Video: Leg & lower limb strengthening (Part 1)

﻿Hi, my name is Sophie Brazier. I'm a children's physio-therapist. Thank you for joining me today and taking time to watch this lesson. So we are on unit three and this is lesson 11, and we are going to be continuing on the topic of strengthening your limbs. And today we will take a closer look at your lower limb strengthening. So we'll begin with a recap of what lower limb strength is. Then we will continue with an activity and give you another idea of an exercise you can try. The exercise is going to be cycling and you're going to be lying on your back. So you won't need any equipment for this activity. You will just need yourself and you might need a mat if you're doing it on the floor. You may need some help from a parent or carer. So if you'd like to ask them, get yourself ready and then we can think about starting the 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 go over why is muscle strength important? So your muscles in your lower limb control your ability to do everyday activities such as standing, walking, climbing, or descending, so going up or down something like stairs or a hill and balancing and moving through different standing, sitting and floor positions. So really if you think about it, any position where you're moving your legs, you're using your muscle strength. And having a strong lower body can improve your flexibility, mobility, range of movement and balance. It doesn't mean to say that if you've got good muscle strength, you have good flexibility, mobility and range of movement, because there's other things that can affect those too. But if you do have good muscle strength, that will certainly influence those things and it will improve those things as well. We'll also just go back over what muscle strength is. So it's how strong you are, needed for gross motor skills, dynamic gross motor skills and good for keeping you healthy. So if you think back to how strong you are, remember that your muscles work in pairs, and there are different types of muscle contractions. So your muscle strength is needed for gross motor skills, such as getting in and out of bed, balancing to put clothes and shoes on and getting on and off a chair. So sitting down and standing up and standing to brush your teeth where you're perhaps a little more static, but you need to hold that position. And if we think about dynamic gross motor skills, so this is more skills when you're moving, you're going up and down stairs, you're walking around, you're changing position, you're running. And this also incorporates your balance. So your muscle strength and your balance also work together here. And your muscle strength is good for keeping you healthy, so reducing the risk of injury. So that's remembering about your joints being stable, if you've got strength, either side of the joint, you're going to have a good stable joint so your risk of injury will be lower. I'll just talk you through this activity. Then I'll talk you through a demonstration in more detail. And then you can pause the video and have a go at the activity yourself and then restart afterwards. So the activity is cycling, but you're going to be lying on your back to do this. You're going to start lying on your back and you're going to bring your hips and knees to about 90 degrees roughly. Then you're going to start a cycling motion. So a cycling motion with your legs, like you are pedalling, but it's almost like you're doing upside down. So you're going to start off with a slow, steady speed just to get that rhythm going with your legs and get that motion going. It can take a little bit of coordination. So just give yourself a bit of time to get used to the pedalling action. And I'd like you to try for 30 seconds to start with, if you're able to. Say, here is my starting position, I'm lying on my back, I'm making sure my back is nice and supported. So try not to let your back arch. And then I am starting a cycling motion with my legs. So I did actually find this quite tricky to get going with, but if you just imagine that you've got some pedals and that you're pedalling each leg one at a time, and you're taking each leg round in a circular motion, and then you kind of get into a rhythm. So I will then show you the starting position again, and now I am trying another variation where I am reversing my cycling. So I'm going backwards. And this did take a lot of thinking in my head because I was so used to going forwards. So when I went to go backwards, I got myself a little bit muddled. So don't worry that can take a little bit of time to get used to, and a little bit of coordination. Here, I'm pedalling and I start off slowly and then I'm increasing my speed. So you'll see that as I get used to the cycling motion, I start pedalling pedalling, pedalling, pedalling a little bit faster, and that can be quite a workout. So if you give that a try, pause the video, have a go yourself and then restart afterwards and I'll go through some other options for you. So to extend and simplify, let's just go through this slide here. You can make it more challenging by speeding up the pedalling action as I just showed you. So really do this in a progressive way. Start off with this easier version first. And then if you get used to doing it and you feel more comfortable, then speed it up. Then you can reverse your legs as I showed you, so you're pedalling backwards and don't worry this can be a bit confusing and take a bit of time getting used to it. So try that and see how you go. Then you can increase the amount of time you do the exercise for. So with all the exercise I've shown, you start off with a small amount of time. And as you build up your confidence and you feel the exercise get a bit easier, spend a little bit more time than, then perhaps. Now thinking about simplifying, you can also make the exercise easier by slowing down the activity. And you could perhaps, as a suggestion, you could do five cycles round, then repeat if able, so do five actions round with your legs and then bring your feet down to stop. And then perhaps try again and start off really slowly. And perhaps as a target, try to build up to 30 seconds with your legs in the air. So maybe pause the video again now, have a go at those options and see which works better for you and then rejoin me afterwards. Brilliant. Well done if you gave the exercise a try, I hope you found the ideas useful to extend or simplify the activity. And remember as with all the activities and exercises I'm showing you remember to take those options. And remember to start off small and build up, and there's no set number of repetitions that you need to do each exercise for. You will maybe find that a few small repetitions will be enough for you and you can build up, or you can do small blocks of them and build them up into a larger number of repetitions. But remember to start off small and not overdo it in the beginning, otherwise it will put you off the exercise. So we've reached the end of our lesson today, please join me next time for lesson 12, where we'll be continuing looking at lower limb strength, and we will look at an exercise that is called squats. So this can be quite a challenging exercise. So I hope you're ready for the next one and I hope you have a great rest of your day, take care. And I will see you soon, goodbye!

Lesson summary: Leg & lower limb strengthening (Part 1)

In this lesson we will be recapping lower body strength and why it is important. We will finish with an activity for lower body & leg strengthening.

Leg & lower limb strengthening (Part 1)

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Lesson summary: Leg & lower limb strengthening (Part 1)

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