What are the basic patterns of movement? – Concept and examples


We explain what are the basic patterns of movement, their function and what are locomotive, non-locomotive and object movements.

Basic patterns of movement
Each sport can be broken down into a set of basic movement patterns.

What are basic movement patterns?

In physical education and sports, a certain type of movement is known as basic movement patterns or fundamental movement patterns. exercises that test the most basic or essential skills of the human body, that is, those that are part of more complex forms of movement.

Thus, any complex motor skill, such as the practice of a specific sport (playing soccer, for example) can be decomposed into a set of much simpler basic forms (running, jumping, kicking), which constitute fundamental movement patterns of the human body. .

The basic movement patterns can be of different types, and are classified according to their nature in:

  • Locomotive movements, that is, those that involve walking (that is, locomotion) or body movement, in their very different speeds and forms, whether it is walking, jogging, running, sliding, jumping, crawling, rolling, throwing or climbing .
  • Non-locomotive movements, that is, those that do not involve body movement in space, such as swinging, leaning, turning, stretching or bending.
  • Manipulation of objects, when an object other than the human body is involved in the movement, with which the latter interacts in some way, as in the case of kicking, throwing, catching, hitting, pushing or lifting.

In most sports, these basic patterns are combined in different situations to perform more complex tasks, such as, in the case of soccer, running around the court with the ball at your feet, then kicking it so that someone else jumps and hit into the goal, and even if the goalkeeper throws himself trying to stop it, score a goal.

Thus, each sport thus involves a diverse set of basic movement patterns, and physical education includes different exercises to put them into practice, especially during the individual‘s school time.