Strengthening your core in lying (Part 2)

Physical therapy

﻿Hello there, my name is Sophie Brazier, I'm a children sociotherapist. Thank you for joining me today for this lesson. This is unit two on Core Strengthening, and this is lesson five, where we are going to be continuing looking at core strengthening in lying. And I am going to show you today an activity you can do that is called bridging. So you might have heard of this activity or done this activity. You might have it as part of a therapy programme, and it can be a really nice activity to activate the tummy muscles and also all the muscles around your core and that help keep you nice and strong and stable. And as usual, I will be showing you some ways to simplify the activity and some ways to extend it and make it a little bit harder if you wanted to. So there's lots of options for everybody. So again, for this activity you don't need any equipment, you maybe just need a mat or a blanket if you're on the floor, to make you a little bit more comfortable. And if you need help from a parent or carer, you might just want to ask them to be near you. So give this one a try and we'll make a start. 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 we're going to start with a recap 'cause I always think it's a good idea just to go over what we've learned before. So we are going to have a little think today about why is core strength important and we're going to have a look at an exercise later on. And let's begin by thinking about why is it important? So you need to have that coordination of your core muscles, so you need to have that strength for the coordination to be there. So you need that coordination with just enough contraction at exactly the right time and in the right sequence. So when those muscles are activated, all those things can happen without realising it. But you need that core strength to be there first, so that that can happen. And you need to have your core strength because it needs to be activated to make sure that your head and your trunk are steady, so that you can move in a better way and more freely. And if we go through the flow chart again, a strong and stable core can help prevent injury, which is what we want, and it can also protect your body. So it can help with your posture and it can reduce and prevent back pain. So remember back to all the previous lessons in this unit of unit two, where we've talked about having a good strong core that can help your posture. And in unit one, where we looked at posture, if you've got a good strong posture, and you've got those nice alignments and those nice curves of your spine, maintaining those natural curves and keeping those good postures will all work together. So the core and the posture work together to help prevent and reduce back pain, and ultimately give you a better healthier body. So now I would like you to pause the video, to complete this little activity. And the activity we're going to be doing is a bridging activity. So you're going to be doing it on your back. So as I said at the start, you don't need any equipment, you just need yourself. You may need a parent or carer to help you. And I'm going to show you some ways to simplify or extend the activity a little bit later on after the demonstration. So for the activity of bridging, you need to be lying on your back with your knees bent up and you need your feet flat on the floor. You don't need your feet to close your bottom. So in the demonstration, you'll see where my feet are, but you need your feet, I'd say towards your bottom but give a little distance, so you've got a nice stable base. And you want to lift your bottom slowly off the floor and then slowly lower it. So you're going to see in the demonstration how high I left mine, but you don't want to be lifting it mega mega high so that you create an arch going the other way on your back. What you want to be doing is squeezing your tummy and lifting it and squeezing your bottom to ensure that you're getting a good bridge. And there I've said, squeeze your bottom and tummy muscles together, so you're lifting up to keep the bridge shape. So if you watch the demo now at the end, if you pause it, you can get the activity a try. And then after that, I'll give you some extensions or some ways to simplify it, okay? Give that a try now. So here in this demonstration, I am showing you how to do a bridge. So you would need to squeeze your bottom muscles and your tummy muscles to make this bridge shape. And you'll see that as I push up, I'm squeezing my bottom and my tummy to create that long line with my back. So I'm not lifting my back up too much, so I'm arching too much the other way. I'm creating a nice line going from my knees down towards my shoulders. So here it's a slightly closer view of me making a bridge shape. So I am pushing my feet into the floor, squeezing my bottom, squeezing my tummy muscles and lifting up my hips. So here I'm demonstrating to you the pelvic tilts. So it can be a nice way to simplify bridging, as you can see it's the same starting position. And what happens in a pelvic tilt is that you tip your hips backwards. So you're tipping your pelvis backwards there and then you're taking it forwards. So it's really the starting position to a bridge. So a way that you can do this is you can get a parent or carer to put their hands underneath your lower back, and then they can say to you squash my hands. So as you tip your pelvis back, you will squash their hands. Try this, pause the video now and restart afterwards. Okay then, let's look at a way to extend or perhaps simplify the activity. So you can make it a little bit more challenging by perhaps holding your bridge at the top. So my suggestion is start with a hold of about five seconds and maybe hold your bridge for 10, or if you feel like going further and you're able to, and you're maintaining a good position and you're not lifting too high, then you can see how long you can hold it for, but just go with what works for you and what feels comfortable. Then the second one, you can also extend it by maybe completing more repetitions of the bridging exercise. So why don't you start off with maybe 10 and build up to 30, and then you could set yourself a challenge and build that up into the week. So with all the things that I've shown you, so with any exercise, if you want to make anything easier, just start off with a low number of repetitions. So perhaps start off with maybe five repetitions and builds up slowly and stay within your limit. Then the last thing there keep your back on the floor and start with some gentle pelvic tilts. So I showed you in the demonstration some pelvic tilts, now they're quite difficult to demonstrate in a video, so I hope you saw what I was trying to get across to you. So the way I like to teach it to children and young people is I usually put my hands underneath their lower back. And with younger children, I say squash the tickle monster. So if you're young and watching this and you want to do that you can, or you can just say squash my hands if you're a little bit older. And what you need to do is you need to be squashing the parent or carer's hands. Pelvic tilts are quite a nice way to start off with and then you can tilt your pelvis and then make your bridge. So even just trying the pelvic tilts to begin with can be a nice thing to try. So maybe go away with those ideas, give them a try and see how you get on, and then pause the video afterwards to join me at the end. Well done if you gave the bridging exercise a try. I do find that bridging can really help just get your tummy muscles starting to work, and it can be a really nice gentle exercise that can also help your back as well. And if you needed to have the options, I hope you use them either to make it a little bit easier or if you need a more of a challenge, there were some options there too for you. So that brings us to the end of the lesson, and I'd like to thank you for joining me. Please join me again next time for lesson six, where we will be looking at core strengthening again, but I will show you some examples of an activity in a sitting position and the activity is called a dead bug. You might've heard of this activity before, so please join me for that lesson and we will have some more fun. Take care, have a great day. Bye.

Strengthening your core in lying (Part 2)

Strengthening your core in lying (Part 2)

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