Videos for functional movement

This morning the little nephew and I did the Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone yoga class from Cosmic Kids. For the uninitiated, Cosmic Kids create fantastic videos that use yoga poses to tell the story of a well-known children’s book or film. Unsurprisingly their popularity has soared this year and I’d definitely recommend them for those of you wanting to build exercise opportunities into whole days (and weeks and months!) at home with your children. Anyhow, we spent 27 minutes re-enacting Harry’s first year at Hogwarts, after which I was wiped out - mainly because there was A LOT of getting up and down from the floor! And gosh, that’s hard work. Often we forget that many ‘simple’ activities require strength and balance, and that our general daily activities can be as valuable for our physical health as more focused, conscious exercise sessions.

Lots of the poses that we do in our yoga classes are very functional movements: twisting, bending, stretching and lifting in ways that we also use to move around our homes and the wider world. As we often discuss in classes, using the muscles that help you get out of the bath is generally more useful than getting into the splits or a headstand! Accordingly, here are a few short tutorial videos targeting particular joints or actions that some of you want to strengthen and/or stretch. You’ll recognize all of the movements from our classes, but isolating them into these specific exercises (most of the videos are from physiotherapists) can really help us to set realistic goals. Perhaps you’d like to work through all of the videos once a week, or maybe there’s one exercise that you’d benefit from doing for 60 seconds every day? Let me know how you get on, and if you notice a difference in your yoga practice as you become more confident doing these functional movements.

1) Getting up and down from the floor with a chair

As I found this morning, getting up and down from the floor is hard! This 4-minute tutorial shows you a safe exercise to do with a chair (and a cushion if you wish) that can help you lower from standing to the floor - and back up to standing again. If you practise it regularly each week, you’ll become more confident moving down to the floor at points when you want to be there, and also have a useful strategy for getting up should you have a fall. Doug also points out that this exercise develops leg strength, so do consider trying it even if you are already nimble, perhaps timing yourself doing ten reps.

2) Standing up from a chair

This 3-minute video shows you how to use your leg strength, rather than relying on your arms, to stand up from a chair. Jennifer includes suggestions about how to vary the height and angle of the movement, either to make it easier if you are uncomfortable or to add a challenge if you want to turn it into a strengthening activity. And using the large muscles in the thighs is also a great way to warm up, so try doing this exercise a few times when you notice yourself getting cold this winter!

3) Climbing stairs

Here’s another tip that can help all of us, whether you want to feel safe climbing the stairs twice a day or build strength for hill sprints. In this 4-minute video, Brea shows us how to move up the stairs in a way that protects our knees and makes better use of the large muscles in the upper legs (there’s a theme here!). When you do start to use her advice, you quickly notice how much those muscles can help - and therefore how much less your knees need to work.

4) Strengthening ankles

Who’s got a dodgy ankle? Most of us - or if you haven’t, chances are you’d like to develop your ankle strength in order to protect a weak knee. This 4-minute series of exercises is great for helping you strengthen the muscles around the ankles and balance confidently in different positions. Personally I’d prefer to do fewer reps than the video suggests: 5 on each foot, each day, is more appealing to me than doing 20 once a week. It’s amazing how daily sets of 5 or 10 reps add up though, especially if you stick at it for a few weeks.

5) Finally, one for stretching more than strengthening. Most of us spend our days in positions that round our shoulders and, accordingly, shorten our chest muscles. In this 5-minute demonstration, Bob and Brad show us two stretches to really help with releasing this tension - and an added bonus is that stretching the chest muscles often help to release neck and shoulder tension too. Just 30 seconds in one of these stretches can really make a difference to your comfort throughout the day, so take some time to experiment with them and see what works for you.

There you go! Nothing fancy, but plenty that’s useful to all of us on a daily basis. Most of these videos are quite dated so I haven’t included social media links for the creators: but if you like someone’s teaching style, please follow through to their YouTube channel to access more resources. And don’t forget to explore the blog for more useful tutorials.