will look at an activity that is called a spotty dog. So if you want to find out more then please join me for that. So I hope you have a great rest of your day. Take care and I will see you soon. Goodbye!

Balance activity (Part 4)

Balance activity (Part 4)

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