PDFE #2 "Movement Classification"

On Saturday September 4, 2010, I visited Troy University in Alabama for their first home football game of the season. The Trojans competed against the Bowling Green Falcons on Troy's turf field in the evening. Kick-off was at six. I choose this setting because of the variety of movements available for athletes to use both during the game and pregame. In any football setting, movement begins with warm-ups and stretching and does not end until the last whistle blows.

When observing either the action or environment at the football game, I focused on one-dimensional systems of movement. During the game, I observed every type of fundamental movement skill. Loco-motor movements could be found in the majority of the game. Any time a player traveled down/across the field, whether he was running as an attack-man or sliding as a defender, he was using loco-motor movement. Similarly, manipulative skills were common. Since a football is used to play the game, anytime the ball was thrown, caught, or handled counted as a manipulative skill. In the pregame warm-up, players focused on stretching by balancing and bending while extending select muscle groups. Static stretching like that requires stability of movement. Most of these fundamental movements also fall into the category of gross motor skills. Most basic movements, like running, blocking, throwing, and stretching are all gross motor skills. Fine motor skills would require much smaller and more accurate movements (hand-eye coordination), such as spinning a football while throwing it accurately at a moving attack-man.

Another area of one-dimensional systems is type of task. The type of task classifies an action's continuity of movement. Discrete movements are quick and have a distinct beginning and end, such as a player kicking a field goal. The movement begins when the player takes a step to swing his leg, and it ends when the foot lands back on the ground after striking the ball. Serial movements are a combination of discrete movements linked together. At the beginning of most plays, the center snaps the ball to the quarterback. This series of movements from the center snapping the ball to the quarterback catching the ball to the quarterback throwing the ball include three discrete movements combined into one serial task. Continuous tasks have a longer duration and show no set beginning and end to the repetitive motion. During the football game, the most common continuous skill was running to the end zone. While running, there is no observable start or finish to the legs and arms swinging back and forth. The movement only ended when the player either reached the end zone or heard the whistle blow.

In addition, two other one-dimensional systems are cognitive-motor elements and environmental predictability. Cognitive-motor elements range from limited decision making to maximum decision making. The majority of plays in football are limited in their decision making because the players know exactly where to run, who to catch, and where to look for the ball. The quarterback's position requires some decision making because he has to determine who is open for throwing the ball to. On the other hand, the coach uses maximum decision making skill; he is the mind behind the team, telling them which play to do when. The environmental predictability can either be open, where the environment is unpredictable and forces players to adapt, or closed, where the environment is stationary and lets players plan their moves. The majority of football revolves around an open environment. Field goals were the only closed environments that I observed.

When observing both action and environment, I placed certain movements into Gentile's two-dimensional system of 16 categories. First, during static stretching, there was no body movement, no object manipulation, no environmental variation, and no context variation. Then during warm-up throwing, some players were stationary with object manipulation but with no environmental variation or context variation. Most of the time, players without the ball were trying to either get open or block a man, which means they experienced body transportation with no object manipulation but did have environmental variation (players moving around) and context variation (dodging around a defender). Before the defenders attack the quarterback, the quarterback experiences either body transport or no body transport with object variation (the ball) in a varying environment with no context variation. Lastly, at one point in the game, one attack-man caught the ball up the field from the other players and ran down the field without anyone near him. In this instance, the attack-man experienced body transportation with object manipulation without any environmental variation or context variation. Overall, football players use a wide array of movements that occur in varied situations.