- Hi guys. Welcome to our Nuffield Health swap exercise
session. This workout is a home-based workout
which will be focusing primarily on your cardiovascular fitness
as well as your upper body and lower body strength
and is a great way to improve your balance as well as boosting your energy levels
after a long day at school. Whilst these exercises can be done anywhere,
please ensure that the space around you is clear
and you have enough space to move. Also, make sure that you have a drink at hand
to make sure that you stay hydrated throughout and use a mat or a towel at any point
you're doing work on the floor. If at any point you feel dizzy,
sick or any pain please stop immediately. So before we start the main workout we need
to make sure we warm up properly. We're gonna start off nice and gradually
and build up the intensely as we go. So what I want you to do is bring your feet
slightly wider than your hips.
You're gonna bend nicely, easing into the knees and reach up overhead.
You're gonna do about five or six of these and each time just see if you can go a little
bit lower, reaching up a little bit higher each time.
Give me two more please. In, making sure you breathe in on the way
down, out on the way out.
Okay from here, just nice and easy. Just gonna start off slow.
When you feel you can, just let yourself open your arms
up a little bit more. I'm not too worried about whether you're breathing
in to the right or left. Just notch your breathing at the moment.
And just coming back into centre, bring the hands out to shoulder width,
feet nice and wide again. Just gonna start off rolling the shoulders
forward slowly and then gradually building up the size and
the speed. So really loosen off into your shoulders.
And 3, 2 and 1. Shake it out.
Again make sure you're soft in the knees. We're gonna go backwards this time, okay.
So again, starting small and just gradually increasing the size
and the pace. So the intensity starts to build as you're
moving. Stay soft in those knees to help protect your
lower back. 3, 2, and relax again.
Shake it out. We're gonna start now
to increase the heart rate a little bit. So what I want you to do is just work
from one foot to the other. Remember we're just gonna work your pace all
the time, so if you feel you can, you can take it into
that jog. Anytime you need to bring it back down into
a march. We're just trying to elevate the heart rate.
Make sure you're using your arms as well as those legs and knees.
You're working off the toes, the intensity starts
to build, to bring your knees up towards your hips.
Remember we're just gonna work your pace all the time,
so if you feel you can, you can take it into that jog.
Little challenge. Can we go just a little bit quicker?
Awesome work, guys. And ease down.
Again, we're shaking out. So you're gonna set those feet again.
Get soft in the knees. Bring belly button into spine,
and we're just gonna do jabs. So 1, 2.
Now we're gonna do 4. 1, 2, 3, 4.
6. Into 8.
We're gonna work all the way up to 20. 10, 12 now.
1, 2, 3, 4. Make sure you stay soft here
and you're rotating just through those hips. There's 14.
16 now, 1, 2, 3, 4. You should feel your heart rate building up
and your breathing starts to raise. 18.
Last one, 20. Get low and drive forward from the shoulders.
Bring your belly button into spine. I think I've lost count.
Maybe 4, 3, 2 and 1. Fantastic.
With the warm-up complete, now is a perfect time to grab yourself a drink
and a little recovery if you need it. Take 1 or 2 minutes until you feel ready
to start the main session. So now it's time for us to get into the main
part of our workout.
The first exercise we're gonna do is gonna be working
on our balance, and we're gonna do that first before our muscles get too tired.
So you can grab some objects and place them around you.
Some just household objects. Bottles of water, tins, cushions, anything
you want. You try and reach out for the first object
and come back up. Take the foot out to the side a little bit,
and then we're gonna go wider and then take it round on the diagonal behind
you. And finally one right out behind you as low
as you can get. Take your time.
Shake that leg off and we're gonna switch over now
to use our right leg. So again, you're just gonna reach out
with a toe and come up, Take it away on the angle and come up.
Now go as wide as possible to the side, just touching the floor.
So those legs should be feeling a little bit warm now from doing that balancing work.
I'm just gonna increase the intensity very slightly.
So what we're gonna do, we're gonna go back into that squat like we
did in the warmup.
We're not gonna do the big breath. So what I want you to do is take a seat behind
you, okay. Don't worry about how low you go to start
off with. Just see if you can work down a little bit
lower each time. Just gonna hold a little bit at the bottom.
Push the chest out and shoulders back. Use your arms out in front of you to get a
better balance, and also make sure you never lift your heels
from the floor. Now there is one little change we can make
to make it even harder. Don't do this if you don't feel comfortable,
but if you can we're gonna take it into a jump squat.
So you're gonna come down, you're gonna jump up.
Land. Soft in the knees when you land,
but we'll do a separate one each time. Breathe in, drive up.
5, we're just gonna do 6 of these. And 6.
So what we're gonna do now is gonna move on to a cardio burst, again for those heart and
lungs. And again grab 3 or 4 objects from around
the house and just place them on one side of your room,
okay. You're then gonna go over to the other side
of the room. What I want you to remember though is
if your legs are still tired from those squats, don't feel like you have to start immediately,
okay. Walk away from your objects to the other side
of the room, and then you're gonna run across the room,
grabbing your first object. Turn and bring it back.
You're gonna repeat that for however many objects you've got,
trying to increase the pace as you go. Couple of things I want you to remember.
One is only run at the pace you feel comfortable. Make sure you slow down just before you do
the turn. When we turn, turn to a different direction
each time, so if you turn once on your left,
the next time turn on your right. Okay, and also make sure you're not running
into anything around the house, okay.
So clear as much space as you need before you start.
You're then gonna take anywhere up to a minute, 2 minutes to recover.
And we're gonna repeat, placing all those same objects
back where they were in the beginning. As we mentioned at the beginning,
it's really important at the end of your workout to do a cool down and a stretch out.
For the cool down, just reverse and repeat some
of the exercises we did in the warm-up, just bringing the intensity down gradually
as you go. Okay, and then we're gonna take it into our
stretches. So we're gonna start off with what we call
a butterfly stretch. This is for the inside of your legs, your
groin, so you're gonna start off bringing your feet
together. Now you'll all have different levels of flexibility,
so that's absolutely fine. With the belly button into spine,
we're gonna keep the back nice and straight. Just use the elbows on the inside of the knees
and then just slightly tip forwards and through. So you're bringing your chest down towards
your heels and your feet. Just gonna hold it here for about 10 to 15
seconds. And just slowly just come up and ease off.
You just feel a little relaxed there. From here, we're gonna take ourselves down
to the floor. So just stretch the legs out nice and long
and stretch the arms out long too. Now here, again I want you to think about
your breathing in through the nose and out through the mouth,
and just find a little more length than you're used to
in your body. Take your time.
You're gonna pick up one knee, and you're gonna bring it all the way in
and through toward the chest. Now you do have a couple of options here.
You can hold at the knee. You can hold nearer the shin.
You can even hold in and behind. It's not too important.
We just wanna make sure we've got a nice stretch through the hamstring and even going into
our glutes which are our bum muscles.
If it's a little bit intense here, just bring the other foot in and bend it,
or if you feel comfortable, stay with that nice, long leg.
Just keep gradually easing it in towards you. And eventually just ease off.
Let it go away nice and slow. There's no rush here.
During the stretching section, we're always just working
at our own pace and also our own limitations and our own abilities.
So again, breathing in through the nose and as you breath out through the mouth,
your body should relax just a little bit more and you might find you can stretch it just
through that tiny, tiny bit more to make that stretch
more intense. The stretches never want to hurt,
but you should always feel a little something, slight pull.
We're gonna take that over now to what we call a figure four stretch.
So using your legs you're gonna make the number four
by crossing your ankle across your knee. Now if you start with the leg further away,
the stretch is a little less intense. The more you step this foot in towards your
bum, the more stretch is getting here into your
piriformis. It's a small muscle in your bum which is really
important for your lower back as well. You can just ease the knee away slightly.
And again if you want to increase the intensity here,
one thing you can do is just lift the foot and start to apply a pressure
through this raised knee into the ankle so you're getting stretch here in the back
of the leg. Again, we're just gonna hold it for about
10 to 15 seconds. Breathing in through the nose and out through
the mouth. And then slowly let it ease down.
Now this is the bit where we get to chill out.
So we're gonna take everything into the most comfortable position we can.
Now for some of you that might be with your toes turned out and your hands nice
and wide from the body.
You might wanna put your arms all the way out to the side,
and you may even want to bend your knees. It really is all about you and where you feel
comfortable. For me, it's about there.
Now all I want you to focus on here is deep breath
in through the nose. Taking a nice slow, long breath.
Try and hold it for a little bit, and slowly,
gradually breath it out. Now remember guys,
these kind of meditation and relaxation techniques aren't just things
we have to do at the end of a workout. They can be done almost any time of the day
when you've got five minutes to yourself, especially if you're having a stressful day.
Things are tough at school. Just grab 5 minutes to yourself
and we slow down your breathing. Try to relax all those muscles and that tension.
Great work team. That's the end of our swap session.
I hope you enjoyed it. Please make sure you finish up by drinking
plenty of water. We don't want you to get dehydrated.
Going forward, try incorporate this more and more
into your week, okay. We want you to move as regularly as you possibly
can. This workout itself could be done anywhere
up to four times in a week, okay.
Start off slowly. Build it up gradually,
and hopefully in a couple a week's time you'll be absolutely smashing out those exercises.
If you would like to learn more about our SWAP programme,
please go ahead and visit nuffieldhealth.com/swap.