What is upper body strength?

Physical therapy

﻿Hi there. My name is Sophie Brazier. I'm a children's physiotherapist. Thank you for joining me today for our lesson. I hope you're having a good day. So we are on unit three and this is lesson one. And we are looking at strengthening your limbs. So today, this lesson will focus on what is upper body strength. So what we'll do to begin with, is we'll look at what muscles are in the upper body. We'll have a look a little bit about muscle strength in the upper body. And then we will look at an activity that is going to be called balloon tennis. So for the activity you will need a partner to play that game with. And you can also make it into a game so it can be quite fun. So you'll need a balloon as well. So if you want to get those bits ready and ask for some help, then we can get going with our 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. In 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 have a little think about your upper body. So your upper body has muscles groups that do different things. So you have muscles around you hands, your forearms, your upper arm, and your shoulder. You also have muscles that connect you limbs to your chest, your trunk, and your spinal column. These muscles control your ability to do everyday activities. So these are activities such as reaching for something, pulling something, pushing something, and lifting something. So activities where you're using your arms and these muscles all around here. So if you were to think about whole day the amounts of times you use those muscles is quite often. And let's think about what muscle strength is because you've heard that word, but sometimes it can be a bit confusing. So your muscle strength is how strong you are. So that is the amount of force you can exert in one muscle contraction. There's also something called muscle endurance which is how long you can keep those contractions going before you get tired. So those two things do work together. And there are different types of muscle contraction. Which I will explain a little bit more about in another lesson. And muscle strength is needed for fine motor skills and for gross motor skills. So it's needed for things like everyday examples I'll give you. Cleaning your teeth, where you're using your hand and you're using this action. And holding a pencil. So handwriting, so for grip. And for fine dexterity. And for gross motor skills. So these are skill where you're using bigger muscle groups. And bigger muscle actions. So for throwing and catching. And for carrying school bags. And also muscle strength is needed for keeping you healthy because it reduces the risk of injury. So it does this because if you have good strong muscles around a joint, the joint will be nice and stable. And this means that you'll be at less risk of injury which is really good. So we're talking about the upper limbs. So why don't we just have a look now at what the muscles actually do. So in your lower part of your arm, so down here, they allow your hand to move. They allow you to move your wrist and your forearm. So these kind of actions. And moving your arms like this. And they're really important in pulling and pushing activities. So they can be involved in stabilising and for moving things as well. And then if you move up to around your shoulder muscles, so around this part of your arm, they allow your arm to move in all directions. So if you think about all the things you do with your shoulders, there's a variety of movements and muscle contractions that happen there. So there's no surprise that these muscles are used in every day activities that you do. And then the muscles connecting your upper limbs to your chest. So that's across here and you've also got some muscles across the back here. So these allow you to move your arms in many directions. So towards your body So coming down this way and going away from your body as well. So a whole variety of movement involved there too. So these muscles are really important for a strong posture and you'll remember in unit one we looked at posture. So if you need a recap on that you can have a look back. So the activity I'm going to ask you to do now is something called balloon tennis with a partner. So you might have played this before or you might have heard of it. So this activity is using the muscles around your shoulder. And the idea behind it is that you want to try and tap or hit the balloon above your shoulder height. So you want to try to keep your arms up. So you've got to use all these muscles in your arms to hold your arms up. But then you've got to use your muscles to tap the balloon. And as a starting point, you can try 10 times between you and a partner. And then you can see how you get on. If you enjoy the game, you can carry on. If you, pause the video now. Have a go yourself and then rejoin me afterwards. And I'll talk through some ways that you can extend and perhaps simplify the task a little bit. So here I'm playing balloon tennis with a partner. And you'll see in the video that I am mostly keeping my hands above my shoulder height to tap the balloon back to my partner. And here you can vary the height that you're doing it at and you can also vary the speed a little bit. And hopefully you can keep it up in the air. So an extension of this, is to try the balloon tennis in half kneeling. So I've got one knee on the floor and one knee up as I'm showing now. And your partner can be in the same position or they can be standing. So you can vary the activity now by doing that slight change. And that can be quite challenging because you need to keep your balance. And then here I'm demonstrating the keepy uppy game that you can play. So you can just do this on your own. And you've got to try and keep the balloon up where you're tapping it hand to hand. So you can see how long you can manage this for or try for 10 seconds and build it up. So if you have a go with these activities now and you can see how you get on and then rejoin me afterwards. So if we think about that activity ballon taps a little bit more. How did your arms feel? Were they beginning to feel a bit tired? If they were, you can try keeping your arms below shoulder height. So you can try tapping the balloon from down here and that might make it a bit easier. If you want to change it up a little bit and introduce a little bit more of an extension to the game you can try the following. So you can do half kneeling balloon tennis. So I demonstrated in the video there that I was down on one knee. And I was tapping the balloon back. And your partner can be at that position or they can be in standing. So you vary it a little bit. And the other thing was a keepy uppy. Which you saw me do by myself. So that's just where you're moving around and then keeping the balloon up in the air. So you can also have a go at that one. And the last thing there, piggy in the middle. So that's just an idea. If you want to play it as a game with a group of people. You can have one person in the middle and they are not meant to get the balloon. And if they do, they have to swap with the other persons on the outside. So pause the video now. Have a go at those options and see which one you like. And then you can join me afterwards for the end of the lesson. How did you like that game of balloon tennis? I hope you enjoyed it and maybe you gave the piggy in the middle idea a try as well. And if you need a bit of options to simplify maybe keeping your arms down a little bit or doing less repetitions. Then you use that as you need it. So we have now come to the end of our lesson. So thank you very much for joining me today. Please join me next time where we will still be on unit three. And we will be on lesson two and we will be looking at why upper body strength is important. And there'll be another activity for you to try. So all that leads me to say now is take care. Have a great rest of your day. And I will see you soon. Goodbye.

What is upper body strength?

What is upper body strength?

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