use your own body to find what you are studying then when you need to reference a muscle or bone you can just look at yourself and it will come back to you....at least that is what I did you can also find a guinea pig to locate the muscles and such on but then you don't have the built in reference. Flash cards also
Did you get the Fitness Professionals Guide to Musculoskeletal Anatomy and Human Movement? the tests on the disk in the book are useful.
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If a person wants something that they have never had, they have to do something that they have never done. - Shawn Fears, CPT
I memorized them in groups. quads, adductors, abductors, hip flexors, etc. I found that if I broke them into sections, then really understood what they did, it all fell into place.
Good advice from Tekva and Akyoda. I would add the following as a perspective more than a study technique on the subject:
I've been into health and fitness for many, many years and thought that a personal trainer cert would be the closest thing possible to an automatic for me. Then I received the manual and spent two months trying to get my head around the first three chapters; they're hard subjects and they're not well tought in a comprehensible way by the ACE system.
You should find the going both easier and more interesting once you get to and past Nutrition (Chapter 4). Don't abandon the first three chapters, but do get past them, even if you haven't mastered them - you can revisit them from time to time while progressing with the rest of the manual.
Thanks, guys! I've done a pass through manual and study guide, and have taken the supplemental courses taught by Exercise Etc. You're right... it does get much better once you get past those first three chapters!
I'm starting another and more thorough pass through everything. Barry, I've been using the same technique (while manual) you use in terms of typing up the study guide questions & answers to be able to go back and quiz myself.
I have NASM's PT manual, and have found the muscles to be taught in a much clearer way.
It's tough to learn out of a textbook! I might have to start using my husband as my guinea pig!
