Meaning of Kinesiology in Sports

The word kinesiology comes from two Greek roots — kinesis, meaning movement, and logos, meaning to study. Put together, kinesiology is literally the discipline that studies movement. More fully, it is the study of human movement and muscular function, and it seeks to understand how muscle function affects health.

A science that draws on many others

Kinesiology does not stand alone; it draws on the concepts of several sciences, including biomechanics, anatomy, physiology and neuroscience. Using them, it tries to understand the mechanism of human movement and to pinpoint the specific muscle involved in a particular movement. In this view, the human body is treated as a machine that works in a very purposeful way.

What kinesiology covers

Kinesiology — also called human kinetics — is the scientific study of human movement, and it addresses three kinds of mechanism at once:

• Physiological mechanisms — how the body's systems fuel and regulate movement;
• Mechanical mechanisms — the forces and leverage involved; and
• Psychological mechanisms — the mental side of performance.

How the contributing sciences each add a piece of the picture

Take a single skill — a sprinter exploding out of the blocks — and see how each science kinesiology draws on explains a different part of it:

• Anatomy identifies which muscles (the hip and knee extensors, the calf muscles) and which joints are doing the work.
• Physiology explains how those muscles generate energy rapidly, and how training adapts them to fire faster and stronger over a season.
• Biomechanics explains the forces, angles and leverage that turn that muscular effort into forward motion.
• Neuroscience explains how the nervous system times the firing of each muscle group in the correct sequence, and how repeated practice makes that firing pattern faster and more automatic.

Kinesiology is the discipline that puts all four pieces together into one coherent picture of the movement — which is exactly why it draws on "several sciences" rather than being one narrow subject.

Why "a machine that works purposefully" is a useful idea …