Understanding the Body Concept

The Body concept is the foundation of the Movement Education Framework. It focuses on developing body awareness and understanding how the body moves, balances, and coordinates during physical activity.

Before athletes can perform volleyball skills efficiently, they must first understand how to control their body. This includes recognizing how different body parts work together, how to transfer body weight, maintain balance, create force, and recover for the next movement.

At Cognitive Kinetics Hawaii, we teach athletes to move their body first, rather than simply reaching for the ball. Athletes learn to organize their posture, shift their center of mass, coordinate the hips, trunk, shoulders, arms, and legs, and create efficient body positions before making contact with the ball.

A key part of this process is developing proficiency in the Fundamental Motor Skills (FMS). These include locomotor skills (such as walking, running, jumping, hopping, skipping, galloping, sliding, and leaping), non-locomotor or stability skills (such as balancing, bending, twisting, rotating, stretching, and weight transfer), and manipulative skills (such as throwing, catching, striking, kicking, dribbling, and volleying).

While each fundamental motor skill is important on its own, volleyball rarely requires athletes to perform these movements in isolation. Instead, athletes continuously combine and transition between locomotor, stability, and manipulative skills to solve movement problems during play. A player may shuffle to the ball, lower into a stable passing position, rotate through the hips and trunk, contact the ball with control, recover to a balanced ready position, and immediately transition into the next movement.

As athletes develop proficiency in the Fundamental Motor Skills and learn to combine them efficiently, movement becomes smoother, more coordinated, and more adaptable. They no longer have to consciously think about each individual movement, allowing them to focus on reading the game, making decisions, and executing volleyball skills under pressure.

Using a variety of equipment—including tennis balls, foam balls, volleyballs, and balls of different sizes, weights, textures, and bounce characteristics—provides athletes with diverse movement experiences. Each variation encourages them to organize their body differently, helping them become more adaptable movers rather than relying on a single movement pattern.

As athletes develop a stronger understanding of the Body concept, volleyball skills such as passing, setting, serving, attacking, blocking, and defensive movement become more efficient because the athlete understands how their body should move—not just what skill to perform.

Learning the Body Concept

Understanding movement begins with asking questions about how your body works. These questions help athletes become aware of their movement, recognize efficient movement patterns, and learn how to adapt their body to different movement challenges.

Body Concept Questions

• What is my body doing before I move?

• Where is my center of mass?

• Am I balanced before, during, and after the movement?

• How am I transferring my body weight?

• Which body parts are working together?

• What body shape gives me the most control?

• Am I leading with my hips or reaching with my arms?

• Which locomotor movement is most efficient for this situation?

• How can I combine locomotor movements more smoothly?

• How does changing my body shape change my movement?

• What happened to my balance when I contacted the ball?

• Did my body prepare me for the next movement?

• What could I change to move more efficiently next time?

Athletes are encouraged to explore these questions rather than search for one "correct" answer. As they gain experience, they begin to recognize how their body organizes movement in different situations. This understanding helps them adapt, solve movement problems, and transfer their learning to volleyball and other sports.