Leg & lower limb strengthening (Part 2)

Physical therapy

﻿Hi there, my name is Sophie Brazier. I'm a children's physiotherapist. Thank you for joining me for our lesson today. We are on unit three and this is lesson 12. So we will be continuing on the topic of strengthening your limbs. And in this lesson, we will be still looking at strengthening your lower limbs. So what I'll be doing is taking you through a recap of what muscle strength is, then we'll look at why it is important, and we'll be finishing with an activity in this lesson that will be called squatting activity. So you might have heard of squats before, and I'm going to talk you through an activity that can have some options to extend, or perhaps simplify the activity if you'd like an easier version or perhaps if you need more of a challenge. So you do not need any equipment for this. You just need yourself. And there is an option to simplify it where you might want to hold onto the back of the chair. So if you want to get that ready you can also have that. And you may need some help from a parent or carer. So if you want to ask them now as well, I'll let you do that. So if you get yourself ready, we can then 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 the 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 us begin by having a recap of muscle strength in your lower limbs. So muscle strength is how strong you are, it's needed for those gross motor skills. And it's needed also for dynamic gross motor skills. And it's needed for keeping you healthy. So your strength uses your muscles. And remember your muscles work in pairs, and there are different types of muscle contractions that do different things for your body. The gross motor skills are things like getting out of bed, you're balancing to put clothes and shoes on and off, and getting up from a chair so like a sit to stand activity. And if you think about an activity you do every day of just standing to balance to brush your teeth. And when we think more about dynamic gross motor skills dynamic means when you're moving. So this is when you're going up and down stairs so you're using all those big muscle groups, but you're moving while you're doing them. And for generally when you're walking around home or school and perhaps when you're running and doing those more high functioning dynamic gross motor skills. And good for keeping you healthy. If you've got good muscle strength, then this will help reduce your risk of injury because it will be protecting those joints and keeping them nice and stable. And we will recap why is muscle strength important? So your muscles control your ability to do everyday activities. So in your lower limb, the strength is there to help with activities such as standing, walking, climbing up and down stairs, you're balancing and moving through different standing, sitting and floor positions. So really every movement you're getting into and out of using those leg muscles. And having a strong lower body can improve your flexibility, your mobility, your range of movement and your balance. And it also keeps you healthy. As I said before, it reduces the chance of injury as having that strength around the joints can help keep them stable. Now the activity I would like you to try is going to be a squat activity. So some squats I'm going to demonstrate. So I'll talk you through quickly a brief instruction of how to do the activity. Then I will demonstrate and I'll go into more detail. And then I'll give you some options of ways to simplify or extend the activity as you may need. So the starting position is you and standing with your feet wide apart and feet facing forward. So you don't have to have them too wide. I'd start with hip distance apart. And then if you want a bit more steadiness and you need a stronger base they may be a slightly wider. So what you need to do is keep your back straight as you bend your knees. So my suggestion here is that you pick a point on the wall and you look forward. And you are bending down as though you're sitting on a chair. So you're going to almost stick your bottom out to sit down, and then you can either have your arms out in front of you at shoulder level or by your side. So see which one works better for you. Then slowly straighten yourself up without holding on to any support and back down to the starting position. So you're really going to be like you're sitting down, but you don't have a chair there, and you're coming back up. So give that a try to pause the activity to do that and then you can rejoin me afterwards. So you'll see here I'm demonstrating facing you. So you will see I've got my feet flat on the floor. I get distance apart and I'm starting to squat. So I'm doing it quite nice at steady pace. I am going down and when I do this, I'm keeping my back straight. So I'm going down and little way so that I feel I've got to keep bending my knees and I'm doing it. I'm sticking my bottom out and keeping my chest upright. So keeping back in that nice alignment. So here you'll see that angle from the side. So as I take my bending my knees, my arms go forward and a good way to keep that alignment in your back is to keep looking forwards. So here I am holding onto an object while I squat. So this could be an extension of the activity, or some people may find this as slightly easier, if they're holding something. So this is still from a side angle and I'm doing exactly the same thing, apart from when I get down to the bottom, I am holding for a few seconds and coming back up. So that's just called a squat hold and that might be something you want to try. So again, I'm maintaining that position in my back by looking forwards and I'm just taking a nice bend in my knees. Then here I am demonstrating holding onto the back of a chair. So here I'm only taking some small squats, so you're just see some little mini squats you might like to call them. And I'm just taking some gentle bends in my knees whilst I maintain that position in my back. So it might just be another option for you where you can hold onto something in front of you just to give you a little bit of extra support. What I'd like you to do now is go ahead and try those things, pause the video, and then you can restart and join me afterwards. So in the video you saw me demonstrating some ways to extend or simplify the activity. I'll now talk you through them as they're written down here. Say for an extension to the activity, you could try increasing the number of times you do the squats. So I would say start off with perhaps between five and 10 repetitions, and then you can increase by five each time. And remember to maintain the quality of the squat. So keep that position of your spine, so you want to be looking forwards rather than arching your back and looking down as it gets harder. You could hold the squat position for a count of three. So you could go into the squat and then hold the squat for three seconds and then come back out slowly. You could also hold onto an object whilst bending and restraining. So I think in the video I showed you, I was holding a small Pilates ball. You could hold on to a cuddly toy or a cushion, and you could just do the same squat bending and restraining holding the object. You could deepen the squat a little bit further. So only try this if you're increasing the number of times you're doing it and you're managing all those extensions and then perhaps try bending a little further in the squat. So to simplify the activity, you can make it easier by reducing the number of times you do the squat so start off with a small number and you could perhaps try between two and five to begin with and then maybe build it up. You could also do the activity with your back against a wall. So here you can use the sliding action down the wall to help you a little bit but just be careful you don't go down too quickly. So just as a little bit of an extra support. And also you could try, as I showed in the video, you could hold onto a chair in front of you as a way to make it slightly easier. And then you've got a good point of contact in front of you, and then you're maintaining looking forwards while you bend down. And finally there only bend a little away. So just do a mini squat, upright position, and just lower your bottom small way and come back up. So start off with those and see how you get on. Okay, give all those options a try, see how you manage and then restart afterwards to join me. How are your legs feeling after the squatting activity? I think the squats are really good activity to get all those muscles working in your lower limb. And you just need to remember to think about your back when you're doing the activity so you're not arching it. And if you start getting tired and you think you're losing the position of your posture and your back then maybe stop and have a rest and then you can build up. So we have now come to the end of our lesson. So thank you for joining me and I hope you found that useful. Please join me next time, where we will still be in unit three, but we will be in lesson 13. And we will have another look at an example of a strengthening exercise for your lower limb. So I hope you have a good rest of your day. Please take care and I will see you very soon, goodbye.

Leg & lower limb strengthening (Part 2)

Leg & lower limb strengthening (Part 2)

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