Exercise is essential for a growing body. It allows children to grow and develop, strengthens muscles and skeleton, and also promotes recovery from a variety of ailments. For physical education to be useful, it must be adequate, corresponding to the capabilities of a particular child. In this article we will tell you which health groups for exercise therapy exist, as well as how the classes are held.
Physical education - normal and medical
Physical education in general is a rather broad concept. Its goal is to improve physical development, strengthen the immunity of a baby or adolescent. This is not about professional sports or about conquering Olympic heights. It's just that every toddler, regardless of age, gender, health status, needs physical activity. Naturally, kids and adolescents need it in different volumes.
Physiotherapy (exercise therapy) for children is indicated in the presence of certain health problems. It is a special set of exercises that tone or relax completely specific muscle groups, joints, and body parts. Exercise therapy for children is prescribed not only for the treatment of existing problems and ailments, but also for the prevention of the disease, if the child, according to doctors, has a predisposition to it.
The exercise therapy complex is composed of applied sports, gymnastic and game exercises. In medicine, there are several dozen various recommended complexes that are prescribed for the rehabilitation of disabled children, for recovery from injuries, for rehabilitation after operations.
Therapeutic gymnastics implies the presence of separate training programs for babies and adolescents with respiratory ailments, for children with motor dysfunctions, for babies with kidney and other organ diseases, as well as for children with neurological disorders.
In each of these groups, not only the established diagnosis is taken into account, but also the age, degree and severity of the disease, concomitant diseases. Only taking into account all of the above, the doctor can prescribe specific exercises for the child. The physical education group of the child or the exercise therapy group is also of great importance, we will talk about them below.
Most often, exercise therapy classes are included in complex treatment - they are combined with a visit to a physiotherapy room, massage, swimming in the pool, breathing exercises, auxiliary and alternative methods of treatment, as well as taking medications according to the scheme prescribed by the doctor.
The effectiveness of exercise therapy depends on how appropriate the selected load was. The widespread popular belief that a sick baby should be more at rest is mistaken. Children with diseases need physical education even more than children without health restrictions, but this should be a completely different physical education.
Health groups
All children are usually divided into five groups. Children's doctors are engaged in this division. Let's talk in more detail about which guys belong to these groups and what physical activities are shown to them.
First (group A)
This group includes healthy children who do not have any chronic diseases. The physical and psychological development of a representative of the first group fully corresponds to his age. There are no significant restrictions for him, except for age.
Gymnastics exercise therapy is carried out at the request of the parents and exclusively for preventive purposes. The recommended exercises include general strengthening exercise complexes, exercises with sports equipment, general physical education.
Second (group B)
To this group, the pediatrician will classify a generally healthy child, but with a slight lag in height, weight, physical development from the reference age norms and standards. This group will include children who have colds and viral ailments more than 3-4 times a year, as well as children with minor speech impairments.
The criteria for this group are rather vague and imprecise, and therefore it raises the most questions. Physical activity for children of this group is recommended for general, general strengthening, with and without sports equipment. It is recommended to add breathing exercises to it.
Third (group C)
This includes children who have chronic diseases, but they do not greatly interfere with their lives, that is, they are in a fully compensated state. Exacerbations in such children are rare; in a state of remission, the child's health is normal.
Usually, the third physical education group is given to children with chronic bronchitis, with lowered kidneys, with a curvature of posture, if it does not cause other disorders in the body. Physical activity for such children is shown therapeutic, the standards for ordinary physical education lessons are reduced.
Fourth (group D)
This physical education group is intended for children with chronic diseases in a state of subcompensation. If the baby often suffers from exacerbations, he recovers for a long time after them, his health suffers, he is shown certain narrowly targeted therapeutic exercises. Children with bronchial asthma and mild forms of cerebral palsy most often fall into this group.
Fifth (group E)
This group is for children with severe diseases of a chronic nature - with disabilities (disabilities), who cannot attend kindergarten or school due to illness. For them, group exercise therapy classes are rarely carried out, more often these are individual lessons with individual appointments relative to the recommended complex.
The first group usually contains no more than a quarter of the total number of all children: according to statistics from the Ministry of Health, the number of perfectly healthy children is at the level of 20-25%. The problem is that children often fall into the first group not because they are healthy, but because they have not yet been diagnosed, because some diseases have an unexpressed and slow course.
Children from the third and fourth groups quite often unite into one group for physical education, they have quite similar physical exercise programs. This combined group is called "ad hoc".
Quite often, parents are interested in specific diagnoses. It is difficult to say to which group a child with a compression fracture of the spine will be classified, because the consequences of the injury can be different. It is no less difficult to predict the group definition after the transferred pneumonia. In case of spastic diplegia, hemiparesis, and in case of torticollis, the group is established and can be changed during life.
In addition to the general state of health, exercise therapy specialists pay special attention to the types of diseases. So, children with respiratory diseases usually fall into one group for classes, and children with motor impairments - into another.
As for infants, no division is made for them. The only thing is that for premature babies, exercise therapy is recommended to be introduced later than for babies born on time. The first division into groups occurs at preschool age, when the child begins to attend a kindergarten, where gymnastics and physical education are provided.
Training program
Classes can be group or individual. For children from the special group (these are the third and fourth health groups), it is advisable to conduct classes under the supervision of a specialist using monitoring of heart rate, changes in blood pressure and other diagnostic markers of the child's condition. But the main criterion is the well-being of the student himself, how he transfers the load.
For beginners, exercises are often simple and dosed. As the patient progresses, the tasks become more difficult, the load increases.
Children from the group of cardiorespiratory ailments are recommended programs based on cyclic exercises with low respiratory stress.
Children after injuries or with ailments of the musculoskeletal system are additionally advised to include swimming and gymnastics in the pool in their classes. The main complex for them includes exercises with a ball, gymnastic sticks, exercises with a gymnastic wall.
The exercise therapy class is divided into three successive stages:
- introductory;
- main;
- final.
The introductory part includes warm-up, walking, running, breathing techniques. In the main part, there are always exercises recommended for a specific pathology, play, individual, with and without sports equipment.
The final part of the lesson always includes relaxation techniques, relaxation exercises, muscle stretching and auto-training.
Features of physical education for some diseases
In case of damage to the heart muscle (myocarditis), exercise therapy is recommended even in the hospital, then in the polyclinic at the place of residence. Only after 10 months the baby is transferred to a special group for exercise therapy, if there are no attacks. If the condition is stable and the attacks do not recur within a year, the child can be transferred to the third group after a year. In two years, with a favorable set of circumstances, you can count on getting into a general physical culture group.
With congenital heart defects, everything is more complicated: the child will be able to receive a maximum of group 4, and then provided that after the operation at least 12 months have passed and the baby has been successfully engaged in exercise therapy all this year.
With bronchial asthma, boys and girls will remain in the exercise therapy group as long as frequent attacks recur. If within two months the attacks do not recur, he may be allowed to engage in group 4, and if there are no attacks during the year, then in the third.
With chronic gastritis or colitis, the child can be counted on to be transferred to the fourth physical education group from the exercise therapy group only for six months in the absence of exacerbations. Physical exercises are prescribed only in the absence of pain, without exacerbation.
With hemophilia, exercise therapy is not prescribed, like no other type of physical activity. But with an insignificant degree of the disease, light and gentle exercises can only be allowed under the supervision of a specialist.
Kidney problems are the basis for prescribing physical education only outside of attacks and acute periods. Also, there should be no concomitant heart pathologies. Children with pyelonephritis, glomerulonephritis and renal failure cannot get into the general health group.
In case of severe manifestations of endocrine pathologies, exercise therapy is recommended from the first days of the disease, and the child can get into the general group only with the mildest degrees of diabetes mellitus and only with the individual approval of the doctor.
A child with postural disorders can and should be engaged in a general physical education group, and a child with developed scoliosis - only in an exercise therapy group. Separate complexes of exercise therapy do not exist for children with myopia or farsightedness; they are shown classes in special groups with severe deviations or in general physical education groups if the deviations are insignificant.
Where to study?
With infants, with toddlers with disabilities, who are limited in movement, and their transportation can harm the child, homework is recommended. In other cases, parents can choose to attend group classes or study individually.
Classes can be conducted on the basis of kindergartens and schools, be sure to specify, if necessary, when registering a child in the appropriate institutions, whether they have exercise therapy specialists.
Tips and tricks for parents
If a child is prescribed physiotherapy exercises, such an appointment should be taken with the same seriousness as other doctor's recommendations. It does not occur to us to ignore the prescription of a medicine to a child.
There is no exercise therapy only for legs or back, as many people think. The complex always includes a large number of exercises aimed at a variety of muscles, joints, ligaments, nerve endings.
Exercise therapy classes are always laborious. It is important for parents to make sure that their son or daughter does not miss them.
For a complex of exercise therapy exercises for children with cerebral palsy, see the following video.
