Liz Stuart: Hello, I'm Liz Stuart and I'm going to present some exercises with you today. I have a baby as well while he is a toddler now; he is one-and-a-half, but exercise really paid to keep hard into me getting my figure back after pregnancy and what we're going go do today is a deadlift, which sounds a bit technical really, it sounds like something that big body builders do in the gym, but we can adopt it to suit our needs and the reason why we are doing it is because it helps to tone up the back of the thighs and our bottom and also very importantly it helps to strengthen the lower back, which as you probably know is pregnancy really does weaken the lower back, so it's really important to strengthen that area up again.
The only equipment that we're going to use today is if you have some or you can use tins of beans or just do the movement. I'm just going to use two, two litre bottles of water because they provide just about the right resistance if you don't have dumbbells at home. Okay, so first of all, we're going to get warmed up, so let's think about our posture before we do that. Feet are about 20-centimeters apart, knees are soft, pelvic floor muscles tight and tummy muscles tight as well, put yourself apart of your hips, draw your shoulders back and imagine a piece of string pulling you up and making you stand tall from the top of your head and roll your shoulders back. Do eight back and five, six, seven, eight and forwards two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight and shoulder shrugs up and three, four, five, six, seven, eight and now just march on the spot, bring your knees up high and keep those tummy muscles tight all the time, maybe you're warming up, so we can get our body ready to do some exercise. So, we're going to be working the back of our thighs, our bottoms and lower back.
Okay, and now just stop that on the spot, tummy muscles tight, keeping the back flat, which is going to bend forwards, looking straight ahead and that's really important to keep your tummy muscles tight as you bend down. We can do lots of bending down picking up many beans, picking up toys up the floor, it been inside that's really important that you keep your tummy muscle tight and your back flat as you do so. Okay and one more of those because our movement today is bending forwards and just to the side and down, tummy muscles tight, lower body straight still as you bend over side to side.
Okay and now we'll grab our water bottles to do our deadlift. So, we're standing square on feet about 20-centimeters apart, tummy muscles are tight, shoulders are back and we're going to keep looking straight to head during this exercise. It's really important to keep your back flat, legs are straight and you just going to bend down, hands come just below the knees and up again. So, it doesn't look like much, but what you're doing is working the lower back and the back of the thighs as well.
Okay, so let's go, let's do 12 and 11, tummy muscles are tight; don't let them slacken up because that will support the lower back as well. Okay and eight, seven shoulders are back, six you're feeling the arms as well, five and four, three, and two and one. Okay, roll the shoulders back and we will do another set. So, tummy is tight, just make sure your back isn't arched out, so just tuck those hips under if you need to. Tummy muscles are tight like a closet okay and one, two, so when you're bending down to pick things up or pick up your baby or bending down to change in that, just make sure that you keep your stomach muscles tight, so it really well help to protect your back, and I mean I'm not doing this at the moment and so the exercise, but when you do bend down to get things just bend your knees as well. If you got toddler, look at how they pick things up on the floor because they've just got the most perfect posture, they pick things up properly because they squat down to pick that we should do.
We've got our back thigh bending and pick things up, you know the best feel body. Learn from your toddler, where he totally has and two more and one, great stuff, okay. You can put your bottles down now. Alright, and just roll your shoulders back and you're going to stretch out the back of our legs, so we're going to put one foot out in front of us, tummy muscles are tight square on and we just don't miss like as we're sitting down, we're just bending down, hands are above the bent knee, not the straight leg above the bent knee. Very important, you don't put any pressure on that straight leg and now just feel the stretch down the back of your hamstring, that's the muscle of the rung basically put down, all the way down your leg.
Okay, and just feel that stretch, and then change over, we only hold the stretch, it's for about 6-10 seconds in post-natal exercise. So, you're just stretching out the back of the other leg, tummy tight and back up again and just reach up, stretch out the sides of the body, you always feel it so nice to stretch and two more and two and just reach up and now just reach down and aim to touch the floor or your toes, whichever you can do, don't overstretch so and now tummy muscles tight slowly roll up and roll the shoulders back. Thanks you very much for watching and give yourselves a clap. Well done.
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