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AQA A-Level PE 2022 Revision: Sport, Society and Technology

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AQA A-Level PE 2022 Revision: Sport Psychology

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AQA A-Level PE 2022 Revision: Biomechanics

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AQA A-Level PE 2022 Revision: Exercise Physiology

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AQA A-Level PE 2022 Revision: Sport in Society

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AQA A-Level PE 2022 Revision: Skill Acquisition

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AQA A-Level PE 2022 Revision: Anatomy and Physiology

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t was going to be the Pandemic Olympics; the cheerless games that would inspire ambivalence at best. And then sport did its thing. Despite the lack of crowds and the looming threat of Covid, Tokyo was amazing. It also became something else: the mental health Olympics.

When Simone Biles pulled out of the gymnastics events, she brought an unprecedented focus on the psychological challenges of elite sport. One of the greatest athletes of all time had decided to prioritise her mind over the will - and enormous pressure - to win. "There is more to life than just gymnastics," she said. After taking stock in a Tokyo gym, she returned to the beam event, taking a bronze medal in what might have felt like one of her biggest victories.

Mental health has been a feature of a sporting summer. Biles said she was inspired by Naomi Osaka, the Japanese tennis star who withdrew from this year's French Open to ease her anxiety and depression. Brain more than brawn also sparked debate at Wembley, where England's penalties "curse" returned, and at Wimbledon, where the British wildcard Emma Raducanu prematurely departed the psychological cauldron of No 1 Court. Mark Cavendish came back in spectacular style at the Tour de France, meanwhile, after overcoming depression.

The outpouring of honesty appeared to become contagious. Ben Stokes decided in July to take an indefinite break from cricket to prioritise his mental wellbeing, in what retired player Michael Vaughan told the BBC was a "wake-up call for us all". The next day, England defender Tyrone Mings made the front page of the Sun when he revealed his "mental health plummeted" in the build-up to Euro 2020 because of anxiety over his selection.

"I did a lot of work on that with my psychologist," Mings said. "I was given a lot of coping mechanisms - breathing, meditation or just learning how to bring yourself into the present moment. To stop letting your subconscious take over."

I'd be vomiting in the toilets before races, visualising myself in armbands, struggling to swim to the end of the pool

Today's sporting heroes face unprecedented pressure, not just to perform on the sporting field, but on social media and as the face of their own brands and businesses. "At the end of the day, we're not just entertainment, we're humans and there are things going on behind the scenes that we're also trying to juggle with as well on top of sports," Biles said.

Light is emerging in the space between "super" and "human". And if supreme performers are just like us after all, the field of sports psychology - traditionally the preserve of elite performers - has perhaps never been more relatable. More than ever, sports psychologists say, the lessons of these high-stakes moments can be applied to all our lives.

mma Raducanu had sprung from nowhere at Wimbledon, defeating a string of higher-ranked players in a startling run that captivated the nation. Promoted to No 1 Court - and the front pages - for a fourth-round match against Ajla Tomljanović of Australia, the 18-year-old suffered dizziness and breathing difficulties, and retired. "I think the whole experience caught up with me," she said later.

Dr Claire-Marie Roberts was watching with a pang of recognition. Roberts, 43, was a promising teenage swimmer, who once qualified for the 100m breaststroke at the 1996 Olympics. But she had done so despite almost crippling competitive anxiety.

"I'd be vomiting in the toilets before races with so many self-doubts and ridiculous scenarios playing out in my mind," she says. "I'd worry about letting my dad and coach down, and think everyone was much better than me. Sometimes I'd visualise myself with armbands on, struggling even to swim to the end of the pool."

Happily, and unusually for the time, Roberts had a sports psychologist to turn to for help: "In the early 90s nobody really even knew what a sports psychologist was." It was only then that she was able to start managing her anxiety and qualify for Atlanta with Team GB.

When a pre-Games injury snuffed out her Olympic dream, Roberts' experience inspired a job swap. She is now a sports psychologist at the University of the West of England in Bristol, and learning and development manager at the Premier League. Before football, she worked with several Olympic athletes and teams.

Her 25-year journey epitomises the rise in prominence of psychology in sport, which is now combining with a broader awareness of mental health. Wellbeing has become part of a national conversation, with voices as diverse as Prince Harry and Marcus Rashford challenging us all to speak up and look after ourselves. Rashford, who would go on to miss a penalty in the Euro 2020 final against Italy, sent Raducanu a message of support after her withdrawal, revealing that he had experienced a similar reaction to pressure during an under-16 England match.

Simone Biles on the beam in Tokyo. Photograph: Wally Skalij/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images

What can we take from these moments of seemingly unimaginable pressure, and how can we use those lessons to cope with the demands of our own lives?

Roberts begins with a case study - a friend who has a severe fear of flying. The psychologist identifies four core skills in performance psychology. "And they could be just as useful for an England player taking a penalty or my friend getting on a flight to Málaga," she says.

First, break down big, scary goals into smaller, more manageable ones. "For my friend, the first goal might be getting to the gate," she says. "Then there's self-talk, or positive affirmations. Saying, 'I can do this', 'I've done this before, I'm meant to be here.'" Mo Farah has talked about feeling unworthy before races in the years before he became a champion. "I always wanted to win but in your head some part of you thinks: 'He's better than me, he's better than me,' so you put yourself in third or fourth," he told the Guardian in 2012. Breaking the 10,000m European record in 2011 gave him a confidence that, he added, "feels like it's a weapon... You're in control."

In Tokyo, Swedish discus star Daniel Ståhl earned instant meme status with his own self-talk. "I am a Swedish Viking! Aaaah!" he shouted at himself seconds before a throw.

Next up: visualisation. "It's fundamental for confidence to be able to see yourself achieving your goals," Roberts says. "So an athlete might picture themselves scoring a penalty, or my friend might visualise themselves walking to the gate." Finally, Roberts prescribes relaxation: the learned ability to come down from a state of heightened arousal to take stock and make good decisions. This might require relaxing your muscles or practising meditation. "Or it might be as simple as my friend doing some breathing exercises before takeoff," Roberts says.

Prof Steve Peters - a veteran sports psychiatrist who has worked with dozens of teams and sportspeople, including the England men's football squad, British Cycling and the sprinter Adam Gemili - says he often talks to athletes about consequences. "I'd take a sprinter and say, this is what could happen in this 100m race: a world record; underperformance; or an unexpected event," he tells me from Tokyo, where he is working with the British taekwondo team. "I like to go through each consequence and put them to bed, so they're not going over them in their minds when they need to focus. I'm always surprised that people don't do this in real life - they just react to what is thrown at them."

Ten years ago, athletes skirted around the issue, or blamed things like dodgy food to mask the reality of the situation

Peters also works to identify the one thing that is keeping an athlete from performing as well as they could. Sometimes, this can require conversations with his or her coach - and some diplomacy. "Often there is this mismatch," Peters says. "A high jumper might be focused on their footfall, while a coach might say the problem is getting the hips up. I look for evidence of what is right."

Dr Andrea Furst, a sports psychologist who works with England Rugby and the Australian sailing team, says the discipline to focus on what needs to be improved is what separates elite athletes and mortals. "Many of the things that are needed to be elite are not particularly complex, but it's the requirement for them to be done day after day that makes supreme performers," she says. "One of the best pieces of advice in everyday life would be to pick one thing to focus on to change and stick at it."

Roberts says greater prominence for sports psychology is improving the way we look after athletes, as well as the way athletes talk about themselves. "What was so encouraging about Raducanu was the openness with which she spoke about what happened," Roberts says. "I doubt you'd have got that 10 years ago; athletes skirted around the issue, or blamed things like dodgy food to mask the reality of the situation." Biles was so honest about her own struggles that it felt almost radical. She said the outpouring of support she then received made her realise she was more than her sporting accomplishments, "which I never truly believed before".

"The idea of a god-athlete is a dangerous mirage," adds the psychologist Pippa Grange, who has worked with several elite athletes and teams, including England during the 2018 World Cup (she now works for Right to Dream, a football academy in Ghana and Denmark). Her England appointment brought psychology into the heart of the squad, rather than as a service players could reach for if they felt they needed it (or could admit to needing it). Grange reportedly got players to sit in small groups and share their life experiences and anxieties, for example, to improve cohesion and trust - a dynamic that remains central to Gareth Southgate's winning management style.

'I put too much pressure on myself': defending taekwondo Olympic champion Jade Jones goes out in the first round. Photograph: ANL/Shutterstock

"The performances we love the most are the ones where we can see huge hearts, deep character and the mastery of skill at an inspiring level; where we can see 'humanness' - not robotic perfection or emotionless 'execution'," Grange says. "There is something for all of us to take from that."

Dr Geir Jordet, a professor at the Norwegian School of Sport Sciences in Oslo, is in demand from big businesses to apply lessons and techniques from the singularly stressful scenario of a penalty shootout. The Norwegian former youth footballer, who switched to sports psychology after an injury, spent five years analysing every shootout since 1976 in the World Cup, as well as the Euro and Copa America finals. He also interviewed 25 players. "The mechanisms that we use to deal with performing under pressure are universal," he says.

When the England-Italy Euro final went to penalties, Jordet grabbed a notepad. His analysis, covering more than 45 years of shootouts, has revealed that when a team only needs one more successful penalty to win the match, the player who takes it will score 92% of the time. When a team will lose the match if they miss the next penalty (for example Bukayo Saka's turn for England), the player taking that penalty scores only 62% of the time. "In life, it's about considering the positive consequences of what you're doing rather than dwelling on the negative consequences if you mess up," he says.

Jordet even found that the way a player celebrates a successful penalty can really matter. "If you celebrate intensely and make yourself big and show how happy you are with what you did, you immediately increase the chance of your team winning - when we control for other factors, such as the position of the player in the shootout and who's up or down," he says.

Jordet, who has worked with dozens of top-flight teams (he prefers not to name clients, but does say he received a call before a Euro 2020 match in case it went to penalties), found that big rather than modest celebrations not only increase the chances of success in the team's next kick, but of failure when the next opposing taker steps up. "In business, I tell people that when you land an important contract or do well in a meeting, it's important to show you are happy to everyone around you. It's contagious."

Jordet measured the time a player takes to strike the ball after the referee blows the whistle to allow each strike. Players who rush are more likely to miss: perhaps, Jordet says, because they are seeking rapid relief from stress. Just two seconds more to take stock - and control - significantly boosts the chance of scoring.

But waiting too long can be counterproductive; Jordet was stunned when Rashford waited 11 seconds before taking - and missing - his spot kick. No player had taken that long in 45 years of big shootouts, he says. "I've always backed myself for a penalty, but something didn't feel quite right," Rashford tweeted the next day. "During the long run-up I was saving myself a bit of time and unfortunately the result was not what I wanted." The lesson? Taking too much time can lead to overthinking and mounting stress.

Above all, the data suggests shootouts are not a lottery: "We found that the more players believe the outcome of penalties are down to chance, the more likely they are to experience destructive anxiety. Perception of control is key." Southgate knows this, and has prepared and trained his squad accordingly, using data rather than heart to select penalty takers, for example. But whether control is perceived or real, the Italy final showed that it only goes so far.

It was techniques like these, which were novel at the time, that helped Roberts banish some of the stress she felt before big swimming races. That pressure had never stopped her diving off the blocks, but it had made her a deeply anxious teenager.

Growing awareness of these stresses, boosted by Raducanu and Biles' honesty, is, Roberts says, the most positive result of the rise of sports psychology. "When you look at the athletes competing in Tokyo, some of them are so young and it's such a huge amount of pressure for anyone, but for a teenager it's a really tough ask and I think people are only just fully understanding that," she says.

By forgiving and applauding the likes of Saka, Biles and Raducanu, we are acknowledging a very human response to pressure even when athletic ability can seem impossible to comprehend. It's something to chew on the next time we step up to our own penalty spot, vault or baseline.

Slice up your goals
"If you're facing a particularly challenging situation, it really helps to break bigger goals into chunks," says sports psychologist Claire-Marie Roberts.

Avoid impostor syndrome with self-talk
"Use positive affirmations," Roberts says. "Say to yourself: 'I can do this, I've done this before, I'm meant to be here.'"

Visualise success
"This is fundamental for building confidence," Roberts says. "Picture yourself achieving the goals you've set for yourself."

Focus on consequences
"If we don't address the outcomes of what we're trying to do, they can prey on our minds and undermine focus," says sports psychiatrist Steve Peters. "Go through the consequences of failure or success and put them to bed one at a time."

Relax
"Breathing, muscle relaxation, meditation or even music can help bring you down from a level of heightened arousal and let you refocus," Roberts says.

Focus on what's not helping
"You're asking yourself what you are doing and what is not helping you achieve your goal, and focusing on that," Peters says.

Celebrate your triumphs
"When you do well in a team, it's important to show that you are happy to everyone around you - it's contagious," says Geir Jordet, psychology professor.

Pause before going for it - but not too long
"Don't pass time for its own sake, which may produce overthinking and extra stress," Jordet says. "Spend a few seconds focusing on what you can control."

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How to win at life: what sports psychologists can teach us all

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t was going to be the Pandemic Olympics; the cheerless games that would inspire ambivalence at best. And then sport did its thing. Despite the lack of crowds and the looming threat of Covid, Tokyo was amazing. It also became something else: the mental health Olympics.

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Falling short of your goals? You're in good company. Most do, and the effect is cumulative- missed goals are de-motivators, and the reasons for missing them can quickly become reasons to give up the fight and flatline your progress. To keep today's resolutions from becoming tomorrow's disappointments, follow these five proven enhancers to your goal setting journey.

Set better goals.

The reasons for missed goals fall into one of two categories: there's a problem with your goal or a problem with your process. You can cut yourself a break by making sure your goals are reasonable, attainable, and within your control.

Break larger goals into smaller pieces.

Big goals give us a reason to wake up in the morning, so aim big, but the larger your goal, the more likely it will be that it requires a sequence of smaller goals to achieve. Let your big goal, your outcome goal, be your guiding light, but focus on those smaller proces...

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Falling short of your goals? You're in good company. Most do, and the effect is cumulative- missed goals are de-motivators, and the reasons for missing them can quickly become reasons to give up the fight and flatline your progress. To keep today's resolutions from becoming tomorrow's disappointments, follow these five proven enhancers to your goal setting journey.

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Pressure affects us all and sports performers are no different. Tennis players serve double faults, golfers miss short putts and football players miss penalty kicks when it really counts. Just over 80 minutes into the Women's World Cup semi-final, the England Lionesses trailed USA 1-2 and team captain Steph Houghton had a penalty kick to try to level the score. She was unable to convert the opportunity.

In her own words Houghton "just didn't get a good connection" and the kick was saved by the USA goalkeeper. But what was she thinking as she prepared for the penalty - was this a kick to level the scores or a kick not to lose the match? As captain, did she feel unusually self-conscious in that moment? Was she particularly focused on her technique, or was she simply unlucky?

Pressure matters. In Men's World Cup penalty shoot-outs, more than 90% of kicks to win the shoot-out are scored - yet only 60% are successful when the player must score to keep the shoot-out alive.

Sport psychologists who study performance under pressure have shown that several things happen. First, when we are anxious we become more distracted, particularly by sources of threat. In penalty kicks the goalkeeper is the obvious threat to success and researchers have shown that 56% more time is spent looking at the goalkeeper in pressure kicks. To make matters worse, goalkeepers often try to distract the kicker - and they make more saves when they do so.

Secondly, the fluent and automatic feel of highly practised skills can unravel to the point where the players can look almost like novices. In most activities it pays to slow down to give yourself the mental space to think logically when anxious. But, paradoxically, once skills such as a golf swing or football kick are well-learned, it is best to perform them without thinking.

Some players are more prone to over-thinking than others. Do these statements describe you: "I'm aware of the way my mind works when I work through a problem" or "I get 'worked up' just thinking about things that have upset me in the past"? Researchers have shown that "yes" responses to these and similar statements are associated with skill failure and poor decision making under pressure.

Third, we tend to focus more on the outcome than what we need to do to achieve it. By its nature, pressure implies a performer is on the verge of achieving something important. Unsurprisingly, their thoughts turn more to the outcome - yet this is the very thing they can't control, which itself becomes a source of anxiety.

EPA/Kim Ludbrook

Fourth, pressure situations can be accompanied by a strong urge to avoid the situation. Multiple gold medal-winning Olympic rower Sir Steve Redgrave described in his autobiography A Golden Age that he frequently thought: "Why am I doing it? I don't' want to be here. It's absolutely horrible." Avoidance can also be seen in the body language of players. In football shoot-outs, the players taking the penalties to prevent a loss are more likely to turn their backs on the goalkeeper after placing the ball and respond faster to the referee's whistle. The urge to "get it over with" leaks into players' actions.

How to thrive under pressure

Coaching staff, sport psychologists and teammates play an important part in preparing the players to perform well under pressure. How might they do this?
1. Encourage a 'challenge' mindset
Do players see pressure situations as a threat or a challenge? A team culture that embraces pressure and plans for it is critical. By practicing under pressure players become acclimatised to it, understand how it affects their thoughts, behaviours and emotions, and have the opportunity to learn and practice coping skills. Researchers have shown that basketball players who completed nine sessions of practice under pressure improved their free throw success from 73% to 78%.
2. Trust the process
And let the outcome take care of itself. By focusing on what we need to do to achieve an outcome, our thoughts turn to things that are more under our control. Simply asking "How?" can help switch focus to the things under your control.

Rather than "winning the World Cup", players will be encouraged to focus on the game plan and their role within it across a range of scenarios.
3. Encourage clarity and certainty
According to players, a big source of stress in penalty shoot-outs is uncertainty about whether or not the coach will ask them to take a kick, and which of the five kicks they will be asked to take. Planning in advance for this eventuality is critical. The order in which players take kicks and their strategy, body language, pre-kick routine and use of deception and disguise are all part of effective preparation.
4. Keep it simple
We can keep fewer things in mind when under pressure so it's important to have a simple, clear game plan. This applies to skill execution too. "Holistic" cue words that capture the essence of the skill, such as "smooth" or "reach" for the basketball free throw, have proved effective in preventing "paralysis by analysis".

Pressure situations are synonymous with sport. As sport psychologists become integrated into more sport science support teams, we are helping athletes and organisations to embrace the challenge of how to thrive on the biggest of stages.

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Women's World Cup: choking under pressure is common - here's how to avoid it

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Pressure affects us all and sports performers are no different. Tennis players serve double faults, golfers miss short putts and football players miss penalty kicks when it really counts. Just over 80 minutes into the Women's World Cup semi-final, the England Lionesses trailed USA 1-2 and team captain Steph Houghton had a penalty kick to try to level the score.

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It was only a matter of time before Tottenham Hotspur and England striker Harry Kane broke the record set by Jimmy Greaves to become the club's all-time top scorer. On February 5 2023, he bagged his 267th goal for the club in a 1-0 victory over Manchester City, taking him clear of Greaves's record.

In doing so, Kane also joined an illustrious group - the men's Premier League "200 club". Few would put it past him surpassing Wayne Rooney's 208 Premier League goals this season, then chasing down Alan Shearer's 260 in the next few to take top spot.

But it hasn't always been plain sailing for Kane. He struggled in the early part of his career with relatively unsuccessful loan spells at Leyton Orient, Millwall, Norwich and Leicester. And his early unimpressive goal returns and injuries meant many fans would have struggled to believe he would become one of the game's greats.

So what is it about Kane which has led many to call him the greatest striker the men's Premier League has ever seen?

Kane, Rooney and Shearer are very different centre-forwards. Kane is prone to dropping into the midfield to showcase his playmaking skills, yet rarely misses an opportunity to hit the target from inside the 18-yard box.

Rooney tore around the pitch, winning challenges and aerial battles while also being deadly in front of goal. Shearer, on the other hand, was seldom seen outside the opponent's 18-yard box - but any attempt within it would likely hit the back of the net. All three have shown a champion's mindset.

Kane's mindset

An important aspect of any elite athlete is how well they perform under immense pressure. Football is no different to any other elite level sport in that it places psychological strain on its players. Indeed, with the Premier League's worldwide popularity, the strain for footballers may exceed other elite sports.

One psychological explanation for Kane's success can be found in the concept of " challenge and threat states ", which looks at why some athletes perform better than others under pressure.

When faced with immense pressure, we evaluate the upcoming demands of a task against our resources to cope with them. When perceptions of our resources outweigh the demands of the task, we experience a "challenge" state. But when demands outweigh our resources, we enter a "threat" state.

Kane faces many demands each game: opposing players who want to nullify his impact, reporters who may be unimpressed with previous performances, crowds who may be trying to intimidate him. Poor training weeks could also lead him to question his skills. Yet frequently, he overcomes these demands through immense belief in his physical skills and capabilities.

The emergence of a challenge state is important as it is known to cause better performance than a threat state. This has been proven in both the short and long term in football, cricket and golf. A challenge state allows for better performance because less resources are dedicated to "overthinking", allowing for better decision-making and concentration.

Setbacks, obstacles and failures are a part of sport and Kane is not immune. Injuries at several points in his career and persistent rumours of a lack of fitness and form could all have made Kane question whether facing up to these setbacks was worth it. But the Tottenham player has shown incredible bouncebackability and psychological resilience.

Kane's style of play and decision-making

Alongside his challenge mindset, Kane is also good at making the right decision at the right time. As a central striker, his decision-making needs to happen accurately and quickly, whether that's making defence-splitting passes or deciding to arrive late into the box.

Research has shown that elite-level athletes are more accurate and quicker in making decisions than their less elite opponents.

One potential explanation for how Kane manages to arrive at quick and accurate decisions is through his ability to filter out irrelevant information.

When making a defence-splitting pass, identifying the start of the forward movement by your teammate and the body position of the defender is much more relevant than the movement of a non-target player or noise from the crowd. And research has shown that successfully attending to relevant information while being able to ignore irrelevant cues leads to better performance.

Kane has also mastered the art of "seeing" rather than "looking". In other words, he is able to frequently switch between competing focuses while ensuring each gets sufficient attention.

The ability to attend to multiple relevant sources of information simultaneously, affording each sufficient attention to take in and process the information rapidly, is an exceptionally elite skill. Kane's ability to see spaces, anticipate the movements of teammates and opponents, and attend only to relevant information enable him to be in the right place at the right time with extraordinary regularity.

Ultimately, the biggest factors for Kane's success are his mindset and his ability to make expert, informed decisions very rapidly in the key moments of a game. In years to come, these factors will surely lead many a fellow professional footballer, pundit and fan to describe Kane as one of the greatest footballers the Premier League has ever seen.

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Harry Kane is Tottenham's top goal scorer - sports scientists explain his brilliance

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It was only a matter of time before Tottenham Hotspur and England striker Harry Kane broke the record set by Jimmy Greaves to become the club's all-time top scorer. On February 5 2023, he bagged his 267th goal for the club in a 1-0 victory over Manchester City, taking him clear of Greaves's record.

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The No.1 Health Expert: The One Food (WE ALL EAT) That's Killing Us Slowly: Max Lugavere | E223

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Visual Guidance
Visual guidance involves showing the performer what to do or how they are performing. Visual guidance can be presented in the following ways:
Demonstrating. It is important that the demonstration must be the perfect model and delivered by a skilled performer. It is important that

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We can today provide an update on the strategic ambitions set out in the Women's and Girls' strategy, Inspiring Positive Change, two years since its launch in October 2020.

The strategy pledged to create a sustainable future for women's and girls' football in England through eight transformational objectives to be achieved by 2024. Since the launch, strides have been made in the priority areas, with growth accelerated after a historic year for the women's and girls' game.

One of the transformational objectives was to win a major tournament which was delivered on 31 July when England lifted the UEFA EURO 2022 trophy at Wembley Stadium in front of 87,000 fans.

Since then, awareness of the Lionesses has increased by 32% across girls aged 5-16 in England*, and interest in women's football is up 12% amongst girls aged 5-16 in England compared to before the tournament*.

Following the historic win, watched by a peak television audience of 17.4m on BBC One, there have been record-breaking league attendances in the Barclays Women's Super League and record average attendances in the Barclays Women's Championship. The momentous achievement of the England team has shown an impact across the whole women's and girls' game.

Since October 2021, there's been a 17% increase in female affiliated players across all levels of the game, a 30% increase in female registered football teams, and a 15% increase in female youth teams - made up of girls aged between 5-18 years old. Since the summer's EURO, there has also been a 196% increase in women's and girls' football session bookings through the England Football 'FindFootball' tool.

Growth has also been shown across refereeing and coaching. Since October 2021, there has been a 21% increase in female registered referees across all levels, and a 390% increase in female referees aged between 14-15 beginning refereeing training. The number of female coaches working in affiliated teams is up 75% compared to the same point last year.

The strategy set clear Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) objectives and since its launch, 94% of County FAs now have EDI plans specifically for the female game, nearing the target of 100% by 2024. 64% of County FAs are currently offering FA-developed 'football for fun' recreational opportunities for adult women from all communities, with the aim of hitting 100% by 2024.

Baroness Sue Campbell, our Director of Women's Football, said: "When we launched our Women's and Girls' strategy, Inspiring Positive Change, in October 2020 eight months into a global pandemic, we could not have foreseen the incredible two years that lay ahead. While things in the world have changed, we have remained constant in our belief that football has the power to change lives for the better and improve opportunities for girls and women across society.

"The power of women's football was evident on 31 July 2022, a day that will live long in the memory for us all. One goal in the strategy was to 'win a major tournament' but none of us could have imagined the impact of victory in a home tournament. When the Lionesses lifted the UEFA Women's EURO trophy at Wembley Stadium in front of 87,000 fans, it was a moment of great joy, but it was also a moment of great opportunity. The reaction to the success and the way it transcended society has given us an unprecedented chance to change the future of the women's game forever. It has turbo charged our strategy with demand growing right cross the game. We have seen more girls stepping forward to play, more fans filling our stadiums and new commercial partners all wanting to be part of this great movement for change.

"Another big goal was our pledge to transform the game at the grassroots level by ensuring that girls have equal access to football in schools and clubs. It's a passion shared by our special group of England players, who are doing everything in their power to make change in this area. Our strategy sought to achieve this goal by 2024 but we know that we must capitalise on the Euros and work in partnership with government and other key stakeholders to drive this ambition as quickly as possible.

"Our strategy was based on understanding an individual's motivation to be involved in football. Whether that be playing for fun or competition, coaching, refereeing, volunteering or becoming a fan, we want to ensure there is access and opportunity for every girl and woman.

"Building on our highly successful Weetabix Wildcats offering for primary age girls, we launched our SQUAD programme for 12-14-year-olds and saw 90,000 girls take part in the Let Girls Play Biggest Ever Football session.

"Alongside the development of our club pathway, we launched the Women's National League three-year strategy, produced a comprehensive plan for the development of the Barclays WSL and Barclays WC and saw a significant uplift in prize money for the Vitality Women's FA Cup competition.

"We have redesigned our talent pathway to ensure it is more diverse and inclusive, and produced a blueprint for success for our England teams from under 14 to senior level. All this progress has been underpinned by the rapid development of coaches and referees at all levels of the game and the support of an increasing number of commercial partners.

"We still have a long way to go but we are making good progress on all fronts. Thank you to all our partners who have played a pivotal role in helping us make strides towards our strategic goals, including our County FAs, schools, clubs, and of course the talented and committed team at the FA."

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women’s and girls' game sees growth after a memorable year

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fa's women's and girls' football strategy update - november 2022

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Inspiring Positive Change - November 2022

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We can today provide an update on the strategic ambitions set out in the Women's and Girls' strategy, Inspiring Positive Change, two years since its launch in October 2020. The strategy pledged to create a sustainable future for women's and girls' football in England through eight transformational objectives to be achieved by 2024.

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The Science of Endurance: Fuel & Hydration

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Listen to this episode from The Real Science of Sport Podcast on Spotify. Prof. Ross Tucker and sports journalist Mike Finch break down the various forms of energy the body uses, how they work, how we fuel them and when to use what.

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Welcome to my blog. Throughout this piece, I am going to be using the language of the AQA axes.

Here's a table of principal axis key terms to help teachers of other boards translate my terminology:

Since the introduction of mechanics as a compulsory theme of study in addition to movement analysis in GCSE and A-level PE, departments and teachers all over the UK have used jelly babies to teach axes as well as planes. The thinking goes that jelly babies can be skewered with cocktail sticks which, much like a football player, can be pivoted around the cocktail stick axis. On the face of it, this seems like a neat idea. It's fun, it's memorable and it involves jelly. What's not to like? However, jelly babies as movement examples will always fail to generate the core intuition of axes because they have no joints, no moving parts and, therefore, should not be used as examples of rotational movement in place of a human being except for a very, very fundamental and generalised introduction (see below).

My blog title is, at best, a little unfair to anyone who has taught axes with jelly babies. It is a bit "clickbaity". I agree. I do not aim to offend anyone but, rather, to make a point about how high-quality learning is actually stimulated. I encourage every teacher to make your teaching fun, to bring in some crazy activities from time to time but to do so when those activities actually represent the concepts being taught.

What is an axis?

Let's start at the beginning: an axis is a point around which rotational movement can occur. Despite what we tend to teach in PE lessons, in the human body axes pass through joints. In fact, we can also state that axes pass through the fulcrum/pivot points of levers ( use this idea to interleave learning to your levers lesson).

😲 The three primary axes taught in PE lessons are generalisations only. If we assess any movement, it will actually involve rotation around joints themselves, not around the primary axes. 😲

This statement above is going to annoy a few people. Almost the entire PE teaching sector teaches that the three principal axes pass through the navel. This is no surprise, as this is the taught content from all specifications in PE. But these axes are purely representative: they summarise movement rather than being the movement itself. They are used as generalisations to represent rotation. These principal axes represent other forms of movement at joints, none of which can be represented using jelly babies.

Let's look at some examples.

Transverse axis

We'll start with the transverse axis and use a sprinter for this example:

I want you to consider which joint(s) this runner is rotating around as they start their sprint.

Click to reveal the solution.

And we could go on. But, please, realise that these rotations (all of which are movement in a part circle around a joint) are all rotations that can be summarised and generalised as rotation around the transverse axis. HOWEVER, not one of these movement patterns can be completed by a jelly baby.

Now we have this clear, take a look at the image below. It is this intuition that we want the learners to develop. Axes are multiple and always pass through joints. In this image, you can see the sprinter's right leg driving. This involves plantar flexion of the right ankle and extension of the right knee. The ankle rotates clockwise around the transverse axis to produce plantar flexion. The knee rotates anticlockwise around the transverse axis to produce extension. Students need to realise this. Simply saying sprinting is rotation around the (generalised) transverse axis is not intuitive. But if students understand that sprinting involves multiple rotations around multiple transverse axes at multiple joints, they will fully understand the need to generalise these actions. This is what I encourage you to consider: Teaching the concept fully and then generalising rather than teaching the generalised axes (let's say with jelly babies) and not giving the students the chance to intuitively understand the role of joints in rotation.

As an aside, I'd like to mention that some of my most memorable teaching moments have involved teaching rotation around the transverse axis when running. I will encourage you to experiment with this. Try the following:

1. (With no-one watching) Stand sideways on to a full-length mirror and, with plenty of space around you, extend your elbow so your arm is straight and then swing your shoulder through 180 degrees from horizontally in front of you to horizontally behind you. Do this as fast as you can without causing damage. Notice the angular velocity of your arm.

2. Now, do exactly the same thing but this time flex your elbow so that, if possible, your fingers are touching the front of your shoulder. Now swing your shoulder forwards and backwards as fast as you can. What do you notice about the angular velocity this time? It is way faster, right? And you probably look like a plonker!

3. Repeat the same experiment with the leg by swinging at the hip with an extended knee and then with a flexed knee (you'll need to hold your foot in your hand). You should notice that, with your knee flexed, the leg swings far faster and, if we apply this to sprinting, say, it suggests that a good heel flick will cause the recovery leg to return to the track and apply force sooner.

4. Why do you think this? How can you apply it to teaching sprinting, for example? How can you apply it to other joints and other performances. How about front crawl arm recovery? How about a spin in ice skating?

5. It happens because in the two examples with elbow and knee flexion one's body mass is located more closely to the axis of rotation. We call this a reduction in the moment of inertia and this is inversely proportional to angular velocity. In other words, low moment of inertia, means a more rapid turning action.

6. Now consider a student who understands this principle. How might this affect their sprinting technique or equivalent?

This video 👇, as you'll see, is a very quick demo of me performing the process above with my shoulder. I have presented this countless times at the front of classrooms and it is always a memorable moment, if you'll pardon the pun.

Let's now take the longitudinal axis and consider a skier rotating around a gate.

I want you to consider which joint(s) this skier is rotating around as they turn the gate.

Click to reveal the solution.

All three of these movement patterns are rotations around the longitudinal axis and we use the longitudinal axis to summarise or generalise these movements as a whole. A jelly baby can perform not one of these movements. Hence, bin the babies!

Sagittal axis

We will use the classic example of a cartwheel but you could use a diving goalkeeper's save or a range of dance moves:

I want you to consider which joint(s) this performer is rotating around as they cartwheel.

Click to reveal the solution.

In other words, the "rotation around the sagittal axis" is a summary of the following:

Rotation around the sagittal axis of the left shoulder

Rotation around the sagittal axis of the right shoulder

Rotation around the sagittal axis of the left hip

Rotation around the sagittal axis of the right hip

A jelly baby can never, ever represent this idea and, therefore, is not an appropriate or intuitive teaching tool. 🙁

By now, you're probably annoyed with what I've written. You probably love that jelly babies lesson. I get it and, let's be honest, you are doing no harm if the jelly babies come out and play a small part in a lesson on axes. What I am asking for is the teaching of the fundamental principle of axes alongside this or, better, as the majority experience when learning axes.

Thank you for reading and have a good day.

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Bin the babies! How to teach axes properly.

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Welcome to my blog. Throughout this piece, I am going to be using the language of the AQA axes. Here's a table of principal axis key terms to help teachers of other boards translate my terminology: Since the introduction of mechanics as a compulsory theme of study in addition to movement analysis in GCSE and A-level PE, departments and teachers all over the UK have used jelly babies to teach axes as well as planes.

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Neville & Carragher clash over the problems of VAR in the Premier League 🍿

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The SECRET Behind An Olympic Champions Mindset: Professor Steve Peters

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Learn all about human body anatomy with Innerbody’s award-winning Anatomy Explorer. View over 1,000 3D diagrams and illustrations.

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There are 12 major anatomy systems: Skeletal, Muscular, Cardiovascular, Digestive, Endocrine, Nervous, Respiratory, Immune/Lymphatic, Urinary, Female Reproductive, Male Reproductive, Integumentary. Select a system below to get started.