From the area of Physical Education, we must know the basic physical capacities of children.
It is also important to know the needs and capacities of the students, the recovery breaks, progressions, in short, to know the impact of physical activity on the students’ bodies.
In general, an adequate development of physical condition and basic physical capacities will contribute to the integral development of the students, it will improve their health in the present and in the future, as well as their quality of life. Providing knowledge so that in the future they can organize their physical activity with some autonomy.
Importance of basic physical capacities in the curriculum
The importance of basic physical capacities is such that within the primary education curriculum Royal Decree 126/2014 of February 28 (7) we have a specific content block for the work of basic physical capacities.
In addition, their work in the classroom will contribute to the development of key competencies (6).
Descubre la importancia de trabajar con deportes alternativos en Educación Física.
Veremos paso a paso, el auge en la última década de este tipo de deportes en el ámbito de la educación física, además se van a presentar dos propuestas prácticas para su desarrollo.
Concept of basic physical capacities
María Castañer and Oleguer Camerino define basic physical capacities as the set of components of physical condition that intervene, to a greater or lesser degree, in the achievement of a motor skill (2).
Basic physical capacities can be defined as:
The basic motor prerequisites on which man and the athlete develop their own technical skills, which are strength, endurance, speed, and flexibility (Zatzíorskji 1974).
By basic physical capacities or physical qualities, we can also understand the determining factors of physical condition, which guide and classify to perform a certain physical activity, achieving through training the maximum development of their genetic potential.
Following Castañer and Camerino (2006), we can distinguish:
- The motor capacity refers to the potential of motor skills that nourishes motor skills.
- The physical quality is the more or less optimal state in which each capacity is found at each age or evolutionary moment.
Following this criterion, the basic motor capacities would be the endogenous configuration of a dilogenetic endowment, while the motor qualities would be the result of an ontogenetic evolution that has not yet been consolidated.
Capacity as changing potentiality and quality as refinement of the capacity that is linked to performance and efficiency in responses.
Their development influences technical skills in a determining way, so much so that there is a close interdependence between technique and physical quality. It also significantly influences motor learning possibilities, as well as tactical training.
Classification and location of basic physical capacities
To locate basic physical capacities, we will take into account the motor control model of Welford or Marteniuk, in which there are three mechanisms in motor execution:
- Perception mechanism: responsible for perception, reception of stimuli through vision, hearing, touch, balance, or kinesthetic organs.
- Decision mechanism: in it, the received stimuli are processed, and the motor response is decided, selecting the most appropriate motor response.
- Execution mechanism: the orders sent from the CNS are materialized. In this mechanism, the qualitative contribution (responsible for the direction and control of movement) and the quantitative part (provides the necessary mechanical and energetic components) are differentiated. The basic physical capacities occupy the quantitative aspect of movement.
Marta Castañer and Oleguer Camerino differentiate between perceptual motor capacities (corporeality, spatiality, and temporality), socio-motor capacities (expression, interaction, and introjection), and physical motor capacities (strength, endurance, speed, and flexibility) (2).
According to their function:
- Basic physical capacities: strength, endurance, speed, and flexibility.
- Complementary motor capacities: coordination and balance.
According to Manno (5):
- Coordinative capacities: are determined by the ability to capture and process information by the analyzers involved in movement. Therefore, they fundamentally depend on the central nervous system (coordination, balance, body schema, laterality, rhythm,…) (5).
- Conditional capacities: are limited by the efficiency of energy metabolism (strength, endurance, speed, and flexibility). The limiting factors of conditional capacities depend on the availability of energy from the muscles and the mechanisms that regulate their supply (5).
From the above, other capacities arise: strength-endurance, explosive strength, speed endurance, or agility (resulting from speed, flexibility, coordination, and balance).
Morphofunctional substrates of Basic Physical Capacities
Each of the basic physical capacities is the result of the efficiency of a different physiological system of the organism, on which it is preferably based, although the human being is a whole, which as such functions and responds.
Following Fidelus (1982), man is like a universal machine that can perform a large number of motor tasks thanks to its three different systems: motor, feeding, and motor.
- The direction system: It is constituted by the Central and Vegetative Nervous System, which direct “the biomachine”.
- The feeding system: It is composed of the digestive, cardiovascular, and respiratory systems.
- The motor system: Performs movement from the contraction that moves the levers of the organism.
Basic physical capacities
Next, we analyze the basic physical capacities in Physical Education:
Strength within the basic physical capacities in Physical Education
Marta Castañer and Oleguer Camerino define strength as the motor capacity to overcome resistance through the opposition exerted by muscle tension (3).
When working on strength, during the primary education stage, it should be done globally and through motor skills, as children are in a period of growth.
Throughout the six courses, it will be taken into account that the level of complexity of the contents will be progressive and always adapted to the possibilities and limitations of the students.
In this way, we will achieve the following benefits: improve muscle tone, greater performance to perform daily life tasks, or prevent some postural diseases.
Below are some activities for the development of strength: exercises in pairs (push, pull), games with sticks, climbing, quadrupeds, jumps, throws, circuits with different stations…
In all of them, it is necessary to emphasize the importance of adopting a good body posture (straight back, bend the knees to lift weights,…).
It is also important for students to acquire content related to strength, such as the different muscle groups involved in a particular activity: for example, in a jump, the quadriceps.
To evaluate strength in the Primary Education stage, we can use the following tests: Eurofit Battery
Endurance in Physical Education
Castañer and Camerino define endurance as the ability to withstand the state of progressive fatigue that occurs in long-duration work (3).
Endurance work in the primary education stage should focus on the development of aerobic endurance (at low-medium intensities), globally, playfully, and mainly through games.
It will provide the following benefits: increased respiratory capacity, reduction of fatty tissue, improved capillarization and vascularization of the muscle, helps prevent coronary diseases in adulthood, compensates for stress situations…
To develop endurance, there are different tests to evaluate endurance: Cooper test (linear load functional test), Course Navette test (progressive functional test), being important to adapt them to the characteristics of the students we work with.
Speed in Physical Education
Álvarez del Villar defines speed as the basic physical capacity that allows us to make one or several movements in the shortest possible time (1).
The work of speed in primary education should be done globally and always through skills and coordination aspects.
Reaction speed and gestural speed can be worked on from 7-8 years old. Regarding displacement speed, we will focus on short non-lactic distances.
Its work will provide the following benefits: increased attention and concentration, allows for faster and more effective movements, and stimulates the functioning of the nervous system.
Some activities to work on speed are: coordination games in the first cycles, relay races, jumps, chases, starts responding to different stimuli,…
Regarding the evaluation of speed, in primary education, we can use the following instruments: 20-meter speed test, gestural speed test, Eurofit Battery (10×5 meters, plate hitting to evaluate gestural speed).
Flexibility within the basic physical capacities in Physical Education
Álvarez de Villar (2) defines flexibility as that quality that, based on joint mobility, extensibility, and muscle elasticity, allows the maximum range of motion of the joints in various positions, allowing the subject to perform actions that require great agility and skill (1).
Flexibility should be worked on throughout the entire primary education stage, being present in all phases of the session (although the warm-up and cool-down phases are the most conducive to its work).
In the first courses, dynamic methods will prevail, and from the third or fourth, static methods can be used. It is important that the exercises performed are controlled and broad.
In this way, they will provide the following benefits: they will help improve coordination, prevent different injuries of the locomotor system, help take care of postural hygiene, and increase the performance of other physical capacities (strength, endurance, and speed).
To work on flexibility, we can do it in a playful way (in chase games,…) through circuits by stations, using both mobility exercises and stretches.
In the Eurofit Battery, there is a test to evaluate trunk flexibility from a seated position.
Basic Physical Capacities and evolution in motor development
During the first two decades of our lives, we experience a growing evolution (in absolute values) of all Basic Physical Capacities, with the controversy raised by flexibility.
The controversy arises from the fact that if flexibility were an involutive capacity, how to explain then that those people characterized by having very little flexibility when they were teenagers, later as adults with training manage to improve quite a bit?
During puberty, where there is an accentuated development of Basic Physical Capacities, it coincides with the first years of any student in a secondary education center, so it is an aspect to take into account in our didactic approaches.
Once the puberty stage is overcome, the evolution of the different physical capacities experiences a stable and continuous increase until reaching its maximum development (as a general rule) between 20 and 30 years, depending, logically, on our characteristics and level of training.
From the age of 30, all capacities undergo an involutive process, with a slower decline in endurance and strength compared to the others.
In the following table, we will see the evolution of Basic Physical Capacities within motor development.
If we analyze the previous table in the “Physical Education” section, which is the objective to be achieved, we can deduce that some stages of life are better than others to achieve certain objectives and take care of health, which are called “sensitive phases,” since the development rhythms (quantitative and qualitative) are different for each of the Basic Physical Capacities.
The sensitive phases in the development of Basic Physical Capacities are the period of time in which there is a favorable predisposition to train a physical quality, obtaining greater performance in a given work.
What is the difference between a physical quality and a physical capacity?
A physical quality refers to the characteristics of motor actions in full realization or already executed by a person.
However, physical capacity refers to the potentiality that an individual has in terms of their strength, speed, endurance with which a person could perform a specific motor action.
Evolution of basic physical capacities
The human being, from birth, is a dynamic entity, undergoing quantitative and qualitative transformations in an evolutionary and involutive sense; with different rhythms and intensities.
All basic physical capacities evolve in a growing sense in the first years of an individual’s life, except for flexibility, which always involutes.
Physical capacities evolve with age, although on non-coincident planes; they present an accentuated development at the onset of puberty, and particularly between 12 and 18 years (Mano, 1989). In addition, Meinel & Schnabel (1988) (8) point out that during puberty and adolescence, the development of conditional capacities is as follows:
Evolution of speed as a basic physical capacity
The highest levels of speed are achieved before those of endurance and strength, due to the faster maturation of the nervous system; reaching maximum development between 20 and 30 years, depending on the level of training.
Reaction speed and movement frequency result in values similar to those manifested by adults at the end of puberty, with a general stagnation observed at 15-16 years.
After sexual maturation, the nervous system slowly adapts to exercises and training loads in speed work.
Evolution of endurance as a basic physical capacity
Endurance, if not trained, decreases rapidly, and if trained, it is gained in a relatively short period of time.
The ideal age at which an athlete can develop 100% of their endurance is between 18 and 35 years. From there, the capacity will gradually decrease.
Puberty is a phase of almost permanent increase in this capacity in men. For women, the development is similar, but with a lower endurance capacity than men.
During adolescence, in correspondence with biological age, greater tolerance for anaerobic lactic-type loads is observed. The aerobic capacity is a neutral capacity that can be worked on from 6 to 18 years.
As for anaerobic capacity, it is necessary to wait until after puberty, from 13 to 18 years, as a sufficient aerobic base and loads above the anaerobic threshold are needed.
Evolution of strength as a basic physical capacity
Strength is a quality that is acquired progressively. A trained athlete is considered to have maximum strength between 25 and 35 years, with the peak moment at 30.
Puberty is shown as the beginning of a more marked increase and manifestation of maximum strength, especially in men.
Specific sexual differences in the different types of strength increase permanently during adolescence, so that in untrained girls, their values begin to stagnate around 14-15 years.
Evolution of flexibility as a basic physical capacity
Flexibility, as we have analyzed, is a degenerative quality, that is, it is continuously lost from birth.
However, if flexibility is trained during childhood and adolescence, it can be maintained constant or even slightly increased.
From the fourth decade of life, all basic physical capacities present an involutive process, with a slower decline in endurance than in strength and speed, influenced by personal characteristics and the level of sedentarism.
There is a clear differentiation between both sexes from puberty (until then, development is parallel and almost similar), so much so that in adulthood, the difference in absolute values approaches 40%.
The trainability of basic physical capacities is high, and until the age of achieving complete maturation, they are sensitive to the stimulation of a general type of training, well proportioned with the specific type.
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Conclusion on basic physical capacities in Physical Education
Within the area of Physical Education, we must seek the motor enrichment and harmonious development of the student, through the prior work of physical condition, which is determined, as we have seen, by the development of the different basic physical capacities. We must ensure that this development is fundamentally based on health.
In short, as teachers, we must try to ensure that the basic approaches in our area seek to modify sedentary lifestyle habits and promote attitudes that lead our students to fully develop all their capacities (motor, cognitive, affective, and social).
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Bibliography
- Álvarez del Villar, C. (1985): Physical preparation in football based on athletics. Editorial Gymnos. Madrid.
- Blázquez Sánchez, D. (2010): Teaching by competencies in Physical Education. Editorial Inde. Barcelona.
- Castañer, M. and Camerino, O. (1996): Physical education in primary education. Inde. Madrid.
- Grosser, M. (1992): Principles of sports training. Editorial Martínez Roca. Barcelona.
- Manno, R. (1988). Fundamentals of sports training. Barcelona: Paidotribo.
- The Organic Law 8/2013, of December 9, for the improvement of educational quality.
- Royal Decree 126/2014, of February 28, establishing the basic curriculum of primary education.
- Meinel, K., & Schnabel, G. (1988). Theory of Movement. Stadium. Havana.
