Starting to build endurance

Physical therapy

﻿Hi 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 six and this is lesson six, and this unit is all about endurance. So what we're going to do today is continue on that topic, and we will look at an activity that looks at this as well. And the activity we're going to look at is "sit to stands." So you will just need a chair or a stool to do the activity from, and if you need any help from a parent or carer to get that, then you might want to ask them now, before we start. So I'll let you get ready, and then we can get going with our lesson. I'd 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 we will be exploring topic areas that we regularly provide advice and support on across all ages and abilities. Each lesson will have ideas and activities that can be carried out either at home or in school. And any information I'm giving you is to be used alongside any specific strategies or resources that may have been given to you by your child's school, or perhaps a therapist. So if you have got any questions or you need help tailoring this to their needs, then please contact your local therapy service. So let's look at the types of endurance. So you have muscular endurance and cardiovascular endurance. So muscular endurance is the ability of your muscles to work without tiring, and cardiovascular endurance is the ability of your heart and lungs to pump blood around your body and supply your muscles with oxygen. So they are both really important for a healthy body. And just by building up small amounts of endurance and your stamina can really help contribute to both these things. And let's think about points to remember. So important things to think about when building up your endurance: start slowly and build up, so don't rush into it. You need to think about your capability, but you also need to be kind to yourself, so you can push yourself a little bit, but remember not to be too hard on yourself. And remember that everybody is different. So you might tyre quicker than somebody else in one activity, and then the next day, you might be able to go for longer than someone else. So it just shows you that there's lots of variability amongst everyone. And this point I really like: exercising can be fun, and it does make you smile. And make sure that you ask your physiotherapist, if you're unsure whether you should attempt any of these exercises. So this is just to point out, if you do have a programme, along with any other programmes that you have, to stretching or any other exercises you may have, if you've got some of these kinds of exercises and they're specific to you, then make sure you're doing them first because the exercises I'm showing you are quite general. And if you want to use them as extra, you can. So I just wanted to point that out to you. So the exercise we're going to look at now is an activity of sit to stand. So you're going to start off in a seated position on a chair with your knees and hips at around 90 degrees. So I'm going to demonstrate in a moment, and I'm doing it off a stool. So your feet should be a comfortable distance apart so that when you stand, you are balanced, and you're going to move from the sat down position. So you'll sit up to a stand position. So you're going to use your leg muscles and without your arms, if you can. So try and do it without your arms first. And you're going to slowly lower back down to the sitting position and repeat 10 times. So now if you watch the video demonstration, then you can pause and have a go yourself, and then rejoin me afterwards and we'll have a little closer look at the activity. So here is a demonstration of the sit to stand exercise. So you can see that my base of support where my feet are flat on the floor is quite stable. I am then coming from a sat down position all the way up into standing, and I'm not holding on when I come up. So I'm coming from around 90 degrees at my hips and knees, and then I am pushing up. So using my leg muscles, and I'm using my arms to give myself a little bit of momentum as well. And I'm coming up into a nice standing position. Then here, I'm changing it up a little bit by crossing my arms in front of me. So that might also be an option that you can try. And now I'm going back to putting my arms up in front. So I'm not swinging them down by my side, I've just got my arms up in front of me. So you could also try that option. Now I'm just varying the speed, I'm doing arms ahead. I'm going up quite slowly, and I'm controlling the sit back down. So this is another idea that you can do because you're working slightly different muscles and you're slowing the movement down, so you've got to control it. Then another idea is to come from a lower surface, you've got to really push to come up. So this is a little bit of an extension to the activity because it's slightly harder coming from a lower surface. So here you'll see that I'm starting to use my hands to push up from, so this can help make the activity a little bit easier because you're getting a bit of assistance to come up into standing. So do try that if you need some help getting up. So my suggestion now is if you pause the video, have a go at that exercise yourself, and then rejoin me afterwards. So let's think about some options for that activity. So you can make it more challenging by crossing your arms or holding them out in front of you when you stand up, as I demonstrated. You can increase the speed at which you stand up, and you can also increase the number of times you repeat the exercise, and the length of time you do it for. So you can start to gradually build up the amount of time you do it for, and maybe you could do 30 seconds, have a rest, and you could do that five times. So that's just a way to build up some endurance by doing small repetitions, and then you can have rest and then build up slowly. You can also start off in a lower seat to make it more of a challenge. So I did show you that I came up from a slightly lower position. And if you need some help to simplify the activity, as I showed, you can use your hands to come up into standing. Then also think about decreasing the number of sit to stands, so maybe try five or ten first. And decrease the speed, so don't go as crazy with going up and down. And you can start off at a higher surface, like a table, where you just rest slightly down onto it, then push to stand. So this is almost like a mini sit to stand. So you're not really going all the way down, you're just coming off a higher surface. So you can have a little think about those things. If you pause the video now, try some of these options, and then you can rejoin me afterwards for the end of our lesson. How did you get on with the activity? My legs are quite sore after doing lots of those sit to stands, so it can be a really good workout, and it also can get your heart rate going as well. So we have now reached the end of our lesson. So thank you for joining me today and taking the time to listen. Please join me next time for unit six, lesson seven, where we'll be continuing looking at endurance, and we will look at another activity. So if you'd like to find out what it is, please join me then. So all that leaves me to say now is take care of yourself, have a great rest of your day. And I will see you soon. Goodbye!

Starting to build endurance

Starting to build endurance

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