It’s Day 14 of the Mykidstime 21 Day Health & Fitness Challenge! If you missed yesterday’s video, catch up with Day 13 here.
Our health and wellbeing expert, Fiona O’Donnell, explains what’s involved for Day 14 in the video below. We want you to tell us during the challenge how you are getting on so tag us on social using #mkt21days and we’ll give you some encouragement!
Mykidstime 21 Day Health & Fitness Challenge: Day 14 – Ankle Stability
This exercise looks super easy, but it is one of those exercises when you actually do it properly it can feel like you’re really working very hard. You can use this exercise during your movement snacks, just to build up stability and strength in your feet. It’s going to build up strength in the soles of your feet, in your ankles, in the tendons around your feet. If you’re a walker or a runner, this is wonderful and it should be done ideally every day.
You’ll see me doing this exercise with nothing in my hands. This isn’t about having a heavy weight, it’s about displacing the movement and causing a little bit of a wobble. What we’re trying to do is make you as unsteady as possible, and by being in this position we’re going to build up all those muscles around the legs, around the ankle, in the foot to increase your stability and strength.
Let’s start by standing and step out your foot as if you’re about to lunge. Keep your back leg straight, up onto the ball of the foot in the front leg and reach your hands up over your head, reaching forward. You can see here I’m going from my right shoulder to left shoulder, right hip to left hip, bottom right to top left, and there’s a bit of a wobble in there.
What I’m doing is trying to create instability and we want to challenge our own balance in this position, swapping sides again, reaching overhead and tilting forward. It doesn’t matter what order you do these movements in.
If you have any questions throughout the Challenge, email Fiona or send her a message on Instagram, Facebook and use hashtag #mkt21days to let us know how you are getting on with the Challenge!
About the Author: Fiona O'Donnell
