How are you?
I hope your summer was great!
I wish you strength for the new season! It is going to be an excellent one.
First of all, my apologies for such a long period of blog silence. I feel accountable to those brave minds that go through the effort of trying to understand my ideas of human movement in a written format.
Some of the readers of this blog also have had to learn a new language called Finglish, a fine blend of English and Finnish language that I use often without being aware of it.
By the way, for the Finnish readers interested in human movement development and functional training, I have established a Finnish blog http://www.toiminnallinenharjoittelu.com/
This will actually enable me to focus on one language at a time.
(suomenkielinen blogi osoitteessa www.toiminnallinenharjoittelu.com)
SO, what is physical education?
Can you define it? What does it consist of?
My degree is in physical education. I should know what it is.
Well, at least I know what I have been told it is.
It is at least some of these things defined by a few main goals:
- to inspire and motivate to stay physically active for life
- to learn motor abilities
- to offer physical movement to compliment otherwise more passive life styles
- to introduce different forms of games, plays and activities
- to support social, psychological and emotional development
- to teach different kind of skills of life through physical movement and activities
I am sure there are more of them that I can’t think of right now. However, I would like to add one goal that I feel is not paid attention as far as I know.
I think it is very important and I think we should spend a few minutes of THIS during every single session of physical education no matter what the level or age.
Can you guess what it is?
To establish basic integrated movement patterns!
What?
That’s right. I will give a satisfaction guarantee (sounds good right? :-)) to a physical education program that will spend 5 minutes every single session teaching integrated movement patterns such as deep squat, lunge, hand stance, single leg squat and hanging.
Imagine if from the kindergarten level to the last grade in high school, or even better… in a home for elderly, every person would do these movements COACHED and supervised.
What if the 1.5 year olds who can sit in deep squat would never stop doing that pattern but would keep doing it for the rest of their lives?
Would it keep them healthier and more functional for the rest of their walk on the earth?
And if so, could this be a part of a successful physical education program?
Just thinking...
I missed writing the blog. It teaches me to structure my thoughts.
Thank you for your support!
Tommi
PS: “Education's purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one.” Malcolm Forbes.
