Mastering Muscles & Movement – A Brain-Friendly System for Learning Musculoskeletal Anatomy and Basic Kinesiology provides a unique, strategically organized approach for learning the muscles, bones, joints, nerves, and movements of the human body. As the subtitle implies, research in brain-based learning has been richly applied in the design of this book to facilitate understanding, memorization, and mastery of this body of knowledge. Purchase of the book includes access to online Study Aids to enhance this brain-friendly system.

This book provides a system for understanding and memorizing musculoskeletal anatomy and kinesiology.  While there are many books available that cover the subject, Mastering Muscles & Movement presents a fresh approach that is designed to leverage the natural ways the brain observes, learns, and recalls this type of information. Rather than employing the usual one-muscle-per-page format, this book treats groups of muscles as “movement families” and presents them in a way that provides a rich visual, verbal, and relational learning environment.

The result is a truly brain-friendly experience for the student.  The myriad details and relationships are easily recognized in simple and natural ways by the innovative arrangement of the muscle information on each page and from page-to-page.  The reader comfortably stays aware of the bigger picture while studying any one item, easily compares and contrasts related features and facts, and is enabled to structure study time to play to strengths or to eliminate weaknesses.

Features
 
A primary goal of the Mastering Muscles & Movement (MMM) system is to be clear, concise and detailed, while eliminating common roadblocks that can interfere with the student's learning process. Some key features of this research and brain-based approach include:

  Systematic Opportunities to Easily Compare and Contrast

The brain is a natural pattern-recognition machine. The physical layout of images and text in MMM facilitates effective comparing and contrasting of both visual and verbal information.

  Consistency and Clarity in Sizing, Angle-of-View and Level of Detail

Consistency and clarity means the brain has to expend less effort mentally rearranging, translating, filtering and imagining missing details which are needed to successfully organize the information into long-term memory.

  Hierarchical Learning Structures

The brain is better able to encode and retrieve data when it's stored in a structure that contains broader categories which sub-divide into narrower, more specific topics. MMM is structured in exactly this way.

  Context for Understanding

The innovative arrangement of the muscle information on each page and from page-to-page enables the brain to easily and naturally grasp the myriad details and interrelationships inherent in the study of anatomy.

Audience
 
The first edition of Mastering Muscles & Movement has been successfully utilized by students learning massage therapy, yoga instruction, physical therapy, Pilates instruction, athletic training, and dance, as well as students in college undergraduate functional anatomy and anatomical kinesiology classes. The new second edition has incorporated many improvements suggested by students and instructors over the years. The format has been redesigned and new information and illustrations added, while maintaining the original brain-friendly organization and approach that has proved useful in the past.

This book serves as a course textbook in some educational programs, and is valuable as supplemental material in others (depending on the level of specialization required for the course).  In addition, this book serves as an easily accessible reference on the shelf of practicing professionals - great for a quick lookup of anatomical details or for brain-friendly client education.  Finally, because of its clarity of organization and simplicity of approach, it is an efficient anatomy review book for students who are preparing for examination, and for practicing professionals who want to refresh their knowledge before attending continuing education classes.

More Information
 
Please visit the textbook Resources page for tutorial presentations and PDF downloads that provide a more in-depth look at the MMM textbook.