Arm & upper body strengthening (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. Today, we are going to be continuing on the topic of "Strengthening your limbs." And this is probably going to be the last lesson we look at your upper body. And we will then be moving on looking at strength in your lower limbs. This is Lesson Seven. And the activity we will be looking at a little later on is called a plank. The plank won't be on the floor, it's going to be off a sofa or you can do it off a stool. And I'm going to be demonstrating it on the same piece of equipment that I did the body dips in Lesson Six. If you'd like to get yourself ready, you may need some help from a parent or carer. If you'd like to ask them now, and then we can begin. 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. 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. 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. Let's begin by recapping what muscle strength is. Your strength is how strong you are. It's how much force you can exert in one day. And also you can have muscular endurance. That's how many times you can repeat the activity before your muscle tyres. And there are also different types of muscle contractions. And remember that your muscles work in pairs. And muscle strength is needed for fine motor skills such as cleaning your teeth, holding a pencil and handwriting, really important everyday activities that you will be doing. And it's also needed for gross motor skills where you're using your upper body. Things such as throwing and catching, and in a day-to-day environment at school, it's things like carrying your school bag or perhaps at home, helping the shopping bags. It's essential and needed to keep you healthy, so it reduces the risk of injury. And let's recap on why it's important to have muscle strength. Your muscles control your ability to do everyday activities. We're looking at the upper limb here. Looking at things like reaching, pulling, pushing, lifting, all those activities that use the muscles in your upper body. And having a strong upper body can improve your flexibility, your mobility and the range of movement. It can also help keep you healthy, so it reduces the chance of injuries. Because if you've got strong muscles, that strength around your joint, then you have got a stable joint. Your joint will be at less risk of injury, which is what we want. I'm now going to talk you through an activity that I'd like you to try. And then I will demonstrate on a video and go into some more detail describing it. You can then pause the video, have a go yourself and then restart afterwards. The activity is a plank and it... Sometimes you may have seen a plank being done on the floor, but I'd like you to try this activity where your legs are resting on a sofa. From a sitting position on a sofa or bench or a footstool, want you get into a position where you're lying on your tummy and you're bringing your hands down to the floor and your legs are on the sofa. You're going to walk yourself out with your hands and keep your legs resting on the supporting surface, so that your tummy is clear off the sofa. You're weight-bearing through flat hands which underneath your shoulders, and you're pushing up through straight arms to keep your tummy up and your back straight. Not only is this an activity for your arms, it's also a really good one for course. If you think back to Unit Two where we looked at core strengthening, this is also a nice one to look at. And if you try and hold this position for 20 seconds, that's just a rough estimate of what people might be able to manage. But you can start off at a lower amount of time as well. Remember, watch the demonstration, pause the video, have a go yourself and then restart. Here I'm getting into the starting position for the plank walk out. I am placing my legs so they're resting on the footstool, and then I'm getting myself in a nice aligned position. You see I'm moving around a little bit, just so that I've got my hands position nicely under my body, and then I come back in and then I'm going to walk out again. You can take out as far as you want here. I've taken out quite far. I've gone past my knees. I've just got my lower legs and feet resting on there. That is a little bit more challenging. And then you can try other options. Here I'm perhaps coming a little bit, making it a little bit easier. I've got most of my legs on the supporting surface. Then as a way to make it more challenging, you can see that I've got a ball. What I'm going to do now is, I'm going to get into my plank position. When I've worked out the position, and then I'm going to... This is quite hard. I'm going to tap the ball and try and maintain that plank position. It can be quite tricky staying in that position, because you've got to keep that alignment. You've got to use the strength in your tummy, but also then use the strength in your arms. Then here, I'm just demonstrating to you a much simpler version. I'm just coming out a little way so that I'm lifting my chest off the floor and then coming back in. And then you can try and take it a little bit further. This might be a nice way to just start off the exercise. Get those a try, see how you get on. And then if you pause the video, while you do that, and then press restart to join me afterwards. Okay, so I demonstrated some ways to extend and simplify, but I'll just talk you through the slide again where it's written down. You can make it more challenging by holding the position for longer. You might only be able to start for a few seconds to begin with. 10 or 20 is a nice starter if you can aim for that. And then if you find that easy or want a bit more of a challenge, you can hold it for longer. But remember, if you're holding it for longer, you need to be maintaining that flat aligned back and not letting your back dip or your position go. You want to think more about the quality of the movement rather than holding it for longer in an unusual position where you're putting strain on your back. You can weight-bear through one hand whilst reaching for something else, so there I was tapping a ball. You could reach for an object that somebody is passing you or you could get creative and do something else. Then finally there, you could try some wheelbarrow activities with a partner. Here they would pick up your feet and your weight going through your arms. And you could perhaps have some wheelbarrow races, which can be quite fun to try. Now let's think about some ways to simplify the activity. You can make it easier by holding the position for less time, you could just walk out with your hands and then walk back in again. Really simply just getting into the position, momentarily pausing and coming back out of it. That could be a nice starter and then you could build up to trying to hold it for a short amount of time. And then lastly there, try keeping your tummy resting on the sofa. You're just keeping your chest up off the floor. And that can just be a real lovely beginning point to try as well, if you're finding the other options a little bit more challenging. Give those a try, pause the video now and then you can restart and join me afterwards. Good for you if you gave the plank activity a try. The plank was probably the hardest out of all the upper body strength activities that we did. It was quite a nice one to finish with for the upper body. It also, if you think about it, doesn't just work your upper body, is also working your tummy muscles and all the muscles around that middle part of your body. It can be a real whole body strengthener as well. Good for you if you gave it a try and you might need a little rest now. We have now come to the end of our lesson today. Thank you for joining me and I hope you found it useful. Please join me again next time for Lesson Eight of Unit Three and we will be moving on from upper body and we will be taking a closer look at lower body strength. All that leads me to say now is, thanks for joining me. Have a great rest of your day and I will see you soon. Take care. Bye.

Arm & upper body strengthening (Part 4)

Arm & upper body strengthening (Part 4)

These resources will be removed by the end of the Spring Term 2026.

Lesson slides

Lesson details

Key learning points

Content guidance

Supervision

Licence

Lesson video