What is lower body strength?

Physical therapy

﻿Hello there, my name is Sophie Brazier. I'm a children's physiotherapist, thank you for joining me today for lesson eight. So we're on unit three of Strengthening your Limbs and today we're going to be taking a closer look at your lower body. So the last few lessons, we've been looking at your upper body and upper body strength. And now we're going to move further down your body. So we're going to be looking at some strengthening exercises for your legs, they're part of your lower body. So, what we'll do first is we'll have a little look at what the muscles do in the lower body. We'll have a little bit of a recap about muscle strength. And then we'll finish with an activity where I'll give you some ideas of a strengthening exercise for your legs. And for this exercise, you won't need lots of equipment, you'll just need yourself, and maybe a parent or carer if you need a bit of help. And I'm going to be using these coloured fruit discs to do some steppings, so they're going to act as my markers. So, you might want something of similar size, or you could use some tapes and sticky tape on the floor just to act as markers for where you need to tap as part of the exercise, and you'll see a bit further on how I do that. Okay, so if you'd like to get those bits ready, then we can make a start on today's 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 begin by having a little look at your lower body. So your lower body has muscle groups that do different things. And if you think about your lower body compared to your upper body, they do very different things and carry out very different functions. So the muscles around your lower body, you have muscles in your feet, your calf and shin area, your thigh and your hip. So all around your joints, and you also have muscles that connect your limbs, so your legs to your pelvis, your trunk, so that's your middle and your spinal column. So all those muscles that are involved in your core strength and have connections to your limbs as well. So the muscles in that area control your ability to do everyday activities. So things such as standing, walking, running, climbing up and downstairs, balancing, and then moving through different standing, sitting and floor positions. So really every time you're moving and changing your position, that involves your legs, that is going to involve all the muscles in your lower limb. Let's just recap what muscle strength is. We went over this when we looked at, upper body muscle strength. So lower body muscle strength, is how strong you are. It's needed for gross motor skills and needed for dynamic gross motor skills, and good for keeping you healthy. So how strong you are, remember that your muscles work in pairs, and that you have different types of muscle contractions. And muscle strength is needed for gross motor skills. So these are things like getting in and out of bed. When you're balancing to put clothes or shoes on. You're getting on and off the chair, so you're sitting and standing and you're perhaps standing to brush your teeth. And dynamic thinking about more skills when you're moving those gross motor skills. This is things like going up in downstairs, when you're walking around, so you're changing position regularly and you're maybe moving your position quite quickly. And, running is also another example of that motor skill. And good for keeping you healthy, so having that muscle strength there initially, can reduce the risk of injury. And as I've spoken about before, if you've got good strength around the joint and those muscles are working well, then you will have good stability around that joint, which puts the joint in a good position and at less risk of injury. So let's just have a closer look at what the muscles do in your lower limbs. So your lower leg muscles, allow you to move your feet so this is the muscles around your sort of Shin area and in your feet, allow your ankle to move. So that's the things like walking and when you're jumping, all those kind of activities where you're using your feet. So really important for walking, stepping and balance activities. Then moving to your thigh and hip muscles that's a bit higher up your body, you... those muscles allow you to move your knee, they allow you to move your leg in all directions. So think of all that bending and straightening of your knee, and different positions that you can get those joints into the muscles work to ensure that you're able to do those actions well. And they're used the most upright activities you do every day. And the muscles connecting your hip to your pelvis and your trunk, so these allow you to move your legs in many directions towards or away from your body. These are really important for a strong posture. So you'll remember in unit one, where we took a real look at what posture is, if you need to recap on that you can look back at that unit. And, the muscles are also really important here for balance. And in unit five, we're going to be looking at balance and coordination. So we'll go a little bit further into those ideas then. So now I'd like you to give this activity a try. So the activity is for a strengthening exercise for your legs. And you're going to be stepping on two markers on the floor. And you would have seen in the introduction I did that I'm going to be using these kind of markers. So I'm going to have three of these, one in front of me, one behind, and one to my side. And then when you swap to the other leg, it will be on the other side of you. And the activity is going to be using the muscles around your hip. So you're going to start with your feet aligned, and as a starting position, you can start with whichever leg you like first, but I'm going to describe it this way. So you're going to keep your left leg still, and your foot on the floor, whilst you step your right foot to the marker. So you're going to go forwards, sideways, backwards, and you're going to do this three times, and then you're going to repeat on the other leg. So if you watch the demonstration I'll do now, you can then pause the video, and have a go at that activity yourself, and then rejoin me afterwards. And I'll go through some ways of how to simplify or extend the activity for you. So in this video, I'm demonstrating to you a leg strengthening exercise where you're stepping in different directions onto coloured markers. So you're taking your leg forwards, back to the middle, to the side, to the middle, and back. And again, you're going forwards, back to the middle, to the side, back to the middle, and backwards, and back to the middle. And then I'm going to swap over so that I do my left leg. So I'm doing similar position with the markers and again, you might want to position the markers where it's a good stretch or a good reach for you depending on how tall you are. And when you're doing it, you want to make sure that you're getting good movement in your hip and also in the rest of your leg, so that you're getting a good activity in those muscles. So you'll see when I moving, I am lifting my foot, and I am bringing it out to the marker and then back in. So give that a try, see how you get on and then you can rejoin me after you've had a go yourself. So, you might have given that activity a try. Let's now think a little bit more about it, how were your legs feeling, were they beginning to feel tired at all. If they were, then you could slow it down a little bit or just do less of the activity at a time. If they weren't and you need more of a challenge, then you could try stepping faster, or you could lift your leg up so you're doing a high knee into stepping onto the marker. So you've got some options to make it easier or a little bit harder. And, you could try the following to change the activity and mix it up a little bit. You could change the direction you step, and do a different order or pattern. So you could perhaps do, backwards, forward, side, side, forwards, backwards, or you can change it so you could play a little bit of a game or perhaps a parent or carer could call out a different direction for you, to mix it up a little bit. You can try some smaller steps, if you are finding it a challenge, so maybe just bring your markers closer together, and really slow it down. So there are some options for you to extend or simplify. Now, if you go away and have a go at those, pause the video, have a practise yourself, see what works for you and then rejoin me afterwards. How'd you get on with the activity? I wonder if you made it into a game with a parent or carer and got them to call out different patterns or different ways of stepping for you. I think that can be a really fun game to play, so I hope you gave that a try. And also, if you needed, there were ways to make the activity a little bit easier. So I hope you use those as well. So we have now reached the end of our lesson. So I'd like to thank you for joining me today. Please join me next time for lesson nine, where we will be continuing on unit three. And we will be looking at, strengthening your lower limb again. But this time, I will show you a new activity to look at to help strengthen your legs. So the activity we will look at is going to be, some standing lunges. Now, don't worry, they sound quite challenging but again, as always, I'll give you some ways to simplify. Or if you need another challenge, there'll be some ways to extend the activity as well. So all that leads me to say now is thanks for joining me, take care, have a great rest of your day and I will see you soon. Goodbye.

What is lower body strength?

What is lower body strength?

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