specialized knowledge of study there are a few terms or phrases that you will want to be familiar with discipline a discipline is a body of knowledge organized around a certain theme or focused that learn people consider worthy of study so kinesiology is a discipline and our focus is on the study of physical activity specifically human physical activity a sub-discipline in kinesiology is often related to a broader more established parent discipline such as psychology physiology sociology biology history or philosophy so for example as mentioned before chapters 4 through 10 we'll focus on the sub disciplines of kinesiology these are areas of study likely courses you might take as a kinesiology student that will introduce to you different areas of concentration as well as different areas that will help the understanding of how these specific sub disciplines affect human physical activity for example as a kinesiologist we will want to understand how the body moves how it is physiologically and anatomically capable of us to be able to do something such as running walking jumping or even throwing a ball but performance is often affected by our psychological process of the activity and our performances it is because of these different areas that we often will look at different sub disciplines to see how an understanding of these fields can help us to better understand how human physical activity is affected these relationships mean that kinesiology students must develop a working knowledge of the language theories and conceptual frameworks of a number of major disciplines and learn to apply them to physical activity so throughout our textbook hopefully with my assistance you will see how these different areas truly do affect human physical activity how does our history as far back or I should say as not so far back as the late 1700s up until present day how does all that has happen throughout this history or many historical events how have they affected what people decide to choose to do is physical activity what is considered acceptable etc so understanding some of our sub disciplines will help us on a much deeper level understand truly the study of human movement