Video: Stretches for your knees

﻿Hello there, my name is Sophie Brazier. I'm a children's physiotherapist. Thank you for joining me today for our lesson. So we are on unit four and this is lesson 12. And what we'll be doing today is we'll start off with a little recap of why stretching is important and then we will look at some tips for stretching and we'll then move on to an idea for a stretch for your hamstrings, which are the muscles on the back of your legs. So you won't need any equipment for today. You may need some help from a parent or carer, so if you'd like to ask them and then you can get yourself ready, and 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. 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 you local therapy service. Let's begin be recapping why is stretching important? So when you woke up this morning, did you yawn when you got out of bed, or perhaps you yawned when you woke up to give your body a stretch after your night's sleep. So stretching can be an instinctive action. If you think also about yawning, when you've yawned, have you yawned recently? Did you take a big stretch when you yawned? These two things can be quite automatic. And when we're spending time in static postures, this can lead to muscle tightness and some stiffness. So stretching regularly can help release some of this tension and those two points there that I went through, they can just become part of your everyday routine and you don't really think about doing those stretches. So regular stretching can really just become part of your everyday actions that you do. And breaking them down into small, manageable chunks, helps make it easier for you. So what you also need to remember is you need to think about your breathing when you're stretching, as it can really help calm your mind. I think that breathing can really help you settle into a stretch as well, so while you're doing it, we can talk through some of the ideas about breathing and hopefully it will let you enjoy the stretch a little bit more. The most important thing to remember is not to hold your breath when you're stretching. So some points to remember for good stretching. Some important things to think about. If you have a programme of stretching that you've been given by a therapist, please make sure that you're following this advice. And if you haven't been given any recent advice from a physiotherapist, please make sure you're following that first, because the ideas that I'm giving you are quite general and they're not specific for you. So if they work for you and you've tried the stretches and they are feeling good for you, then please give them a try. But as I've said before, please make sure if you do have a programme, you're doing that first and these are just extras. So you need to think about the position to be in for stretching. So this is a position are you comfortable in this position? And also the part of your body that you're stretching, is that in a good position to be stretched? And you want to think about your breathing, so remember to relax your breathing for your stretching. And the last few points here, don't over force the stretch and take it slowly. So always avoiding pain, stretches shouldn't be painful. You should take it to a point where you just feel the stretch, and then if you need to back off and go back into the stretch you can, and then by using your breath you probably can go a little bit further. So it's best to start off slowly and build up gradually with stretches. So the activity I'd like you to do now is going to be a hamstring stretch. So you're going to start in a half-kneeling position and you can support yourself with the sofa to the side if you need a little bit of assistance. And you're going to stretch your right leg out in front of you. And you're going to keep your right leg straight, and you're going to bend forwards and try and keep your back fairly straight. So you'll see me do this in the video. It can be quite hard though if you've got tight hamstrings you want to tend to arch your back. So it's better to keep your back in a nice neutral alignment and get a gentle stretch then it is putting your back into a big bend and making everything uncomfortable. And then you want to place and reach your right hand down your right leg as far as you can and hold the stretch. So if you can just reach to your knee, that's fine, and if you feel a stretch straightaway, then just wait there, try some breathing, relax into the stretch and then back off if you need to, and then go back into it. So I would say, to begin with, hold between 20 to 30 seconds and then come off and then you can repeat on the other side and maybe try five times on each side. So what I'll do now is I'll demonstrate in a video. You can then have a go yourself and rejoin me afterwards. So here, I've straightened out my right leg that I'm going to be stretching, and then I'm reaching down my right leg and I'm trying to keep my back in a relatively neutral position. I'm trying not to arch it too much. And you'll be feeling the stretch down the right side underneath of your leg. And again, I'm swapping to my other side. So I am reaching down my left leg, and if you bring your toes up, this also increases the stretch. And just there where I showed you is where you'll be feeling it down your hamstring. And here, I'm trying to settle into the stretch a little bit by using my breath. So I'm taking a big breath in through my nose and breathing out through my mouth to settle in a bit more. And then I'm swapping over to the other side and I might find that I can go a little bit further here because I've already tried it once. So I'm really using my breath to help settle into the stretch. And then once more on this side, I am reaching, I can go a little bit further to my toes, and I'm getting a good stretch down my left hamstring there. So a way that you can extend the stretch slightly is by coming into a standing position to do it. So here I am sinking down and stretching my right leg there. Now I'm coming into the left stretch, and I've got my heel on the floor, I'm bringing my toes up towards me, but I'm putting my weight on my leg that's got a bend on it. So I'll be feeling the stretch in the leg that is straight. So here my left leg where I'm showing you now. So a way to simplify this stretch is to just be in a long sitting position. So you'll just see here I've got my back supported with my bottom up against the back of the cupboards, and I have got my legs out straight. So some people might find this a challenge, but if you can just gradually work your knees down towards the floor, that can also be good as well. And here, you can also try the stretch with a wedge underneath your bottom. So you're just changing the position of your pelvis. And again, you can just do an activity, maybe some reading in this position, or play a game, and that can be quite a nice stretch for your hamstrings in long sitting. So now I'd like you to pause the video and have a go at that stretch. If you rejoin me afterwards, I'll talk you through some of the ways to extend and simplify as I demonstrated in the video. I will just talk you through the ways to extend and simplify as I demonstrated in the video. So for an extension of the stretch, you can just increase it a little bit. So you can go from the kneeling down position and take it into standing as I demonstrated in the video. So you want to keep one leg bent and the other leg straight out in front of you, and then just really think about your back when you're doing that. And really hold the stretch for between, if it's comfortable and you feel it's okay for 20 seconds, between 20 and 30 seconds, and if it's comfortable for longer, stay there. If you need to build that up, then feel free to do that and I would suggest trying maybe five times each side to begin with. And remember that the length of time for stretching is individual to you. So you might find you can just get into a stretch and then you need to come straight back out. But just take it really slowly. And then as you saw there, the way to simplify is you can do some long sitting. So this idea of long sitting is a really nice exercise you can do perhaps in front of the television. Rather than sitting with your legs curled up, you could straighten out your legs. And as you saw there, I used a wedge to just change the position of my pelvis slightly, if you find just sitting straight out a little bit uncomfortable. So if you give those options a try, maybe pause the video now, have a go yourself, and see what works best for you, and then you can rejoin me for the end of our lesson. How did you find those hamstring stretches? I hope you found one of the options worked for you. So we have now reached the end of our lesson. Thank you for joining me today and I hope you found it useful. Please join me next time for lesson 13, where we will be moving down the body again and we will look at some exercises of stretches for your calf muscles, which are the muscles lower down your leg towards your ankles. So all that leaves me to say now is take care, have a great rest of your day and I'll see you very soon, good bye.

Completed: Stretches for your knees

This lesson is a recap of why stretching is important, with a focus on your knees. The video includes a demonstration of a hamstring stretch to try with ways to simplify or extend the stretch as well.

Stretches for your knees

Video

Lesson Complete