Jumping jacks used to be easy and fun right? What happened?
Most of the women I work with have had to modify their jumping exercises due to leakage. Oh the joys of motherhood! I address strategies to remedy bladder leakage during jumping in this article. Today I want to take it a step further. In the gym, the compensation patterns typically seen during jumping jacks are: 1) breath holding, 2) abdominal gripping or bracing, and 3) narrowing the jump pattern. While these may be a short term solution, they won’t progress you into a full jumping jack if that is your goal.
Once you have your breathing pattern connected, you can train that breathing pattern along with impact exercises. Since regular jumping jacks are high impact, the first step is to break the exercise down and then build it back up. This is how rehab works. As a PT, when a patient has difficulty in squatting, we break it down into a sit to stand exercise, then progressively add more load in the lower extremities until they can eventually doing a full squat.
For jumping jacks there are a few things that can be altered; the speed, the body position, the breath, and the excursion. For example, in the slower movements you can time the inhale/exhale as you step or jump. In the faster movements make sure you keep breathing as the tendency can be to hold your breath.
So are you ready to jump with confidence? Find out how in the following video.
