Spain 4º ESO Physical Education
Chapters: 6
1. Active and healthy life
Physical health and training · Supplements and doping · Mental health and body image
- Healthy Lifestyle: Daily Habits That Keep You Well – A healthy lifestyle is a set of daily habits: a balanced diet from five food groups, enough water, 9–11 hours of sleep for school-age children and about 8–10 for teenagers, at least 60 minutes of activity a day, good posture, safe food handling and avoiding tobacco, alcohol and drugs. These habits lower the risk of lifestyle (non-communicable) diseases such as type 2 diabetes, heart disease and some cancers.
- Sports Nutrition: Energy, Diet and Hydration – Athletes need the right food and water at the right time. Energy in (food) must match energy out (exercise plus body work) to keep weight steady. Carbohydrates are the main fuel and are stored as glycogen; protein repairs muscle; fat fuels long, slow work; vitamins, minerals and fibre keep the body working. Losing about 2% of body mass as sweat lowers performance, so athletes drink before, during and after exercise. Most supplements are not needed with a good diet, and banned drugs (doping) are unsafe and against the rules.
- Mental Health: Feelings, Stress and Support – Mental health is how we think, feel, cope and get along with others. Like physical health, everyone has it and it moves up and down. Emotions are useful signals. Stress adds up like water in a bucket; healthy coping (sleep, movement, talking, calm breathing, planning) lets it drain. Self-esteem and good relationships protect us. If feelings stay very heavy for two weeks or more, or stop daily life, talk to a trusted adult or a professional — asking for help is a sign of strength.
2. Organising and managing physical activity
Purposes of physical activity · Maintaining sports equipment · Hygiene in physical activity · Planning group motor projects · Accident prevention and risk · Emergency response and CPR
- Physical Education: Learn, Analyse and Improve a Skill – Physical education (PE) teaches you to move well, stay active for life and understand your own performance. Every sports skill has three phases: preparation, execution and follow-through. To improve, you observe the skill, compare it with a model, find strengths and weaknesses, get feedback and plan practice: plan → do → review → feedback. People are active for health, fitness, fun, friends, competition and well-being. Trying new and alternative sports, joining clubs, staying safe and looking after equipment help you keep moving all your life.
- Health for Life: What Shapes Your Health and How to Build Wellness – Your health is shaped by determinants: personal factors (genes, resilience, habits, knowledge), social factors (family, friends, income, education, gender) and environmental factors (air, water, workplace). Wellness has six dimensions: physical, mental, emotional, social, spiritual and environmental. Changing a habit moves through five stages: precontemplation, contemplation, preparation, action and maintenance. A personal wellness plan uses SMART goals and appraisal tools. Healthy communities give clean water, clinics, parks, schools and support services, and health promotion helps whole groups live better.
- Physical Activity and Health – Physical activity is any movement of the body that uses energy: walking, playing, cycling, dancing, doing chores. Children and teens need about 60 minutes of moderate to vigorous activity every day; adults need about 150 to 300 minutes a week. Intensity can be light, moderate or vigorous, and the talk test tells them apart. A good plan uses FITT (Frequency, Intensity, Time, Type), and technology like step counters and map apps can help. Activity makes the body, mind and social life healthier. Too little (a sedentary life) and too much without rest (overtraining) are both harmful, so balance activity with rest and sleep.
- Sports Management: Organising Sport – Sports management means planning, organising, leading and checking sport so that people can play safely and enjoy it. To organise an event: set a clear goal and answer who, what, when and where; choose a format (knockout, round-robin, league or a mix) and work out fixtures and time; share roles and track tasks on a checklist or app; make a budget and a risk plan; run the event; then evaluate and report so next time is better (plan → do → check → improve). Sport itself is organised at many levels, from school and club to regional, national and international federations, with government sport policy and different forms such as clubs, commercial gyms, school sport and informal play.
- Sports Injuries: How They Happen, How to Prevent and Treat Them – A sports injury is damage to the body from sport or exercise. Acute injuries happen suddenly (a twisted ankle); chronic or overuse injuries build up slowly (shin splints). Soft tissue injuries hit muscles (strain), ligaments (sprain) and skin; hard tissue injuries hit bones (fracture) and joints (dislocation). Risk comes from inside you (fitness, past injury) and outside (weather, equipment, opponents). Warm-up, good technique, the right kit, rules and sensible training load prevent most injuries. Treat a soft tissue injury with RICE, then rehabilitate step by step before returning to play.
- First Aid: What to Do in an Emergency – First aid is the help you give an injured or ill person until trained help arrives. Its aims: preserve life, stop things getting worse, help recovery. Follow DRABC: Danger, Response, Airway, Breathing, CPR/Call. Breathing but unresponsive → recovery position. Not breathing normally → CPR 30:2 at 100-120 pushes a minute, 5-6 cm deep, and an AED. Bleeding → direct pressure. Burns → cool running water 20 minutes. Choking → back blows and abdominal thrusts. Sprains → RICE.
3. Problem-solving in motor situations
Advanced tactical decisions · Perceptual-motor skills · Fitness training planning · Refining sport technique · Creating movement challenges · Architectural barriers to activity
- Team Sports: How Teams Attack, Defend and Play Fair – Team games are grouped as invasion games, net and wall games, and striking and fielding games. When your team has the ball you attack: spread out (width and depth), move into space and pass quickly. When the opponent has it you defend: get compact, stay goal-side, mark a player or guard a zone, and win the ball back fairly. Each player has a role, the team communicates all the time, and officials apply the rules so the game stays fair and safe.
- Motor Skills – A motor skill is a movement we learn to do well, with a clear aim, such as running, catching, writing or a cartwheel. Gross skills use big muscle groups (running, jumping); fine skills use small muscles and need precision (writing, a snooker shot). Skills come in three families: locomotor (moving from place to place), manipulative (controlling an object) and stability (balance, holding a position). Skills can also be open (changing surroundings, like a football pass) or closed (fixed surroundings, like a free throw), and simple or complex. Every movement follows a loop: our senses take in information, the brain decides, muscles act, and feedback tells us how it went. Reaction time is the gap between seeing and starting to move. We learn in three stages: cognitive (understanding, many errors), associative (practising, fewer errors) and autonomous (automatic, smooth). Motor abilities such as speed, strength, endurance, coordination, balance, agility and flexibility are the base on which skills are built; practice, good feedback and creativity improve them.
- Physical Fitness – Physical fitness is the body's ability to do daily work, play and sport with energy to spare. It has five health-related components (heart-lung endurance, muscular strength, muscular endurance, flexibility, body composition) and six skill-related ones (speed, agility, power, balance, coordination, reaction time). We improve it with a planned programme using FITT (frequency, intensity, time, type) and training principles like overload, progression, specificity, rest and reversibility.
- Skill Acquisition: How We Learn Movement Skills – A skill is a learned action done with the least time and effort for a set goal. Skills are classified on continua (open–closed, gross–fine, discrete–serial–continuous, self-paced–externally paced, simple–complex, low–high organisation). We process information in a loop: input, decision (using memory), output and feedback; more choices slow reaction time (Hick's law). Learners move through cognitive, associative and autonomous stages. Coaches choose the type of practice, guidance and feedback to suit the skill and the learner, and use transfer from skills already learned. Theories of learning explain why this works.
- Inclusive Sport: How Everyone Gets to Play – Inclusive sport means everyone can take part — whatever their ability, gender, body, background or money. Barriers can be physical (steps, no ramps), in the rules or equipment, or in people's attitudes (teasing, exclusion, violence). We remove them by building access, adapting games with the STEP model (Space, Task, Equipment, People), writing fair rules for all, and calling out harmful behaviour. Paralympic and adapted sports show how far this can go.
4. Emotional self-regulation and social interaction in motor situations
Emotional self-regulation · Negotiation and mediation in sport · Fair play · Rejecting discrimination in sport
- Sports Psychology: The Mind Behind the Performance – Sports psychology studies how the mind affects play. Personality shapes how we like to train. Motivation is the fuel: from inside (fun) or outside (prizes). Arousal is how "switched on" you are: too little or too much hurts, the middle is best (inverted U). Anxiety is worry; breathing, imagery and positive self-talk calm it. SMART goals give a clear ladder. Aggression must be controlled, and teams work best when everyone pulls together.
- Fair Play in Sport – Fair play means playing by the rules and in the spirit of the game: respecting opponents, officials, teammates and yourself. Rules set the field, time, scoring and what is not allowed, so everyone has an equal and safe chance. A game has roles: players, a captain, referees or umpires, coaches and spectators, each with duties. Sportsmanship includes shaking hands, helping a hurt opponent and accepting decisions; cheating, deliberate fouls, doping and match-fixing break fair play and are punished with cards, bans or worse. The Olympic movement links sport with values: excellence, friendship and respect (and the Paralympic values of courage, determination, inspiration and equality). Organising a fair event means choosing a format (knockout or round-robin), making a schedule, sharing roles and planning for safety.
- Equality and Discrimination: Same Worth, Fair Chances – Every person has the same worth and the same rights, even though we are all different. Discrimination means treating someone worse because of who they are: sex, skin colour, origin, religion, caste, disability, age or sexual orientation. It can be done with actions, rules or words. Treating everyone exactly the same is not always enough; real equality removes barriers and gives help by need. Gender violence is the most serious form of gender inequality. In sport and daily life we reject discrimination by speaking up and including everyone.
5. Expressions of movement culture
Sport as cultural identity · Body expression techniques · Organising artistic performances · History of sport and gender · Sport, politics and economics
- Sport and Society – Sport sociology looks at how sport and society shape each other. Physical activity runs from free play, through physical recreation, to sport, which has fixed rules, organisation and serious competition. Modern sport grew from loose local folk games: the industrial age brought written rules, clubs and governing bodies, and since about 1950 television, money and travel have made sport global and professional. Today sport, media and sponsors are tied together in a "golden triangle". Not every group takes part equally: cost, time, facilities, discrimination and stereotypes create barriers, so governments and clubs work for equal access, especially for women, disabled people, older people and low-income families. Sport also has a dark side, deviance such as doping, violence and match-fixing, which rules, testing and the law try to control. Sport can build health, identity and togetherness, but it can also divide.
- Dance: Elements, Choreography and Forms – Dance is movement of the body, in space and time, with energy, used to express feelings, tell stories or celebrate. Every dance can be described with four elements: Body (what moves), Space (where: levels, directions, pathways), Time (when: tempo, rhythm, pause) and Energy (how: sharp or smooth, strong or light). Choreography is the art of arranging movement using devices such as motif, repetition, canon, unison, contrast and formations. Good performers train technique, safety and expression, and good audiences describe, analyse, interpret and judge what they see. Dance forms, from classical and folk to ballet and hip-hop, grow out of their culture and history.
- Performing Arts: Music, Dance and Theatre, Live – The performing arts are arts that happen live, in time, through the performer's body and voice: music, dance and theatre (and mixes like opera, musicals and street plays). Every performance needs a performer, an audience and a space. A show grows from an idea through rehearsal to performance and reflection.
6. Efficient and sustainable interaction with the environment
Road safety in active travel · Cycling as transport · Urban fitness practices · Managing risk outdoors · Sustainable use of resources · Organising outdoor activities · Caring for the environment
- Road Safety: The Physics of Stopping and Staying Safe – A vehicle cannot stop at once. First the driver needs time to notice and react (reaction time, about 1 s). During this time the vehicle keeps moving: this is the thinking distance = speed × reaction time. Then the brakes slow it down: this is the braking distance = speed² ÷ (2 × deceleration). Stopping distance = thinking distance + braking distance. Double the speed and the braking distance becomes four times longer. Wet, icy or worn roads and tyres give less grip (friction), so braking is longer and bends are harder to take. In a crash, seat belts, helmets, airbags and crumple zones make the stop take longer, which makes the force on the body smaller. Pedestrians, cyclists, scooter riders and passengers all stay safer by following traffic rules, being seen, and never using a phone while moving.
- Physical Fitness – Physical fitness is the body's ability to do daily work, play and sport with energy to spare. It has five health-related components (heart-lung endurance, muscular strength, muscular endurance, flexibility, body composition) and six skill-related ones (speed, agility, power, balance, coordination, reaction time). We improve it with a planned programme using FITT (frequency, intensity, time, type) and training principles like overload, progression, specificity, rest and reversibility.
- Outdoor Activities: Orienteering, Climbing and Staying Safe – Outdoor and adventurous activities, like orienteering, hiking, climbing and water sports, ask you to move in changing natural places. You need skills (reading a map, using a compass, climbing technique), good decisions (route choice, knowing your limits) and safety habits (planning, equipment, teamwork). You also protect nature by leaving no trace.
- Sustainability – Sustainability means meeting our needs today without taking away the ability of future people to meet theirs. It rests on three pillars — environment, society and economy. A resource is used sustainably when we use it no faster than it renews. Today humanity uses about 1.7 Earths' worth of resources a year, and this use is very unequal. Stewardship, careful planning and spatial tools like GIS help us move towards sustainability.
- Environmental Stewardship: Caring for the Planet as We Use Technology – Environmental stewardship means using the Earth's resources carefully so they last, and fixing harm where we can. Every product, from a phone to a hospital machine, has a life cycle: raw materials, making, transport, use and end of life. Each stage uses energy and makes waste. Good stewards keep products longer, choose efficient machines, follow the waste hierarchy (refuse, reduce, reuse, recycle, then dispose), send e-waste to proper recyclers and support laws and company practices that protect nature. Technology can harm the environment, but it can also help: solar panels, LEDs and smart sensors cut waste.