Occupational Therapy Warm-Up Ideas

This blog brought to you by: www.ot-advantage.com

A good start to an Occupational Therapy treatment can be initiated with a warm-up. Occupational Therapy practitioners choose their interventions focusing on the client’s immediate deficits. A warm-up can help an Occupational Therapy client with modulating their senses, preparing their muscles for exercise, or initiate different areas of the brain for challenging activity. Listed are some activities that may help as a client warms up for their OT treatment:
Review prior treatments plan of care: Each Occupational Therapy treatment is developed to increase a person’s function with a daily task. A client will better understand their progress if they identify with how their OT treatments are affecting their recovery.

For example:

• Review prior treatments plan of care. If you educated the client on how to use adaptive equipment for dressing, ask the client to name the AE and what its use is. This will allow the client to better understand their progress and identify how their OT treatments are affecting their recovery.
• If you recently fabricated a splint, have the client show how to donn/doff it and recite the wear/care schedule. This task informs the OT practitioner of the client’s ability to show return demonstration, their understanding of the splint and its use, and offers the clinician the ability to further educate if needed.
• Have a plan or schedule in place to delegate household tasks, if addressing IADLs. Each time your client attends an Occupational Therapy treatment, they will initiate the respective daily task; watering plants, making coffee, stowing groceries, or opening blinds or drapes. This may help a client follow a schedule, assist with accountability, address sequencing and organization of tasks, visual scanning, or balance.
• Ask the client to recite any precautions they may have (e.g., hip precautions, rotator cuff post-operative precautions, weight-bearing precautions).
• Stretch or move affected extremity through various planes to prepare for exercise. Due to spasticity, pain, or weakness AROM can help to prepare a client for higher level tasks.
• If addressing handwriting, have the client sign-in on a log, write the date, and/or check a box for the day of the week. This can be upgraded/downgraded accordingly (i.e., change utensil, write first name only, or circle a word to complete the log-in sheet).
• If addressing various sensory stimuli, have the client pick a warm-up task from a bowl. The tasks can vary from bouncing a ball, sitting on a theraball (with different types of support), manipulating textured or plain putty, washing hands with various textured soaps and towels, or jumping on a trampoline.
• If addressing vision, ask client to sort through a deck of cards or organize play money for a board game.
• When addressing cognition, have the client organize/sequence a simple photo task or a basic rote task.
• Comment if you have any warm-up ideas!