THIS was one of the most profound influences on my own confidence about my knowledge of anatomy.

As you know (because I keep harping on about it) I am NOT academic, so learning muscles names and where they attach and how they move the joints/bones etc was an area I liked confidence in. This was particularly an issue since my job was teaching about it.

My wonderful mentor put me in situations that challenged me, with methods to fall back on should I be faced with a question I didn’t know the answer to.  I have since learned (and now practice) to NEVER to give the answer - this is known as a LEARNER LEAD classroom and allows for exploratory discussion about the logical principles of anatomy which makes remembering it much easier.

Clearly knowing the anatomy is very important when teaching how we understand movement and the way tissues and structures within the body work and influence each other..

BUT

The more I have learned the more I have realised just how GREY this subject is ….in that there aren't so many hard and fast rules as most of the anatomy books would imply.

However we require some clarity using certain rules to follow in the beginning to allow us to understand and comprehend certain things in a layered leaning way. Hence level 2 gym instructor qualifications, followed by level 3 PT and so on…

So I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to access Keele Medical labs through Master Trainer, Biomechanics Coach and TMC16 presenter, Mike Grice. In fact attended several cadaver days there back in around 2009-2011

Now like most people my initial feeling about seeing a dead body, known in this instance as a 'cadaver', was one of anxiety about the smell and that kind of weird feeling that you might imagine goes along with being in the presence of someone who is actually not alive any more.

HOWEVER the medical lab technicians were just AMAZING at educating us on everything so that we could in fact just get stuck into learning REAL anatomy, so to speak. The embalming fluid (made up of formaldehyde, glutaraldehyde, methanol and other solvents) did smell a bit funny but ANY chemical does.

Also the technicians did an excellent job of explaining that these people had offered their bodies to science to educate people like us and to help us all understand all the stuff that is really inside of us a little bit better. This impacted on me in a big way hearing this and how I felt about being in there. So I felt more of a respect for the bodies/people I was analysing than the immaturity of it being weird, if you like.

ANYWAY with my hair tied back, aprons and gloves on we were all taken into a seating area at one end of the lab. I noticed there were blue plastic covers over the cadavers as we were offered seats in front of a slide presentation. Here embryology was explained to us in its simplest terms, which was fascinating. It was explained to us how they do the embalming process, how long the bodies were kept and of course the laws, rules and regulations of being involved in touching human tissue of the deceased.

10 minutes later when we turned around, I noticed the blue covers had been removed and we were taken towards the first 2 bodies. The one male and one female actually looked like they were sleeping and they had been dissected slightly differently to show us different things. For example the male's chest was dissected to show us the muscle tissue layers on one side but the other side was dissected to show the ribs and then the organs underneath as we were told we could lift each part up and fold them back to see.

WOWZERS!

Any remaining feelings of weirdness simply disappeared with pure fascination at what we were actually looking at and TOUCHING! This wonderful gentleman had wanted US to study HIM from the inside to understand better how to help others.

You know what, I actually felt honoured!

So we started to look for the pec minor attachments since we have an assessment we do for this very muscle in our programme. The anatomy books will show you a very sharply defined 2D view of how this muscles looks to represent what, in reality, is not so smooth and more of a rugged texture and the attachments on THIS person did not simply attach to, and stop on, the corocoid process and 3-5th ribs. The ‘striations’ of the fibres actually continued across and down into the opposite hip!

Another cadaver's pec minor presented completely differently again…..we went on to look at all sorts of fascinating things including the now much talked about 5 x quads!

Yep 5 QUADS! Tensa Fascia Intermedius, of TFI it has now been named, challenges the very roots of some of what we knew about human anatomy in that they cannot really be 'quadraceps' if there are actually 5 of them in some people!

I LOVE this because this is the way we teach our learners within our academy. That we should always challenge everything until we can gain clarity and understanding, no matter who is telling or what the books say because they could be out of date of unaware of some new evidence or discovery.

Anyway we moved onto a section of various knee joints all in different states of degeneration and the lab technician suggested we try to determine the order of least to worst degeneration. As we studied them but moving them into flexion to look at the ACL, cartilage and inner surfaces it wasn't as difficult as you might imagine. Specially when we found one with a chunk of metal in it!

I rolled a sciatic nerve between my fingers, 'squished' a healthy lung v's an unhealthy one, felt different muscle types, looked at a row of foetus displayed in jars (a bit like at the Body Work's exhibitions) at various stages of development and even conjoined twins that had deceased at a few months within the womb. This whole experience was mind blowing, humbling and educational on another level.

What was most profound was;

The realisation that we are all as different on the inside as we are on the outside, maybe even more so!

That while books are created to enable us to understand anatomy better, they are very general and based on what we know SO FAR.

That we are still scratching the surface when ti comes to understanding the ways in which the human body works, adapts, evolves and functions.

If lab technicians who teach medical students anatomy don't always know the answer then how could WE exercise professionals expect to!?

What I would most like to communicate across in this Juicemail is the lesson I took from my experience in the cadaver labs. That we should know what we NEED to know really well and not feel so much pressure to 'know it all' because NO ONE does! Not event the lab technicians who teach detailed anatomy to budding surgeons!

By all means use the books to process the basics but also keep in mind that they are teaching us a very GREY subject area in a black and white way to simplify a very complex subject.

Like one of my past learners who called me and said "I don't agree with what the book is saying because......am I right?' He had a very logical JUSTIFICATION as to why he wanted to challenge what the book said but he was almost nervous about challenging the book. I congratulated him on this and said the most important thing is that you are thinking like this and using logic from your own understanding and not simply accepting what another is telling you.

ENJOY the process!

Try not to allow anxiety or doubt to affect your learning experience and rest assured if you are one of those considering joining our academy we are a constant support for you along your fantastic journey in this wonderful world of the human body and movement!

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