Lesson video

Hi, everybody and welcome to today's lesson.

I'm Mrs. Brooks and I'm gonna be taking you through the basic biomechanics, specifically planes of movement and axes of rotation.

By the end of today's lesson, you'll be able to name the planes of movement and axes of rotation and also have a confidence in how to describe them.

Our keywords for the lesson are very much linked to the names of the planes.

Now, you may want to pause the recording to write these down at this point, but we are gonna look at each plane in detail.

It is worth reminding ourselves though that an axis is a line that we reference that would be in the body and that would allow the body to turn or rotate.

So our lesson is divided into three sections.

The first section, we're gonna look at those three planes of movement.

The second section, we will look at those axes of rotation and then finally, we will combine those planes and axes, which will help us remember them when we're looking at sporting movement.

Okay, so let's get started.

Sophia is saying if she stands in this position and we refer to this position as the anatomical position with the arms down by the side, how many lines could she draw that would make the body be in equal halves? What do you think the answer is? Now, the answer is actually three.

So there are three planes of movement in our human body.

Now, that plane, a little bit like we can see in that image there, is a imaginary flat surface that will divide the body into two halves.

So we can see in this image that body has been divided into kind of the right and the left half.

So that if we think of the way that plane is dividing the body, that would then allow us to move along that plane, so we would move forwards and backwards.

In this image, we can see that area of blue has changed and now what's happening is that flat surface is showing front and back.

So we're still divided into two halves, but this time front and back.

Now, if we were to move along that blue line, we would move sideways or we'd move side to side.

And finally, the last plane here, you can see that it's almost looking like a skirt, but it's dividing the body into two halves again, but this time top and bottom.

So if we were to follow that area or that flat surface, I imagine like I'm doing now, our whole body would rotate.

Now, each of these planes have a specific name.

The first one we looked at is known as the sagittal plane.

Remember, that is the one that we showed where it divides the body into left and right.

Now, I have here, oh, if we can see it one before and after.

So we have a sweet here that are really useful to use at this point, 'cause they almost look the same as a body does.

And what I've done with my ruler is I've divided that sweet really simply into left and right and I've used a simple piece of paper or card to do that.

All right, now what would happen is I would then have to move in the same kind of direction as that piece of paper.

So I would be moving forwards and backwards and that is now known as the sagittal plane.

With a different sweet and a bit of paper, what I've done with this one is I've divided that into front of the body and back of the body.

Okay, now if I move along the direction of the paper or the card, what I would be doing, is I would be moving side to side.

This is the frontal plane.

A really quick way of remembering that is F for frontal, front and back.

So it's dividing that body into front and back.

So finally we've got our, this one here that I did earlier, we've got our piece of paper now, but it's gone through the middle of the body and we've got top and bottom.

So if I was to move along, what I would be doing is I would be rotating and following that direction of that bit of paper.

And that's the transverse plane.

So T for transverse, T for top and bottom.

Now, let's just remind ourselves about what a plane is.

So can we complete the missing word in this description? It's an imaginary flat surface running through the body along which something takes place.

What do you think is the missing word? Absolutely, it's that allow movement to take place and our little bits of white card or paper showed exactly that when we were dividing our sweet.

So let's just remind ourselves from our sweets and paper.

That first one we looked at was that sagittal plane and that had that imaginary line dividing the body into left and right or you could think S for sagittal, S for side and side.

Then we had the frontal plane, F for frontal, front and back.

And finally transverse plane, T for transverse, T for top and bottom.

So like we saw with our sweet and our bit of paper, this now would involve moving forwards and backwards.

So if we link that to sporting actions, that could be simply a movement from a game when you are running forwards to receive the ball or if you are playing wheelchair basketball, you could be carrying that ball or dribbling that ball and you'd be moving forward or backwards to get that ball closer to the net.

So if we were to now be using our body to demonstrate movement in the frontal plane, what movement would we be doing? Now, did you either step or rock from side to side like I'm doing? And if you did, well done, 'cause that was the imaginary flat surface that was dividing into front and back.

Now, can we think of some sporting examples like we did then with the running to the ball and carrying the ball towards the basket, can we think of some sporting examples of movement in this plane? Now, there are several, but you could have said, quite a common one is the star jump.

So even though our body is not moving side to side, our legs and arms are.

So they're working in that frontal plane.

Or you could think about a goalkeeper, specifically in football when they're going to save a penalty.

We know the rules dictate that they can't come off their line, but what they can do is they can move side to side to try and put the person off who's about to take the penalty.

Both of those are really good examples of that frontal plane of movement.

Okay, what about now the transverse plane? So using our body, can you demonstrate movement in that plane? Did you rotate just like I'm doing now, because that transverse plane divides into top and bottom? Can we think of sporting examples where that whole body rotation will take place? Now, quite a common one used and if you said it, I can understand why, is in that in dance and very different genres of dance, ballet could be an example where you pirouette and you go the whole way round, so you do that 360 degrees or it could be in discus in athletics where you rotate before releasing the discus, trying to throw it as far as possible.

Okay, now we've looked at these illustrations in detail.

Which of the following of these shows the frontal plane? Is it illustration A, B or C? I'll give you five seconds to decide.

Well done, it is in fact C.

We can see there that that body has been divided into front and back.

So let's link this learning now to our first task.

We can see this individual here is stood in that same anatomical position and what I'm asking you to do is to use that image and first of all draw those three planes of movement.

Make sure you label each plane correctly and add a brief description to each of those planes.

Pause the recording and come back to me when you're ready.

How did you get on? We can see here that the three planes have been added, each of which have been labelled.

So we can see that one, that first one there that's dividing the body into left and right and that's the sagittal plane.

So S for sagittal, S for side and side.

We've then also got the one that's dividing the body into front and back.

F for frontal, front and back.

And finally, our kind of skirt plane is this one here that's dividing the body into top and bottom.

So transverse plane, T for transverse, T for top and bottom.

So we know our three planes of movement and we're now gonna develop that knowledge and learn about the three axes of rotation in the body.

Now to begin with, look at this illustration of a gymnast.

She's doing a backflip.

So often that can be done in isolation or sometimes part of a tumbling routine where this will be the start of the tumble and it will then go on to more and more tumbles, often in the air before they land.

Now, Alex is absolutely right here.

He can tell that that athlete is tumbling backwards.

So given what we've just learned about the planes, this would be this one where they're moving forwards and backwards.

Let me show you that a bit better.

Now, what Sam is then saying is if she was to draw a line of rotation and that's exactly what it is, it's an imaginary line that would be placed to show how the body is rotated, where might she draw that on our athlete? So it is that imaginary line, but we can see here that's been placed here on our gymnast through the hips, because that is the way she would then rotate backwards to complete that movement.

Now, that axis has a name and it's known as the transverse axis.

So it runs through the hips from side to side.

T for transverse, T for through the hips and we can see that exactly on our anatomical position there.

Now, Alex is saying, okay, if we've got that one imaginary line, are there any others I could add to this same diagram that would still allow the body to rotate? Now, our magic number there is three.

We learned about three planes of movement and there are three axes of rotation.

So this one is the one we've seen on our gymnast and it's our transverse axis.

Now, if I show you with our sweets here that are now representing our human body and then I'm gonna simply, I've got a cocktail stick here, which represents our imaginary line.

And what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna go through the hips from side to side and what I've done there is I've put the transverse axis.

So if I then try and rotate our sweet, what they will do is really simply rotate forwards and backwards.

So the transverse axis.

Another one that we need to know is the frontal axis.

Now, this is gonna go from front to back.

So here's my sweet.

So I'm gonna start at the front and I'm gonna go through the middle and then I'm gonna come out of the back.

So we've got the frontal axis going from front to back and if I was to rotate now, I would be rotating this way, sideways.

Can you think of any movements where that might happen? Finally, we've then got the longitudinal axis.

So we can see here that that is now start at the top with our line.

We're gonna go through the head, all the way through the body and then come out at the toe.

So going vertically from head to toe.

So if I now try and rotate that, the way I'm going to do that, is like this.

Looks a little bit like a long kebab if you think about kebab meat if you ever go in the shops.

And it's rotating round like that.

So that longitudinal axis.

So which of these following axis of rotation runs vertically from head to toe? Is it the longitudinal, the frontal or the transverse axis? Well done, we've actually got that vertical there, so that is an example of the longitudinal axis.

Now, is this true or false? The frontal axis runs from side to side through the hips.

Five seconds to decide.

Well done, that is false.

And that's because that's a description of the transverse axis, T for transverse, T for through the hips.

The frontal axis is the one that actually moves horizontally from front to back through the belly button.

So now we know our three.

I'd like to move on to the second task.

We've got three athletes there.

We have a dancer doing a pirouette.

We have our gymnast that's doing our backflip as part of our tumble and then we have another gymnast that's doing a cartwheel.

What I'd like you to do is to label the axis of rotation on each of our athletes and then make sure you make a description as to where that is located in the body.

Pause the recording and come back to me when you're ready.

Well done, did your diagrams look similar to this? So we have firstly our dancer that is rotating around the longitudinal axis and we know that line runs from head to toe.

This was this one here that we did and we were rotating it like that just like our dancer.

Whereas our gymnast is the transverse axis through the hips and right now our sweet is doing that same movement of that backflip and that's showing the transverse axis.

And last but not least, we've then got our frontal axis, which was this one here, going from front to back through that belly button and rotating sideways along that frontal axis.

So we want to be able to remember these as easy as we can.

So a way of doing that is to pair up the planes and the axes.

They always almost work in conjunction with each other.

So the sagittal plane is paired with the transverse axis and as I've moved through the lesson, you've probably seen some similarities in those examples that I've provided when the movement take place or when the rotation takes place.

This is a nice easy one to remember.

Frontal being paired with frontals.

The frontal plane is paired with the frontal axis, which leaves us with the transverse plane paired with a longitudinal axis.

So on our illustrations, this is exactly how it would look.

We know this is our sagittal plane and now it's being paired with our transverse axis.

Frontal and frontal.

So going from front to back, as well as being divided front to back.

And finally, that rotation around the transverse plane, top and bottom and that long vertical line that goes from head to toe.

So which of the following is paired with the frontal plane? Well done if you went for B, because that is showing the frontal axis.

We can see there that line is moving through the belly button from front to back.

So which plane of movement is linked with the transverse axis? Is it the sagittal, the frontal or the transverse plane? Now, that's very easy to get confused, 'cause we've got transverse plane and we don't want, like frontal, to think that that goes with the transverse axis.

It actually is that forward and backward movement, that forward and backward rotation.

So the transverse axis is partnered with the sagittal plane.

So let's put this together so it's an easy way of remembering those planes and axes.

So you can see there, there's a table that does exactly that.

Only there are parts that are missing.

So we have plane of movement, axes of rotation and then we've got an example of a whole body sporting movement.

Can you pause the recording and fill in those missing gaps? And for our plane and axes, remind yourself of that description.

So in each of those spaces, make sure you add a description of the plane and the axes.

Okay, we'd started in our transverse axis, reminding ourselves that's through the hips and that should have been paired with the sagittal plane that's divided into left and right and we'd already been given that example of that backflip tumble.

For that frontal plane divided into front and back, that is paired with our frontal axis that goes through the belly button and we use that really good sideways rotation example of a cartwheel.

And then finally, we had our pirouette and we know that that is linked with the transverse plane, which is divided into top and bottom and the longitudinal axis, which runs vertically from head to toe.

To summarise, we've learned a lot today with regards to planes and axes.

So we're reminded that that plane is that imaginary flat surface, runs through the body like we showed with our pieces of paper and our sweets and that will be the way of showing the movement that is taking place.

There are three planes.

We learned about the sagittal.

That's the one that's dividing the body into left and right.

So it's that forwards and backwards movement.

So a bicep curl could be a good example of that forwards and backwards, frontal, dividing the body into front and back.

We did use those star jumps as their sideways type movements.

Transverse, top and bottom.

I did mention the discus, where the athlete will rotate before releasing the discus so it can be thrown as far as possible.

We then moved onto those axes and even though we used our cocktail stick, that is that imagining line that will exist through the body in which that body can then turn, and there are three axes of rotation.

Transverse is the one that goes through the hips.

So a somersault or a backflip is a good example of that.

The frontal axis, the one that goes through the belly button or from front to back and the cartwheel is an example of that.

Then finally, you've got that longitudal axis, links up with our discus and that 360 degree spin or pirouette.

Thank you so much for joining me today.

I hope that's been useful on the topic of planes and axes and I look forward to seeing you on the next lesson.