A topic that a lot of our families ask about is core strengthening exercises.
We do ask our clients to work on core strengthening exercises. The reason we do this is because we know a lot of our kids have muscle tone and general strength and endurance issues. We know that if we don’t build up the core of their body, and get strong, it’s going to affect their motor output on fine motor activities, and also on other coordination skills. If you’re not strong and you don’t have control of your body, you’re not going to be able to motor well through your environment.
Types of Exercises:
So we will have your kids do wall sits, sit-ups, etc. It is part of our standardized test, but we don’t teach them to the test. We teach them so that they can actually do this.
We’ve found that a lot of our kids are really not preforming these activities much in P.E. any more, so we want to make sure they know the proper way to do a sit-up, for instance. You’d be amazed at how many kids are segmented, and their sit-ups just do not look like what a sit-up is supposed to be, because they do not have the motor planning to be able to do that. So we actually break the skill down and we teach them how to do the exercise, one step at a time, so that they build that overall strength.
Home Exercises:
Often times your therapist will give you some core strengthening exercises. Those are critical, because we know you’re not going to get strong coming here twice a week for half an hour doing exercises. The key to developing core strength is to work on it consistently, so it’s important to do it outside of therapy sessions.
If you have specific questions about activities that you can do at home, ask your therapist. They can design a program that you can do at home, and they can even make a video for you to show you how to do it.
