What does P stand for? Petite, power, perfume, pretty, pretty powerful? When it comes to the CAP model, it stands for both physical and psychomotor development. When we think of physical development in children, how they grow, this includes how their center of mass changes as they age as well as their ability to access fine motor skills versus gross motor skills. Whereas the physical realm is concerned with the body’s growth and development, the psychomotor realm is concerned with how the brain talks to the body, and how the body talks back to the brain to learn how to move. It’s a complex process that involves the perceptual-motor system. This system, how the brain receives, processes, and transmits information, is highly affected by the developmental processes and experiences of a child.
For the brain to talk to the body, it processes information through our sensory receptors, our eyes, ears, nose, and our joints, muscles, and skin. When a three-year-old falls in the snow hands first without mittens on, he or she shrieks because it hurts! The skin on their hands felt the cold, and the feeling of cold on the skin was transmitted to the brain via nerve endings. The brain then communicated to the hand through the nervous system to remove the hand from the cold snow. Hopefully, the child is now willing to put his or her mittens on to avoid this sensation in the future.
If you think about your own skiing or riding, trying to make that perfectly round turn, how do you know you have made it? Does it feel smooth? Is there more pressure in one phase of the turn versus another? Our brain receives information from our external environment and our body’s movements. We process what we see and hear, external stimuli, to decide where and when to turn. And we process information through sensing movement, through proprioception and kinesthesis, to decide how and when to move.
Proprioception refers to the brain’s ability to know where we are in space. Think of Simone Biles in the 2020 Olympics. She lost her ability to know where she was in space and was said to have a case of the “twisties.” Imagine being on a 4-inch wide balance beam and trying to do a backflip not knowing where you are in space. Not ideal. We can speculate that Ms. Bile’s vestibular system of the inner ear, a key part of proprioception, wasn’t functioning properly. Bringing this back to your own skiing or riding, think about how you know when to extend your legs to reach the ground after you go over a bump. The landing is spotted visually, your eyes communicate this information to the brain, and you know to reach for the snow with your legs. Yet, how do you know you’ve touched the snow if you don’t look?
Kinesthesis is the body’s ability to detect its own movements. Simply put, we feel when we hit the ground. The bottom of the feet feel the pressure build up underneath the skis or board and communicate to the brain that it’s time to flex the knees to absorb the landing. Our skin, joints, muscles, and brain are in a constant communication loop, helping us make movements at the right time and in the right amount.
In teaching children how to move, it is important to take into consideration how their brains are developing and what level their brains talk to their bodies. How much information can their bodies process to talk back to their brains? Think back to that 3-year-old student with cold hands who finally realizes what a wonderful idea it is to keep his or her mittens on. Have you noticed that student may need to look down at their skis to know that he/she is making a wedge? Kids’ bodies, muscles, and joints are not yet developed enough to process the position of their skis, so they need external confirmation. With repetition and practice, they begin to know without looking that the wedge is occurring. And, they can also begin to sense that it slows them down.
As children grow cognitively and physically, they are capable of detecting movement through proprioception and kinesthesis at a much faster rate. An eight-year-old can look down a tree run, visualize his or her turns past the next several trees, and communicate to his/her body when to start and finish the turn to complete the imagined line. A four-year-old may only see the turn around the tree right in front of him/her and can only communicate to his/her body how to start and finish the turn one turn at a time. Yet, give that 4-year-old plenty of repetition and practice time, and their ability to see those lines and communicate with his/her body will improve.
Understanding the psychomotor realm and how it develops in children helps inform our instruction to give our students the time and practice they need to learn motor skills and enjoy the sport. Developing minds need a lot of repetition to learn a new movement pattern. To keep your lessons exciting and your students engaged, keep working on the same skill in different ways to keep it interesting. This gives the brain and body time to communicate with one another until a new movement pattern emerges. Enjoy the process.