﻿Hello. My name is Sophie Brazier. I'm a children's physiotherapist. Thank you for joining me for the lesson today. We are on unit two, lesson 13. What we're going to be looking at today is we're going to be continuing to look at core strength, but we will look more specifically at how you can do a strengthening activity in a crab position. So last time when you joined me in lesson 12, we looked at a similar exercise and that was called a crab reach. Today is a little bit of an extension on that. So it's a little bit of a harder exercise, and it's called a crab toe-touch. But don't worry, I will still give you options of ways to simplify, or if you need more of a challenge, some ways to extend it as well. So you'll just need yourself and a match for this activity and you may need help from a parent or carer. So if you'd like to get yourself ready, and then we can begin. 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 readily 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. Let us go through a recap of why your core strength is important. So co-ordination at the core muscles is needed with just enough contraction at exactly the right time in the right sequence. So for this coordination of the muscles to happen, you need to have the strength there initially, and it needs to be activated to make sure that your head and trunk are steady. So if you've got that strong core area, keeping your body in alignment, helping with your posture, then your head, so your head on top of that core area, and your trunk will be kept steady, which is really important for functional activities. It's so that you can move in a better way and more freely. So having that core strong area will enable you to move your arms and legs much more freely around your body and make your movement more efficient. So having a strong and stable core can help prevent injury because it protects your body. So having that strong core in the middle of your body can help protect your spine, helping you keep that alignment, helping you keep those healthy, natural curves, which can help your posture. So remember that your posture is influenced by your core, and your core can be influenced by your posture. So you need to have both things working well together so that they can help each other. Ultimately all these things can help reduce and prevent back pain, which means you will have a strong, healthy body. I'm now going to talk you through an exercise for some strengthening in a crab position. And this is called the crab toe-touch. So, in lesson 12, we looked at the crab reach. So this is a little progression on that and it is a little bit harder. Don't worry. You can stick with the crab reach if you prefer, but you might like to give this a try. So the starting position is in a seated crab position. So you lift your hips off the mat and you kick your right leg up and reach out with your left hand to touch. And then you lower your bottom down, back to the starting position, and then swap with the other arm and leg. That can be quite hard to visualise. So now there'll be a demonstration, and I will talk you through it in more detail. Remember, after you've watched that, pause the video, have a go yourself and then rejoin afterwards. Okay. So this is the start of the toe-touch crab exercise. So you'll see that I lift my hips up into the crab position. I then take one arm, so my right arm, and my left leg to touch and lower back down. Then I take my hips back up. I take my left arm and my right leg to do a toe-touch. And then I lower back down. So each time I'm pushing my hips up, I'm squeezing my tummy muscles and my bottom muscles to create the crab, and then I'm reaching. When I'm reaching, I'm having to squeeze my tummy muscles again. Then here I am demonstrating the same exercise, but I am staying up once I get into the crab position. So you'll see here, I'm keeping my hips up, or I'm trying to keep my hips up, and I am doing opposite arm and leg one after the other. So this is maybe a way to challenge yourself if you'd like to. You might have tried this activity before. It's called a crab walk. So you basically go up into the crab position, and then you can walk sideways, as I'm showing you now, and you can also try forwards and backwards. It can be quite a fun activity to do so get that one a try. So let's talk through the ways to extend or simplify that exercise. You can make it more by increasing the number of times you repeat the exercise. So you could maybe take a few days and you could think, "Okay, I'm going to do this a certain number "for the first time," so say five repetitions. And then you could build up to 10 the next day, and then 15. So you can work it around what works for you, but build it up slowly. You can hold the positions for slightly longer each time. You would've seen in the videos that I varied it a little bit, and I did some holds at the top. So you can maybe hold the position for a period of time when you get to that initial point and then lower back down. That can be really challenging so just take it slowly. And, as you saw there, I also tried some crab walking. So just like a crab on the beach, you will see that I was demonstrating some side to side, and you can also do some forwards and backwards. So you can just play around with this and have a bit of fun. Now, some ways to simplify. So you can also make it easier by decreasing the number of times you repeat the exercise. You might just like to try it and see how it works for you. Also, just hold the positions for a shorter amount of time. So if you'd like to pause the video again now, you can give those variations a try and please join me afterwards. Well done if you managed to give the crab exercise a try. So the crab toe-touch can be quite a challenging activity and you can really feel your tummy muscles working when you're doing it, so you might need to have a little rest after you've done it. Now we have actually reached the end of our lesson. I would like to thank you for joining me today for this lesson on core strengthening. Please join me next time when we will be coming to the end of the unit on core strengthening, and it will be lesson 14, and we will be looking at a summary of the whole unit on core strengthening. And we will finish with a nice activity called a dead bug. You may have played this game before or heard of this activity, so if you'd like to join me for that lesson, I will see then. So all that leaves me to say now is take care. Have a great day, and I will see you soon. Goodbye.

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

Strengthening your core in a crab position (Part 2)

Core strengthening

UNIT

What is your core?

Why is core strength important?

How your core helps the rest of your body move

Strengthening your core in lying (Part 1)

Strengthening your core in lying (Part 2)

Strengthening your core in sitting (Part 1)

Strengthening your core in sitting (Part 2)

Strengthening your core in 4-point (Part 1)

Strengthening your core in 4-point (Part 2)

Strengthening your core in standing (Part 1)

Strengthening your core in standing (Part 2)

Strengthening your core in a crab position (Part 1)

Good core for movement control (Summary)

Lesson overview: Strengthening your core in a crab position (Part 2)

Video

Presentation

Transcript

14 lessons in Core strengthening: