I'm Don Thorpe and I'm here to help you get active. MS Active Together is an
initiative put together by the MS Society to help people with MS get more
physical activity into their lives.
Now I know some of you might be daunted by the idea of exercise,
but fear not, this workout is designed for people with MS who
have mild to moderate symptoms, and I'm joined here by Koz and Samia who both
have MS, and they're going to help me take you through the workout today.
The workout we're going to be doing is a balance and stability workout, and these
exercises are going to help you get a bit more stable on the legs
and help with coordination. Now, we're going to kick off with one of my favourite
exercises called The Sit and Walk, and Koz is your man here. He's gonna be
showing you how to do it. So what we've got, before we go, we've got two chairs here
a certain distance apart. Now Koz, you're gonna stand up and walk to the other chair,
take a seat, and then repeat and go back the other way. So, whenever
you're ready, off you go.
That's great stuff. Turn around. Now guys, I want you to
take a full seat, completely relax at the bottom, then come back up again.
And repeat and go back this way.
Now, one of the variables you can do with this,
to either make it more challenging or slightly easier, is to vary the distance between
the two chairs. Now we've got a moderate distance here, but you can
increase that. Come on Koz, let's have a another one again. I'm going to get you to do
three of these please. Yeah, you can increase that distance and go as far as
you're comfortable doing. But don't rush it, and don't jump too early. We want to
make sure you're confident of doing the exercise before we increase the distance too much.
Take a seat.
Good, let's have one more from you please Koz.
So you can also increase the number
of times you do this exercise as well, and I suggest you start with something
that you're comfortable with, but gradually increase the number of times you do this.
All the way back please.
And you can do this anywhere.
In your living room, in your dining room or your kitchen. All you need is two chairs.
Take a seat.
Thank you. Okay. So the next one is The Kneel to Stand.
Now, Koz, I'm gonna need you to turn around. Samia is just
chilling out for this exercise. But we're gonna use a chair, if we need it.
And the idea is to start off kneeling, and then we come up onto one leg, and we stand all the way up
and then, with the same leg going back down, we drop to the knee.
So, if you need support, we can hold on to a chair, or anything, could be a sofa.
Step up and then bring that knee back down, okay. So the first time we're focusing on our right leg
we're gonna go up, lead with the right, stand up fully, step back
down with the right first. So we'll do this a few times. I'm going to do five reps
on my right hand side. All the way up, bring that right foot back, down we go.
That's it. And then, one final time for me. All the way up, that's good.
Bring it back down.
And...there we are. So, we're going to lead with our left leg now.
So left leg comes round forward, bringing up, stand up fully, and then the
left leg goes back down. Great stuff. Okay. Four more to go. Left leg forward, all the way up,
and then left leg comes back down. And, as I said, if you're comfortable
using no hands, you can do it hands on your hips if you like, step back down,
and there. But I'd say always have something nearby, just in case your balance goes a little bit
and you've got some sort of stability. So one more time for the left leg.
Bringing it up
and lead back down with the left again.
So now we're gonna do the Clockwork Legs (or Clockwork Foot) which is a stability
exercise where we're gonna tell the time with our feet. And we've got a couple
of options. Samia, if you can stand up.
Samia's going to go and use the back of her chair, for support. There we go. If you turn and face it.
Koz is going to have a go on his own, but the exercise looks like this. Start off with our feet together
and we're gonna go, if we're imagining the clock - 12 o'clock
3 o'clock then 6 o'clock and back to the middle.
So then we repeat that on the same leg - 3 o'clock, 6 o'clock, back to the middle. And then we'll do it
on the other foot afterwards. So I'm gonna count you in. You happy with that
technique guys? Right, so we're going to go for 5 on this side. So 3..2..1.. and let's go.
12 - 3 - 6 - back to the middle.
Now keep going at the same pace. So 12 - 3 - 6 - back to the middle.
Now if you need to break in between guys, you can.
So I'm going 12 and then back here, then 3 then back here,
then 6 and then back here to 12.
There we go. So remember guys, this is about balance
but if you do experience any dizziness or anything like that while you're with it,
go easy. And I would suggest, if you're not that confident, always have a chair
or something with you to make sure that you've got an added bit of stability.
Let's do one more. 12 - let's go back - 3 - and then 6. Good stuff.
Okay, so we're going to move on to our other leg now. So kicking off, 12 - 9 - 6,
12 - 9 and 6. Good stuff. Back to the middle.
12 - 9 - 6. It's good, two more.
12 - 9 and 6, back to the middle. Last one on this side.
12 - 9 and 6. Good stuff.
So guys go at your own pace and go at your own rhythm with this one.
You can increase the numbers of reps with that if you're confident.
So I would say gradually try and progress with that.
The next exercise we're gonna do is the Single Leg Balance.
It's simply about trying to balance on one foot and hold that.
And some of you will be able to do that with ease, some of you not so much.
So we're going to use a chair to help us. So Koz if you go round there,
I'll turn my chair around here, and we're going to try for 10 seconds on each leg.
So first up, leading with our left foot on the floor, right foot off the floor.
So if we bring our leg up guys, now if you've got the chair, you can try and
do the free-standing but you might need to go back on occasionally
as and when you lose balance. Okay, that's ten seconds there.
Then we change over, same thing on the other side. So again, you're trying to still hold on the one foot.
if you can do it free-standing great, but if you need your chair that's absolutely fine.
And then we switch back to your other side, left foot again, free-standing if you can.
Now guys, if you can increase the duration of that balance then please do.
It's about progression. You're trying to improve but don't rush into it.
Take it at this pace at which you're comfortable. Change back onto our right leg .
That's it. Go for it, holding there. Some people find that
holding their ear makes it a little bit easier. Now maybe that might work for you.
Try it, see how it goes. One more time on each side. So, onto our left leg - hold
- balance, that's it.
So these exercises should help you with - certainly balancing
but also a little bit of help with your walking as well.
Final time on the right leg. That's it, good job guys, you are doing really well.
Keep holding.... and excellent stuff!
So we're going to do a bit of a cool-down now just to get a bit of flexibility into those muscles that we've just worked.
So let's get you shifted forward to the end of your seat first of all and
we're going to stretch the back of the thigh. So one leg straight, slide your
hands down towards your ankle and reach down to the toes if you can, and kind of
hold on to that one. We're going to hold each pose for around ten seconds.
That's what we call maintenance stretching. It's not really going to increase our flexibility,
but it will maintain any flexibility that we had pre-workout. Okay.
Come up and then switch back to your other leg. That's it. Reach down, as I said,
if you can touch your toes, great. If you can go beyond your toes, you're better than I am.
All right, hold that pose for a little bit. Good stuff. A few more seconds...
Well done, relax. Okay, up to your upper body now. So for the back of the shoulders,
just bring in one arm hook it with your other arm and pull it in
nice and tight so you feel a bit of a stretch in the back of the shoulder.
That's good. We're gonna hold this one for about ten seconds or so as well.
Great stuff, guys. And then on to your other side, exactly the same thing in the
opposite direction. So pull it in close and hold for 10 seconds or so. Good, nice work.
So feel that stretch just on the back of that shoulder. Excellent stuff.
Next, we're going to go for the triceps, back of the arm.
So it's about getting this bit up as high as you can. If you can reach down
between your shoulder blades, Superb. If not, I just want to see you
pushing up there so let's go for that. A bit of help from our other hand.
10 seconds again here, and then we switch over same thing on the other side
right hand over, and good reaching down between my shoulder blades.
Lovely stuff. A few more seconds here, and the last one to stretch out our chest.
We're just gonna really open up our body, so take your arms out wide, sit upright
and really open up that chest. Lovely stuff. Okay guys, that's your stretch.
You've done a great job, really good effort. I'll see you again soon.