Video: Strengthening your core in sitting (Part 1)

﻿Hello there. My name is Sophie Brazier, I'm a children's physiotherapist. Thank you for joining me today. We are going to be continuing with the topic of core strengthening, but today we're going to be looking at core strengthening with a sitting activity. The activity we're going to try is called a dead bug. You might have tried this activity before in line, but today we're going to look at this activity in a sitting position so you'll need a chair. So if you'd like to get that now, you might need a parent or carer to help you, and then we can 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 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. I would like to begin by recapping on why is core strength important? So coordination of the muscles is needed, and this means that the muscles have to work at the right time together with just enough contraction of the muscles at exactly the right time and in the right sequence. So it's important because all those things have to work together for your core strength to be happening, and they need to be activated to make sure your head and trunk is steady so that you can then move in a better way and more freely. So if your core and your tummy muscles are nice and strong and working to stabilise that part of your body, then your arms and legs can work well around that stable starting point. And we'll go through this flow chart. So a strong and stable core can help prevent injury. It can protect your body, which can help your posture, and it can reduce and prevent back pain. By activating your core muscles and having an awareness and building some strength we'll enable you to help all these things that we've just talked about. I'm going to talk you through an activity. It's called a dead bug exercise, and we're going to do it in sitting. So your starting position should be a good sitting position to start off with. You can either do this on a chair or a stool. And when you're sitting in that position with your feet on the floor, the first thing I'd like you to do is lift one arm above your head and lift the opposite leg off the chair. So when you're doing this, I want you to squeeze your tummy muscles when you're lifting each arm and leg to help keep your posture and really think about your position as you're doing this. If you watch me demonstrate this now, then you can pause the video and have a go yourself and then restart to join me afterwards. So what you'll see me doing here is that I'm in a nice seated position, I'm being aware of my posture, but at the same time I'm doing the debt bug activity, so I'm not letting my back arch by using my tummy muscles to keep me in that position, and as I lift one arm, I lift the opposite leg, and then I do the same thing on the other side, lifting my left arm there and my right leg. So each time I'm lifting, I'm squeezing my tummy muscles. So the camera angle is from the front now, so you can see me doing the same activity of the dead bug in sitting, lifting my opposite arm and leg, and you will see that as I lift my opposite arm and leg, I'm having to use my tummy muscles to keep my posture in that aligned upright position. And you might be wobbly because that means you're tummy muscles are working to do the activity. You can speed it up or slow it down depending on how you find it. So give that one a try and see how you get on. So here I'm demonstrating a more challenging exercise where you're doing the dead bug in sitting, and you're lifting both your arms and your legs together at the same time. So as I'm showing now to begin with, I need to lean back a little bit to get my balance, and then I need to really engage my core muscles, so they're working hard to keep me in that position, and then I come back. You can make the dead bug activity a little bit harder or a little bit easier. So to make it more challenging, try lifting both your arms over your head and both legs off the chair together, so you're really engaging your tummy muscles. You might have seen in the video that I had to lean back a little bit just to get my balance, so give that one a try. And also you can increase the amount of times you do the exercise. So maybe start off with perhaps five repetitions and try and extend to about 10, but make sure you have a little break in between. You could also hold the dead bug for a longer amount of time. Maybe start off with a few seconds to begin with and extend this as it gets easier, or you get better at it. To make the activity easier, you could start of with just lifting one limb at a time, and really think about your tummy muscles. So perhaps go around your body, starting with one arm then the other, then one leg and then the other. You can also decrease the amount of times you repeat the exercise. So perhaps just start of with a low number of repetitions and finally, make sure you're staying in position for a short amount of time. Maybe get into the position, hold it for a few seconds and slowly come back out of it and build that up as it gets a bit easier. Have a go at those things now. Pause the video, try yourself, and then join me again. I hope you got on okay with the dead bug activity and the options to make it easier or a little bit harder, it can be quite a challenging activity to do. Now that brings us to the end of our lesson, so all that leave's me to say, is I hope you have a good day and I will see you soon. Please join me next time for lesson seven, where we will be continuing looking at sitting, core strengthening and I'll give you an idea of another exercise to try. Take care. Goodbye.

Lesson summary: Strengthening your core in sitting (Part 1)

This lesson is a recap on core strength with a core exercise in sitting with options to make it harder or easier.

Strengthening your core in sitting (Part 1)

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Lesson summary: Strengthening your core in sitting (Part 1)

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