﻿Hello there, my name is Sophie Brazier. I'm a children's physiotherapist. Thank you for joining me for today's lesson. This is unit two lesson 12, and we are looking at core strengthening. Today, we're going to have a closer look at an exercise in a position called a crab position. So you might be wondering what that is. So later on, I would demonstrate that to you. And what we'll do first, is we'll just talk about what we need. You don't need any equipment. You just need yourself and you might need a parent or carer, if you find this activity a little bit challenging, but don't worry, I will give you some options of how to make it a little bit easier. And if you want a bit more of a challenge, I'll give you those as well. So how about we 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'd like to begin today's lesson with a recap. So let's start with why is core strength important. So your core strength is needed for the following things, co-ordination of your core muscles is needed with just enough contraction at the right time in the right sequence. So for that co-ordination to happen, you need to have that strength there first to make sure that sequence can happen well. And you need to have core strength because it needs to be activated to make sure that your head and your trunk are steady. And they need to be steady so that the rest of your body can move in a good way. So your limbs can move well around the middle area of your body. And this is vital for good co-ordination of movement, for efficiency of your energy. And you just want to have this all working well so that you've got a healthy body. So if you have a strong and stable core, so that area around the middle part of your body is nice and controlled and strong, it can help prevent injury. Having a strong and stable core can protect your body, so it can protect the area around that part of your body, and it can help your posture. So we've talked a lot about how your posture can help your core. And now we're going to talk about how your core can help your posture. So if you've got those two things working well, this can help reduce and prevent back pain. Okay, now we are going to try this exercise and we are going to be crabs. So it's an exercise in a crab position, and it's called a crab reach. You may have tried this before, or it may be a brand new exercise to you. So don't worry. I will give you some options as to how to make it a bit easier. And if you want to challenge, there'll be other options as well. So what I'd like you to do, is start seated with your arms ready, in the bridge/crab walk position, which I'll demonstrate on the video coming up. You then squeeze your bottom to lift your hips up. And then when you're in a good stable position, you're going to reach one hand over the opposite shoulder, twisting your trunk. And then you're going to return to the starting position. And you can repeat on the other side. So when you've watched me do the demonstration, if you pause the video, you can have a go yourself. And then I will also show you some ideas of how to extend or simplify the activity. So my starting position for the crab reach exercise, I push my hips up. I then reach across to the opposite side of my body with my arm. And then I lower back down. So I get ready. I push my hips up. I squeeze my tummy muscles. I reach across and across again. And then you can come back down, but here I felt like I could go a bit further. So I stayed up for one more reach and then I go back down. So I push my hips up. I reach across the other side of my body and I reach across trying to keep my middle still and I reach across again and back down. So you can choose to do more than two reaches at once and then go back down or you can just do one each side and then lower your hips. So try it and see how you get on and just work with what works for you. So here, you'll see that I go into the same starting position and I reach across my body, but now I'm adding in a little extension to the activity. So I'm doing a little crab kick. So I take my arms across my body and back to the starting position of the crab. And then I take one leg out and then the other leg. So when you're doing this, try to keep your hips up. So you really need to be squeezing all those muscles in your core area. So your tummy muscles, and also the muscles in your bottom to keep your hips up. And then this edition is doing your legs and arms together. Now, this is a way to simplify the activity. So here, I'm starting off in the crab starting position, and I'm just lifting my hips up to make the full crab, and then I'm lowering my hips down. So when you get up into that full crab position, you can just hold it for a few seconds. You could lift it all the way up or here I'm demonstrating , you just take it to a small level and then you go back down and then you can just play around with how you want to make the crab position. You can do small, little lifts, or you could lift into a full crab and hold. So if you pause the video now, you can try all of those options. And then I'll talk you through the extension and simplifies in more detail. Let's now have a look at a way to extend and also to simplify the activity if you need to. So you can make it more challenging, by adding in a crab kick. So you're going to be a bit like a karate crab now. You're going to lift one leg at a time. So if you need to, you can go back to looking at me doing this in the demonstration, and then pause the video and have a go yourself. You can also increase the amount of time that you do the exercise. So as a suggestion, perhaps you could do 10 crab reaches one side and 10, the other, have a rest and repeat again. Remember to start off slowly and build up slowly as well. Now, thinking about a way to simplify. So to make it easier, you can start off and in just a seated crab position. So this is the beginning of the crab reach exercise. So what you do here, is just lift your hips up and down slowly. So try that first. If you're finding the whole exercise a bit challenging, and then maybe you could build up to the full crop reach exercise. And lastly there, just decrease the amount of time doing the exercise. If you find it too challenging, why don't you just start off with getting into the position and perhaps doing the reach once and coming back down, and then you can just build it up slowly and see how you get on. So pause the video now, if you'd like to try those options and then restart again afterwards. Wow, well done if you gave the crab exercise a go. I'm quite tired now after doing that, it can be a really challenging exercise and I hope you made you use of the options to either make it a little bit easier or harder if you need it. So that brings us to the end of our lesson. So thank you for joining me, please join me next time for lesson 13, where we will be continuing on the topic of core strength. We will be looking again at strengthening exercise in a crab position. And this time we will be doing a crab toe touch. So if you want to join me for that one, I will see you again soon, so take care and have a great day. Goodbye.

Core strength with a core exercise in a crab position with options to make it harder or easier

In this lesson, we will revisit core strength with a core exercise in a crab position with options to make it harder or easier. Resources provided by University of Gloucestershire (CC BY-NC-SA: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0)

Lesson overview:Strengthening your core in a crab position (Part 1)

Core Content

Content guidance

Supervision Level

Core strengthening: