Anatomical Orientation Made Easy for Personal Trainers, Kinesiology & Nursing Students)

Before you memorize muscles, origins, insertions and actions… you need to understand anatomical orientation.

In this episode, we break down the fundamentals of anatomical position, directional terms and planes of motion so students in kinesiology, nursing, exercise science and personal training can better understand how the human body moves in space.

If you’re currently studying for exams in:
• Kinesiology
• Nursing school
• NASM
• ACE
• ISSA
• NSCA
• ACSM or the SUF-CPT

This is the foundation that makes everything else in anatomy make sense.

We cover:
• Anatomical position
• Anterior vs posterior
• Medial vs lateral
• Superior vs inferior
• Proximal vs distal
• Contralateral vs ipsilateral
• Sagittal plane
• Frontal plane
• Transverse plane

Whether you're learning movement for clinical practice, rehab, strength training or preparing for your CPT exam, mastering anatomical orientation is essential for understanding assessments, biomechanics and exercise programming.

At Show Up Fitness, we teach future personal trainers how to apply anatomy in real world scenarios with actual clients through movement assessments and hands on learning.

Learn more about our certifications and hands on seminars:
[Insert Website]

#Kinesiology #NursingSchool #Anatomy #NASM #ACE #ISSA #NSCA #ExerciseScience #PersonalTraining #Biomechanics #ShowUpFitness

Want to become a SUCCESSFUL personal trainer? SUF-CPT is the FASTEST growing personal training certification in the world!

Want to ask us a question?  Email info@showupfitness.com with the subject line PODCAST QUESTION to get your question answered live on the show!

Website: https://www.showupfitness.com/
Become a Successful Personal Trainer Book Vol. 2 (Amazon): https://a.co/d/1aoRnqA
NASM / ACE / ISSA study guide: https://www.showupfitness.com

Transcript

Why Orientation Matters

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hi day y'all, welcome back to the Trofenis Podcast. Today we're gonna review everything anatomical orientation, looking at flexion, extension, A Bduction, what the hell does all that stuff mean? Super important to master the basics. If you enjoyed today's podcast, throw that five-star review up into your story and let people know about the fastest growing personal training certification where you can become qualified and certified with the SUFT. Welcome to the Show Up Fitness Podcast, where great personal trainers are made. We are changing the fitness industry one qualified trainer at a time with our in-person and online personal training certification. If you want to become an elite personal trainer, head on over to showufffitness.com. Also make sure to check out my book, How to Become a Successful Personal Trainer. Don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review. Have a great day and keep showing up. Today's video is very important because most will just pass it along. When you understand orientation, it sets you up for the future and success for partnerships like we help you with level two, physical therapists, registered dietitians, because this is the language that they use. Imagine if you're driving down the 405 here in California. Which exit are you at? If you're reading your maps or ways, it tells you to get off on this exit. That's exactly what orientation tells you within the human body. This is called the anatomical position. We're going to get into everything, but I'm going to read to you first an MRI. And I think this is really important to understand as a little case example, because most trainers would not be able to understand anything within here. But you're not most trainers, you're qualified. So we had a client who came in, had some shoulder issues. We referred out to our team physician. They had an MRI. And here were the findings from the MRI. Coracoacromial Arch 1, no lateral downsloping, unremarkable AC joint. The supraspinatus and infraspinatus appears normal. Labrum and capsular structures, the anterior and posterior labrum and capsular structures, are intact. Biceps tendon and anchor, no evidence for slap lesion. Osseous structures and articular surfaces, no evidence of osseous stress response. Impression, focal strain of the mid-subscapularis footprint with focal low grade articular surface, no full thickness tear or retraction, and no muscle belly fatty atrophy. The supraspinatus and infraspinatus appear normal, no labral or biceps tear, no evidence for fracture. We don't interpret this and tell our clients and diagnose. But if you were to send this to a medical professional or they send it to you, or a client sends it to you, and you're like, what the heck? This is another language. I have no idea what I just read. The client is going to internalize that, hmm, does this person know what they're doing? We are not doctors, but you have a team of physical therapists and doctors and RDs. And when you can speak that language, it levels you up and it gives you confidence. We need to learn Spanish in order to speak English. Our clients don't care about the anterior, posterior portion of the subscapularis or whatever it may be, but you need to understand that and help your clients get results confidently. So let's start with Skelly right here. Basic orientation, front side, anterior, back side, posterior, medial inside, lateral outside. When you look at the knee, we have a medial collateral ligament. A ligament connects bone to bone. This is your femur. This is your tibia. That ligament connects the medial portion. On the outside, you have lateral collateral ligament. We have an anterior cruciate ligament and a posterior cruciate ligament. Cruciate in Latin means cross. They cross anteriorly and posteriorly, while the other two ligaments are going to be medially and laterally. We have superior, which is on top, and inferior, which is below. I'm superior, I'm on top. You are inferior, you're below. If I'm the king, I stand and I look at you with my hands behind my back because I'm better than you, which you're not, but that shows a lot. Hands are important, and when you hide them from people, it's a sign of disrespect. The mandible, R R R R R, is superior to your sternum. Your sternum is superior to your pelvis. Your rib cage is inferior to your brain and your skull. There are eight bones of the skull. Check out the skeletal anatomy videos. We will get into all of that and planes of motion today. We're just helping you better understand orientation. Anterior, posterior, lateral, medial, proximal is closest to the point of origin. So let's take this big muscle right here, that pectoralus major, woo-hoo-hoo, your testicles. The point that does not move is the origin. The point that moves, which is the most distal, is going to be the insertion. The pec major originates on the sternum. This is the proximal portion. The distal portion is going to insert into your humerus, which allows for the arm bone to move. Now we start looking at joint articulations, such as flexion, that's to decrease the angle at a joint. BAM! Look at that bicep right there. Big biceps over triceps equal. Awesome. That should be a shirt. When my arm is fully extended, this is 180 degrees. I have flexed my elbow joint. I've brought it to 90. That is called flexion. Now when I increase that angle at the joint, that's called extension. 90 to 180. Think of tricep extensions, leg extensions. We don't call leg curls leg flexions, but that is what flexion is referring to, a curl. I am decreasing the angle at the joint. So in the sagittal plane, which we'll talk about here in a second, we have flexion and we have extension. My torso can flex, it can extend. This is called hyperextension. In the frontal plane, we can take away a Bduction and we can add to the midline adduction. I had a creepy student one time. Oh, it hit me. Abduction, like taking a child away. Do not get into the white van with that guy. But if that helps you, taking away abduction. Now for the lower body, the femur comes away, abduction, and it comes in adduction. You will hear people say a B and a D, because when you say it fast and you're all wired up on caffeine, abduction, abduction, what the hell did he just say? A B to take away, a D to bring towards the midline. In the transverse plane, the humerus can horizontally adduct, horizontally abduct. If you go out to the pier here in Santa Monica and you look at the horizon, it's over there. The horizon, horizontally abduction, horizontally abduction. Another rotation that we have is external rotation and internal rotation. This happens at the humerus and the glenohumeral joint, but also at the hip. Another important term to know: contralateral. So Skelly here lifts his right arm up, brings his left leg, like in a bird dog. That's referred to as contralateral. Ipsilateral is the same side, same joint movement, different joints. Abduction going away like jumping jacks. Whereas with the bird dog, you have humeral flexion, you have hip extension. Opposite sides, different joint actions. Another term that's important to know, superficial and then deep. The pec triof major is a superficial muscle. If we remove it, underneath or deep will be the pec minor, two of the 17 muscles of the shoulder, which we'll talk about here shortly. So let's wrap this up and go over a little quiz vocab game to help you better understand orientation and anatomy. Front side of the body, anterior. Posterior side or the posterior chain is behind. The glutes are posterior. The rectus abdominis is anterior. Rectus in Latin means straight because if you look at the muscle fibers, they run up and down. We have the rectus femoris. Here's your femur, rectus straight. It's a biarticulate muscle, bi to articulation. It crosses two joints, the knee and the hip. Some people will make reference to the VMO. Vastus in Latin means wide, medialis oblique muscle. The fibers run in an oblique fashion. Vastus is a quad muscle. Medialis. If we have a medialis, you probably have a lateralis. Vastus medialis, vastus lateralis, vastus intermedius, which is deep to the biarticulate rectus femoris. Those are the four quad muscles. Let's take a look at Skelly's right scapula. This is the anterior portion. This is the posterior portion. You heard reference in the MRI AC joint, a chromioclavicular. Here's the clavicle. The distal portion has the acromial head of the scapula. That is the AC joint. This will all get ingrained into your head, I guarantee it. And then you're going to turn into Neil from the matrix, you're stopping bullets because you understand the foundation. If you want to succeed, as I talk about in my book, volume two is out. If you want to succeed as a personal trainer, you have to master where everyone else is struggling. Go online, Reddit, Facebook, different forms. See where trainers are struggling, can't get clients, can't make money, whatever it may be. It's because they don't understand the basics. So how can you confidently ask someone for money if you don't know the basics? Looking at the spine of the scapula, the posterior side. Inferior, below, you have your infraspineus fossa. A fossa is just making reference to a flat surface on a bone. The superior portion is where the supraspinatus goes. Supraspinatus, infraspinatus, terrace minor, subscapularis. Sub is underneath. Those are the four rotator cuff muscles. Looking at the scapula, you have a lateral border, because here's the spine, the medial border, an inferior angle. Part of the seminars that we go out to at Lifetime with our partnership, we teach within the level two soft tissue mobilizations. One of the techniques is to find the inferior angle of the scapula so you can palpate, which means just feel that area of the scapula and apply that trigger point, which helps with shoulder discomfort. On the posterior side, we have the spine. Some MRIs will reference low back injuries, such as an L3, L4, disc herniation or protrusion, as Skelly has here. It's making reference to where it is in the spine. Lumbar is the lower region, thoracic or T is the middle region, cervical or C is the upper region, superior, middle, inferior. These words and orientation just helps you find where it's at on the human body. And when you can speak that vernacular, the conversations with actual medical professionals, they will look at you and go, Wow, are you a med student? Are you a physical therapist? How do you know this stuff? Because a lot of people do not know what a slap is. Not slap across the face, but a superior, labral, anterior, posterior tear. It's making reference to the tissue around the glenohumeral joint, the second of the four joints of the shoulder. Take a look at the shoulder slides to better understand the shoulder anatomy with actions as well as the scapula and the joints. Some more quizzing. If I were to say kneecap, everyone knows where that is. That's the patella. But the patella is inferior to the pelvis. The most distal bones of the human body on the upper body are going to be the phalanges. You have your metacarpals and then your carpels. More than 50% of the bones in the human body are in the most distal region of the upper body, which is your hands, and the most distal region of the lower body, phalanges, metatarsals, and your tarsal bones. Rewatch this video. Understand and master the basic terminology. That's going to level up your confidence so you can have better conversations with medical professionals. And when you have that client who comes in for that assessment, you can let them know you can get them out of pain, you guarantee it, because you work with a team. If you have an MRI, if you have a blood lipid panel or a chemistry profile, let's take a look at it. I'm not going to diagnose, but I can look through it and help you better understand some questions that you may have. Belt Buckle Trainer, check it out.