Skeletal Muscle Skills

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The best way to learn the skeletal muscle, is the way that works best for you. To find the way that works best for you, you will have to study in as many different ways as you can. In the beginning, it may feel like an overwhelming task. Studying in a group can provide support and open you up to different ways of thinking about how to go about learning the voluntary muscles.

Flash cards are a classic approach and creating your own written flash cards can be a great way for some to begin to process the information and form a mental connection with the material. Our Muscle Charts designed be utilized as digital Flash Cards, for those who do not want to buy a set or take the time to make their own flash cards. For others using an anatomy
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If you are just a little more adventurous, you can use felt to cut the muscle shapes out using the classroom skeleton to help with sizing. Once you have the felt cut out of a muscle label it with origin and insertion, the name of the muscle and its action. Next, you will take the felt muscle and tape it to the skeleton.

Another way to begin the learning process is to take a grease pencil and draw the superficial muscles on a volunteer. This method works great for massage therapy students that can use a massage table and drape appropriately. Palpation is a very important skill for the manual therapist and a great way to learn the skeletal muscles. Palpation is to touch with purpose or intent. In a medical examination, a physician may palpate a region of a patient's body for the purpose of gathering information in order to formulate a diagnosis.

For our purposes, we use the term palpate to touch with the intent, in order to feel the soft tissues of the body. Especially the contraction of a skeletal muscle. Palpating a muscle or having it perform its action or function will lead to better retention when considering how to learn the skeletal muscles. Palpation is a skill that is essential for the manual therapist, massage therapist, or physical therapist and best learned in the presence of an experienced practitioner or
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Go ahead and touch the tip or pointed part of your elbow. You have palpated your olecranon process. Now slide just above the olecranon process and palpate the muscle that attaches to the posterior aspect of your arm or humerus. Straighten or extend your arm as you palpate, you have just felt the triceps brachii contract. Slide your hand around to the anterior aspect of the arm and flex your forearm towards you as you palpate the musculature. You have now felt the biceps brachii contract.

Before you focus on learning the skeletal muscles in detail, make sure you know your directional terminology, planes of motion, and the axis of motion. Increasing your understanding axis of motion and direction of movement will greatly reduce the amount of time you will need to spend on learning the skeletal muscles. Understanding the types of contractions that a muscle can undergo can also be helpful as you increase your ability to think through the information necessary when determining how to learn the skeletal