Play, Practice or Train—Which Comes When?

  Written by Gray Cook

 

There’s a lot of misconception about training these days. Let’s take three terms—let’s think about the words play, practice and training, and see what they mean to us.

Play is something we mostly associate with either playing a sport, or children doing random activities on a playground in any environment—randomly running around doing stuff, climbing, spinning or anything they want.

Then we have the play connotation in sports, everywhere from a pickup basketball game to weekend golf to professional sports.

 

The idea of practice is pretty easy. We usually practice things that require something more than natural ability, meaning that it requires a skill and we have to practice that skill.

Now let’s think about the way we look at play and the way we look at practice, and just realize that neither of those really have a lot of the same guidelines as what we conventionally call training. We’re not really talking sets and reps in play or practice. Basically, we play until we get bored with a certain activity, and then we go pick another activity.

Play is emotionally driven and very random. Yet there’s full engagement—quite a bit more engagement in play than there is in a person’s gym workout.

Let me expand that. When children are on the monkey bars in a playground or on a balance beam, they’re randomly playing. They’re not trying to be a world-class gymnast. They’re totally engaged in that balancing activity, far more engaged than somebody who considers training something done at the gym plugged into a headset while drudging through a treadmill jog.

The engagement part of play is absolutely amazing. That mind-body experience is part of the neurodevelopmental system as we grow and learn to use our bodies in differing environments. Play is what we’re engineered to do until we find activities we love so much that we want to practice them. Once we’ve practiced them, we want to elevate our status and have organized training for them. Play is where it all starts.

Practice, on the other hand, is one of those things where we do have to again be engaged. We learn from the best of the best that it’s not so much the talent for the activity, as it is the talent for the way they practice the activity. Look up the term ‘deliberate practice.’ It’s practice with the right kind of feedback, the right kind of time and attention to detail.

Play and practice are two things we need to bring to our training. As a matter of fact, I reserve training for the organized approach to elevating someone’s physical capacity.

But if we don’t set baselines, there’s no organized approach.

For baselines, we engineered the Functional Movement Screen and the Y Balance Test. We use performance tests. We use one-rep max. We use three-rep max. We use sprint speed tests, agility and endurance tests. We have all kinds of tests, but how many people are grabbing their bags right now and heading off to the gym to train? Really? What are you training? Are you working against a baseline?

Nobody ever says, ‘I’m going to the gym to practice or play,’ but I think there are a lot of people who show up at the gym every day and just pretty much…play. They get engaged in an activity. They see somebody doing something new and decide they’re going to go play with that for a while. The side effect is a workout, but they’re actually just playing.

We see a lot of workouts posted on the internet, but we don’t know if there’s a training effect because they didn’t post any baselines. They didn’t tell us what their goals are. It’s just random activity or there is a number. “I did this many. How many can you do?”

That’s probably not the best application of science.

On any given day, you may head to the gym, a training facility or outdoors, but you have to ask yourself: Are you playing? Are you practicing? Are you training?

All three have a much greater meaning to me and all three have a very important place in our physical development.

As Ed Thomas told us when we were developing the Club Swinging DVD, people used to go to the gym to practice a skill, and the workout was the side effect. That’s what we see when kids truly enjoy playing an activity. The conditioning is a side effect, whereas in training conditioning is the focus.

What if we engineered a workout one day a week where we went to practice a lift or a Turkish getup? It’s not about how much or how many we do. It’s literal perfection— working with somebody who knows what they’re doing or getting with a partner and videoing each other, looking back at the video, watching an expert on video and practicing the activity.

It’s not just doing the activity, but practicing it. The precision and the technical aspect, all of that is going to get better. There’s going to be a workout as a side effect, but the whole point is to get better at something.

The other way to do it is to create a scalable situation, a self-limiting situation. Erwan and I did a bunch of that in our Exploring Functional Movement project. That’s an area where I think Erwan is a genius. It may look like a lot of what Erwan does at MovNat is just adult play in nature, but it’s not. Erwan has that ability, like a lot of other coaches I know, to instantly size up the group and then turn an activity into a completely scalable situation so everyone involved gets what they need.

I’ll be talking more about this in the future, but for now, just think about it. Maybe we could use a play day as our recovery day. Maybe we ought to give up one of our training days and have a practice day for those activities where we’re not as proficient or where we wish we could do better.

It was such a disappointment to see kettlebells make it into someone’s training program before making it into that person’s practice program. That person is missing the precision, attention to detail, alignment and technical proficiency—all of those things were what the RKC was about.

The snatch test was just to see if you’d actually done some practice and to see if you were efficient with the movement. One or two look really good, but when you’re in 30 deep, form starts to break down. What do you do? Do you lean back on your guts? Do you bite your lip and gut through it? Or do you lean back on your efficiency thinking, ‘Okay, pick it up. Stay aligned. Stay technical’?

Here’s my challenge as we go into the spring, dust off those winter muscles and train yourself and train others: Do what I’m going to do this year. I’m going to have a day where I play. It is going to be a workout. It might even look like I’m practicing some skills, but I’ll randomly move from one activity to another and just enjoy myself.

In play, standup paddle boarding is constantly challenging and totally engaging. Yes, I’m playing, but I won’t be racing anytime soon. My racing days with a paddle are behind me, but I love the paddle board.

In practicing, I am working on my deadlift. Even though we just released the Key Functional Exercises DVD in which I gave a lot of pointers for deadlifting, that doesn’t mean I’m a perfect deadlifter. I have some goals for deadlifting, but the first one is to dial in my form. I’ll be seeing Brett Jones at the CK-FMS soon and I’m sure I’ll get some critique there.

Then in training, pick either some movement patterns you need to correct or some physical capacity goals you’d like to elevate. Set a training day or a couple of training days a week to really push those margins. Try to become better in a movement pattern with quality, or try to become more proficient in a lift, speed work or endurance work.

Think about it. Play, practice and train. You should be able to define each of those with respect and integrity for both the people you train and for yourself.

 

Reclaiming Play: Helping Children Learn and Thrive in School
by Nancy Carlsson-Paige
First Published in Exchange, March/April, 2008


Child development theorists, researchers and educators have long known that play is one of children’s most valuable resources, vital to their social, emotional, and cognitive growth. Through play children make sense of the world around them and work through new experiences, ideas, and feelings. But in recent years, a host of social forces and trends—the influence of media, commercialism, fast-paced family life, academic pressures in schools—have been eroding healthy play, robbing children of this valuable resource for optimal growth and learning.

Children today are playing less both at home and at school. According to a national Kaiser Family Foundation survey, children in the two to seven-year-old age group now average about three hours per day in front of screens—time they don’t spend in active, child-centered play (Rideout, et al, 2003). As more parents work, and work longer and harder than they did a generation ago, and without a system of quality national childcare and after school care, the television has increasingly occupied a central place in children’s lives, edging out other activities including play. In our nation’s schools, teachers have had to cut recess and unstructured play in order to meet pressures in a climate of test-driven curriculum. The focus on academic skills and scripted teaching, alarmingly, has pushed down even to preschools and kindergartens where play experiences are disappearing.

But not only do kids today have less time to play, many also have a diminished capacity to play. The powerful influences of media and marketing have undermined children’s ability to create and be in control of their own play. This influence was first felt after the deregulation of children’s television in the mid-1980s, when it became legal to market toys and products to children that were directly tied to TV. Right after this policy change, teachers began observing significant changes in children’s play, reporting that it looked less spontaneous and was conforming to mass media models, especially those from television (Levin & Carlsson-Paige, 2007). Today, children commonly imitate in play what they have seen in movies, video games and other electronic media as well as TV, and use media-linked toys that further encourage replication of what’s been seen on the screen. And often what children imitate are the models of aggression and violence, so pervasive in entertainment media. I have heard countless descriptions like this one from Candace, who attended a workshop I gave recently: “I’m concerned because the children in my day care center don’t know how to play. All of their play is scripted. It’s just an imitation of whatever popular media show they’re into.” And Margaret who said, "I hate Star Wars. It has taken over the classroom. It's all the kids can think about--they're obsessed with it, mostly the boys. They turn everything into a light saber and start fighting."

We educators have an important role to play in taking back healthy play for children today. There is so much we can do to help them create play that truly meets their needs—play that gives children a strong foundation for learning, the emotional and mental readiness to learn, and the social and emotional skills they need for success in school and in life.


Play and Learning

Not long ago, I visited a kindergarten classroom where two children, whose names I soon overheard were Tania and Jasmine, were in the dramatic play area playing “sisters.” I watched these two girls as they searched through the dress up box to find two identical blue scarves to tie around their waists. Then Jasmine said, “Let’s make pizza.” “Yea,” said Tania, “we can put lots of stuff on it.” Tania took a large flat plate and carefully placed eight round circles on it that she took from a container. “These are the tomatoes,” she said. Jasmine took color cubes from another container and put one on top of each of the circles. “And here are the meat things,” she said, and then suggested, “Let’s feed it to the baby!” “No,” Tania exclaimed, “babies can’t eat pizza—they don’t have any teeth!”

As Tania and Jasmine played “sisters,” not only were they having fun, they were learning. Without thinking about it, the two children were working on math concepts such as sorting and one-to-one correspondence when they searched for matching scarves and put tomatoes and “meat things” on their pizza. They were developing social skills as they communicated their plans, heard each other’s ideas, and cooperated on their common project. Seeing their interest in sorting and matching, their teacher Lisa set out unifix cubes on a table later that morning and encouraged the girls to sort them by color and match them to pictures of cubes on printed cards.

By the next time I visited this classroom, the dramatic play area had been converted into a full blown “restaurant” bursting with activity and excitement. The children had taped a sign at the entrance that said “AR RSTRNT” (our restaurant) and several of them were writing the words “pie, pizza and soup” with Lisa, who had suggested they make menus. On a table was a “cash register” made of large legos that held strips of paper handwritten with numbers that children were calling “money.”

When Tania and Jasmine pretended to make pizza and then later worked with unifix cubes, they were gaining valuable experience with early math concepts. When children manipulate materials in play, they are building a foundation of understanding for the competencies and skills we want them to learn in school. We can’t tell children to understand number, for example, by having them copy number symbols onto paper or by reciting the names of numbers. They have to “discover” for themselves what numbers mean—for example that five unifix cubes and five hats and five blocks are all the same quantity—and this they can only do through hands-on experience with materials. Once children understand the concept of number, the symbols such as the number symbol “5” have real meaning because children have constructed this knowledge for themselves, or as Piaget might say, they have “invented” it. When children construct their ideas through play and hands-on activities that make sense to them, their knowledge builds in a hand-over-hand way that is solid and unshakable. They build a foundation of meaning through play that provides the basis for understanding concepts in language, literacy, math, science and the arts.

One of the most important ways we can help children build an understanding of concepts we want them to learn in school is to provide them with long blocks of time that allow them to get deeply engrossed in play. And we can maximize learning by providing open-ended materials such as blocks, play dough, building and collage materials, generic dolls and animals. These are the materials that foster extended play and new learning (Fromberg, 1997). With open-ended materials children can work on concepts at their developmental level, bring their own narratives to the materials, and make just about anything they need or want. Low-specificity toys are a stark contrast to the highly structured single-purpose, media-linked toys that flood store shelves today. As we observe the concepts children are working on in play, we can provide follow-up activities to extend learning as Lisa did when she engaged Tania and Jasmine with unifix cubes and encouraged children to make menus and money for their restaurant. There is a compelling and growing body of research to show that play is essential for children’s academic success, and when teachers intervene to scaffold new learning, the benefits of play are especially potent (Isenberg & Quisenberry, 2002; Singer et al, 2003).


Ready to Learn

Through play children build the foundation they need to understand the concepts they learn in school, but play offers an even deeper benefit as well. Through play children continually regain their sense of equilibrium which is what allows them to greet learning tasks in school with openness and confidence—to have the emotional and mental readiness to say: I can do this task and I want to do it!” Let me explain this with the example of Ruby, a child in my kindergarten class years ago, who restored her equilibrium through play and was then able to engage in learning once again. In the second half of the school year, Ruby was hospitalized with “spider meningitis,” as she would later tell her classmates, and was out of school for at least three weeks. Upon her return to the classroom, Ruby headed straight to the dramatic play corner where I had set up a “hospital,” put on a white coat, and was soon leaning over Sam, one of her favorite play partners and now her “patient.” I remember Ruby listening to his heart with a stethoscope, giving him a “shot,” and directing him to eat some “medicine”—a bowl full of wooden cubes she’d mixed up just for him. Ruby spent much of the next few weeks in the same play area, hovering over one willing patient after another. Finally, very slowly, she began spending more time in the art, science, and literacy areas she had so enjoyed before she got sick.

Ruby’s dramatic play during this period was vital for helping her work through her hospital experience. As she played, Ruby was using scenes she remembered from her actual hospital stay, but mixing them with ideas from her own imagination. Only Ruby knew what she needed to do, and only through this particular play could she gain a sense of mastery over what she had been through and thus find her equilibrium once again.

Though we may barely notice it, this is ideally what children are always doing in play. They take pieces of experience and transform them into something new, re-ordering things in terms that make sense to them and gaining mastery over the challenges they’ve encountered. As they create their own scenarios and narratives, children come to understand and integrate what they’ve experienced in life—the birth of a sibling, an argument overheard between parents, a scary scene viewed in a movie. In this way, play serves children’s learning even more deeply than we sometimes recognize because it’s through the process of play that children continually return to emotional and mental balance and become ready to learn.

We educators can do a lot to encourage the kind of beneficial play that Ruby created after her hospital stay. But children today may need more help engaging in play that truly meets their needs. We may have to become more involved than we did in the past to help children create sustained and original play. How might we do this? First, of course, we observe kids’ play closely and with curiosity: what concepts and issues are they working on? What themes and storylines interest them? The answers to these questions will guide what we do next. We might decide to ask an open-ended question while children are playing—one that could spark a new idea or direction for play. For example, when Tania and Jasmine were making “pizza,” their teacher Lisa could help them extend their play by asking, “Who will eat this pizza?” Or, “Do you need a place where you can eat the pizza?” We might make suggestions for new materials or directions for play. Janice, a kindergarten teacher, told me that when the children in her class were engaging in repetitive Star Wars play, she introduced a large oar into the block area and this one prop ignited interest in a new play theme. And Jim told me that he encourages kids to engage more deeply in play by suggesting they make their own props such as “radios” or “telescopes.” And Charlene said that at times, she briefly enters children’s play to make specific suggestions. She gave an example of a time that the children in her class were playing “robber” and someone was “injured.” Charlene asked to join in and soon said, “There’s someone injured on Center Street. Who can get an ambulance?” and this, Charlene said, inspired a new round of play centered on themes of rescue and healing.


Social and Emotional Learning through Play

Writers in the emerging field of social and emotional learning (SEL) list many skills and competencies that are vital to success in school and in life, such as self awareness, the ability to manage distressing emotions, increased sensitivity to how others feel, perspective-taking, impulse control, establishing positive relationships, and learning to resolve conflicts. Researchers in SEL have been able to show conclusively that social and emotional skills and competencies result in improved academic achievement and higher grades in school. (CASEL, 2007).

The social and emotional skills considered vital for success in school begin to build in the early years and to a large extent, they develop through play. When Tania and Jasmine played “sisters,” for example, they were communicating, hearing each other’s ideas, and cooperating on their common project. Jasmine gained experience with perspective taking when Tania told her, “Babies can’t eat pizza—they don’t have any teeth!” And when Ruby became the doctor in her hospital play, administering shots and medicine to her classmates, she was likely managing the emotions of fear and helplessness she experienced while ill. As children play, they also learn to control their impulses. They have to stay within the boundaries of the roles they create in their imaginary situations and in so doing, they develop more self-regulatory social behavior (Vygotsky, 1933, 1978).

When children play together, conflicts are commonplace because young kids tend to see things from their own perspective and don’t easily understand how their actions affect others. But today, conflicts among children are increasing as they try out the models of aggression and violence they’ve absorbed from the media and have diminishing opportunities to develop social skills through spontaneous play with other children. Because of this, it is more important than ever that we intervene in children’s play to resolve conflicts in ways that help them learn social and emotional skills. With the next example of Curtis, you can see how play conflicts give us an opening to teach children positive skills for getting along.

Nadine, the mom of three-year-old Curtis, asked my advice about an incident that happened at Curtis’ family day care site recently. Nadine explained that Curtis was riding a tricycle and he bumped into another child, who then fell off his bike. The teacher made Curtis sit on the steps for a time-out. Later Curtis was back on a trike, and this time he bumped into a little girl named Madeline, who fell off her tricycle and got a bloody nose. The teacher then told Curtis that he couldn’t ride at all anymore. Nadine asked me, “Is this a good way to teach Curtis how to get along with other kids?”

When Curtis got back on the tricycle the second time, he did just what he’d done earlier. The time-out hadn’t given him any new ideas about what to do instead of driving into other kids. What Curtis needed in this situation was to learn how to interact more positively with other children. Three-year-olds like Curtis tend to focus on only one thing at a time and don’t yet think logically about cause and effect, making it possible to crash into another child without any real understanding of the hurt this could cause. Children Curtis’s age need adults to point out, in concrete terms that make sense to them, how their actions affect others. This kind of intervention can help children develop empathy and caring and build awareness and skill about how to get along with others.

After first helping Madeline, the teacher could have brought Curtis over and said in a matter-of-fact voice without blame, “Curtis, Madeline got hurt and her nose was bleeding. She got hurt when you bumped into her. Can you do anything to help her feel better—can you say any words to help her?” The teacher might also have asked Madeline, “Do you want to say anything to Curtis?” or, “What can Curtis do to help you feel better?” Asking questions like these can stimulate children’s thinking and encourage them to invent for themselves the words to say, helping them build communication skills in a meaningful way.

When we send children to time out as Curtis’ teacher did, we aren’t giving them any new ideas or skills for how to get along with others. Especially today, as we see so many children in great need of learning social and emotional skills, we can do a lot to foster this critical learning by intervening in ways that encourage skill building. And as research now tells us, we’ll not only be helping children become more socially competent, we’ll be giving them tools that will increase their chances for academic success in school. A definitive meta-analysis of more than one hundred studies showed that students who had SEL not only got along better with others, but also learned more effectively and had higher grades and achievement test scores (Weissberg et al, 2007).

This is a time when societal influences are robbing children of healthy play, one of the most important vehicles they have for optimal development and learning. We educators need to step in—with the awareness and skill that is uniquely ours—to reclaim this powerful resource for children. Taking active steps to encourage imaginative and beneficial play that truly serves children’s needs will not only reclaim play for them, but also give children the best foundation possible for success in school and in their lives now and in years to come.

REFERENCES

Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning. (December, 2007). “Background on Social and Emotional Learning (SEL).” CASEL Briefs. Illinois: University of Illinois at Chicago.

Fromberg, Doris. (November, 1997). “What’s New in Play Research? Child Care Information Exchange.

Isenberg, J. & Quisenberry, N. (2002). “Play: Essential for all Children.” A position paper of the Association for Childhood Education International. Retrieved from: www.acei.org/playpaper.htm

Levin, D. E., & & Carlsson-Paige, N. (2004). The War Play Dilemma: What Every Parent and Teacher Needs to Know. New York: Teachers College Press.

Rideout, V., Vandewater, E. A., Wartella, E. A. (2003). Zero to Six: Electronic Media in the Lives of Infants, Toddlers and Preschoolers. Menlo Park, CA: Kaiser Family Foundation, 4.

Singer, D., Singer, J., Plaskon, S. L., & Schweder, A. (2003). “A Role for Play in the Preschool Curriculum.” In Olfman, S., Ed. All Work and No Play: How Educational Reforms are Harming our Preschoolers. 43-70. Westport, CT: Praeger.

Vygotsky, L.S. [1933] 1978. “The Role of Play in Development.” In Mind in Society, eds. M. Cole, V. John-Steiner, Scribner, S. & Souberman, E. 92-104. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press.

Weissberg, R.P., Durlak, J.A., Taylor, R.D., Dymnicki, A.B., and O’Brien, M.U., “Promoting Social and Emotional Learning Enhances School Success: Implications of a Meta-Analysis.” Manuscript submitted for publication, 2007.



Adapted from Taking Back Childhood: Helping Your Kids Thrive in a Fast-Paced, Media-Saturated, Violence-Filled World. by Nancy Carlsson-Paige, Hudson Street Press, March, 2008.

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Nancy Carlsson-Paige, Ed.D., is a Professor of Education at Lesley University in Cambridge, MA where she has taught teachers for 30 years, and a research affiliate at Lesley’s Center for Children, Families, and Public Policy. She has co-authored four books and written numerous articles on media violence, conflict resolution, peaceable classrooms and global education. Nancy is a consultant for public television, and has worked on shows for Arthur, Postcards from Buster, Zoom and Fetch.  Her latest work is a book for parents and all adults concerned about children today called Taking Back Childhood.

 

Incorporating Functional Movement Systems into a Secondary School PE & Wellness Program

Ten years ago, a traditional physical health and education (PHE) program would have been captured by images of students being involved in competitive sporting activities, long lines waiting for a turn and single-function drills regardless of need. Grades rewarded excellence and often, many students struggled to ‘fit in’ or even maintain participation. Fast forward to today and a totally different picture is seen. This is because of the global shift to a concept driven curriculum and physical literacy that has been nothing short of revolutionary in its impact on student learning in physical and health education.

Concept driven PHE instruction produces fewer pressures on students to be proficient in competitive sport and provides greater emphasis on challenge through choice and individual improvement goal setting. In other words, PHE today is all about developing physical independence and physical literacy. These terms are routinely used in progressive PHE pedagogy but they also receive definitive clinical backing from the field of movement, rehabilitation and functional training. Gray Cook, a world leading physiotherapist and founder of Functional Movement Systems (FMS), states that the main goal of physical education should be to develop healthy and capable human beings who can be confident and competent to take care of their own health and fitness throughout their life. But how do you connect educational theory with classroom practice? The synergy of theory and performance occurs when PHE students test themselves physically, usually against a baseline test that they performed with support from the teacher and specific online resources. This is how the International School of Belgrade (ISB) redesigned its PHE curriculum to explicitly include Functional Movement Systems (FMS) as the underlying philosophy when vertically articulating PHE units of inquiry with the simple slogan: Move well before moving often.

Functional Movement Systems (FMS) in the ISB PHE Curriculum

The FMS philosophy states that a person needs to have a solid foundation of functional movement patterns on top of which they will build strength, speed, agility, and sport specific skills. What you do not want to do is to layer fitness on top of movement dysfunction. FMS was therefore purposefully inserted into the ISB curriculum because it was seen to provide the PHE teaching team with a significant tool to help students develop greater understanding and awareness of their movement weaknesses. It can do this through a simple battery of tests designed to reveal mobility and stability deficiencies in key fundamental movement patterns (such as squatting, lunging, stepping, crawling etc…) that one might do at home, work or sports. In accordance with the principles of developmental kinesiology, FMS ‘corrective exercises’ could also be learned and this will help a person improve mobility and subsequently learn how to control increased range of motions and how they should be incorporated into all aspects of daily life.

The Why, What & How

The reason why we decided to make this big shift in our PHE and Co-Curricular (CCA) programs is that we recognized the need to empower our students to be able to take care of their own health and fitness in a way that is safe, efficient and supported by various scientific studies. As stated above, we wanted to design our curriculum in a way that will develop physical independence in our students and athletes and that will help them to move better, feel better and perform better, as well as to put them on a path to a lifelong fitness journey. Our PHE curriculum supports our CCA program by implementing principles of FMS into our team’s warm ups and physical preparation sessions, in the hope it would reduce the incidence of injuries in our students/players and underpin their performance in competitions.

In our PHE program, we use a vertical planning model, in which we build upon the knowledge gained in each previous year of the program. During our fitness units for grades 6 and 7, instead of standardized fitness testing at the beginning and the end of school year, we are introducing basic components of fitness to our students and exposing them to a variety of different fundamental movement patterns such as running, jumping, crawling, climbing, squatting etc. This gives our students a chance to explore different forms of movement and to develop body awareness, coordination, strength and most of all, plasticity of their central nervous system, by exposing them to a variety of sensory stimuli. Dr. Ed Thomas, one of the world leaders in physical education, highlights the positive effects that adequate physical activity can have on students’ academic scores.

In grade 8, we are introducing FMS as a movement screening tool to our students, and they have a chance to understand basic concepts of mobility, stability, motor control and functional movements. They get to inquire why it is necessary to have a certain baseline of functional movement patterns and how these can be transferred to other sports and activities of daily living. We teach our students how to screen themselves for movement deficiencies and how to design corrective exercise plans that will help them improve their movement patterns. They get the chance to learn how to use foam rollers, a variety of different mobility exercises for the body regions that tend to get stiff and tight, stability/motor control drills etc… After they learn how to improve fundamental movement patterns, we introduce the basics of functional training, as a way to load those patterns in an adequate way, that is in line with the latest trends in the world of strength & conditioning of athletes.

As students progress to grade 9, we are introducing CrossFit as another very popular and beneficial way of achieving and maintaining fitness, in a way that is in line with the principles they had the chance to learn in the previous year of the program. They are using the exercises and knowledge obtained and upgrading it by broadening the range of activities they can implement in their workouts. Students are asked to design two or three week plans, guided by the principles of programming in CrossFit and perform their programs in class.

By grade 10, students should have a broad knowledge and understanding of functional movement patterns, functional training and CrossFit, so they are asked to combine all of these methods in designing a 6-8 week plan that they will use to prepare themselves for different community events at ISB, such as the 5km ‘Dragon Run’ trail race.

ISB’s Partnership with FMS UK

The PHE Department at ISB has been very fortunate to have been supported along this journey by members of administration who saw the benefits of this change in philosophy and need for students to take ownership of their movement journey.

We were able to get funding and create a collaborative fitness center that we call the Dragon’s Lair. This space is used by students and teachers as a place where they can participate in functional training and work on their personalized exercise programs, guided by the principles of FMS philosophy. The former Principal Ms. Kristine Greenlaw was instrumental in getting this space for the PHE Department and supporting the messaging within our school community. We have also been fortunate that our new Principal Mr. Aaron Kane is also supportive of the program and has supported our initiative to form a relationship with FMS UK, who will provide us with a bespoke FMS platform that our students and teachers will use. The FMS software will give each user a unique movement program that will improve weaknesses in each individual’s movement competencies.

Using FMS for Staff Wellbeing

The FMS UK software will be available to all students in Grades 8, 9 & 10 initially and will also be used by all consenting staff members. The focus for staff will be improving their physical wellbeing and helping them to better enjoy their time on campus. There are many different views on physical wellbeing and how it can impact mental wellbeing. Here at ISB we definitely believe that if staff members are physically feeling well, then their mental capacity and performance in the classroom will be improved. This is especially important when linked with a good diet and regular exercise.

Special thanks to Kristine Greenlaw, Fmr Upper School Principal & Aaron Kane, Upper School Principal

Nemanja Jeremic is the MYP PHE teacher (6-10) at the International School of Belgrade since August 2019. He was born in Uzice, Serbia and holds a Bachelor’s and Master's Degree in Physical Education and Sport from the University of Belgrade. He has extensive experience in working with a broad range of populations in helping them move and feel better to achieve their fitness goals. He has experience working as a PE teacher, personal trainer, strength & conditioning coach and rehabilitation specialist. He has been implementing Functional Movement Systems (FMS) philosophy in his practice for more than 7 years which helped him to achieve remarkable results. The latest of which was winning a silver medal with the Serbian U19 women’s volleyball national team at the FIVB Women’s U19 European Championship in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia in August of 2020, as a strength & conditioning coach.

 

 

 

BELOW: The International School of Belgrade (ISB) redesigned its PHE curriculum with the simple slogan: Move well before moving often.