I have this little book http://www.amazon.ca/Color-Atlas-Textbook-Human-Anatomy/dp/0865774234/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1197608953&sr=8-2 it’s pretty cheap and I found it to be quite helpful.

Another idea is making cue cards…for every muscle. It will take you a long time… you can speed up the process by googling the muscle and printing off a photo (saves the effort of drawing it).

This coloring book is also kind of handy http://www.amazon.ca/Anatomy-Coloring-Book-Wynn-Kapit/dp/0805350861/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1197609073&sr=8-1 I’m a visual person, so spending 5 minutes shading in a muscle helps me remember where it belongs. There’s also one for physiology…I didn’t use it as much – http://www.amazon.ca/Physiology-Coloring-Book-Wynn-Kapit/dp/0321036638/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1197609073&sr=8-2

Ooh, the internet is so delightful – check out the photographs online of your muscle model http://daphne.palomar.edu/ccarpenter/Models/model%20index.htm I used this torso and that head!! Where was this three years ago??!

Or, you could ask santa for your very own model! This one comes with interchangeable genital inserts!! http://www.buyamag.com/muscle_models.php

Your school bookstore might sell the above books (at an inflation…). The bookstore might also have these laminated cards that go over the different muscle systems, I have one of those sitting around here.

I used all of these methods. If you’re still not confident, talk to your prof or lab TA and see if you can sit in the lab and check out the skeletons and models outside of class time. Sometimes it’s better to work at your own pace. Learning the models is still the best way to prep for exams.

There are so many things to learn, you won’t be able to cram it all in, it takes constant reviewing. It is a pain, but the payoffs later on will make it worth it.

You can draw the muscles on yourself as study (um…obviously not before an exam).

Also, sounds silly, but those ‘Body Building’ magazines are awesome for pictures. Buy some of those, giggle at the photos and see if you can identify their muscles. These guys have such low body fat that you can see so many of their muscles. Also, you can see what positions are needed to flex the muscles, so it can help you put the muscle’s actions into perspective.

Don’t freak out…. you’re not a dunce. I’ve heard from several people that anatomy and physiology is one of the hardest, if not the hardest class that a nursing student has to take. Grades aren’t everything, just work hard and it’ll all balance out.

What worked for me was writing everything out like vocabulary words. I got the descriptions in the book of origin, action, insertion and wrote them over and over while staring at the pictures. I would write each one until I had it memorized and then add a new one. Write the new one until I had that down and then start writing both the first and the second one until I got that right. Once that was done it was time for a third one. Obviously this takes quite some time so, you have to start the process in advance. I learned the muscles in groups so it made more sense and was in managable pieces.

To memorize bone markings, it was MUCH easier when you could remember what each was for. Each mark is either an attatchment for a muscle or an articulation point with another bone. A few are just there and you’ll just have to remember them.

To learn how muscles work I would suggest that you write yourself a little chart of the steps with explanations. Not just the steps in the right order, but really sit down and think through what is happening and why. It is going to be a whole lot easier to remember it all if you completely understand what is going on rather than just trying to remember a jumble of words that you aren’t familiar with. I found it much simpler to just read my book until I felt I understood and then explain it to myself on a new sheet of paper. This approach taught me enough of the process to know 90% of the questions in that section and to make educated guesses on the rest.

If you really understand what you are teaching yourself, like how one muscle is really attatched and works, you will have an easier time that trying to cram 300 random pieces of information into your poor brain. Everything you learn in anatomy is directly applied and really does exist, so make sure you are understanding it in terms of the whole body, not just facts.