[Music] hello everyone and welcome back to my Channel today I wanted to go over the anatomical terms and references that you need to know in order to pass your Pilates exam and teach Pilates since I'm St trained I will be using the anatomical references list that's located in the support material that you are required to have for your stop training however if you are not studying through St you should still have some kind of book with the same list of references or a very similar list of references and you can also find the same or very similar list in the National Pilates certification exam study guide and then for the definitions and references for this list of anatomical terms I will be using using both the Trail Guide to the human body and anatomy of movement reference books both of these books are usually recommended or required for most Pilates courses so if you have your own copies go ahead grab them read along with them as we go through these terms the first thing we're going to focus on are the directions and positions of of the body and on the body when it comes to movement or relating to the body now this isn't in the support material but you do need to know what anatomical position is that's just essentially somebody standing in front of you looking directly at you with their palms facing forwards or someone lying down staring up the ceiling with their palms facing forward so this is anatomical position and from this is what we will reference everything else now in anatomical position we have an imaginary line that runs right through the center of the body dividing it in half um it kind of goes through between the eyes the belly button through the heart all the way down um this is called your midline it's imaginary but that is the middle of the body with somebody facing forwards looking at you now anything that's located closer to this midline or any movement towards this midline is called medial now anything moving away from this midline is called lateral so opposite to medial is lateral things moving away from that midline or located away from that midline lateral also means side so if you already speak like a Latin language you already know that or if you just are used to hearing about players in a game moving laterally you know that lateral means side so anything located on the side is lateral and then that's why our latissimus dorsi are muscles on the side in the back sometimes we just call them lats but that's coming from the word lateral the next term we're going to look at is anterior so again if you have any Latin language background you already know what this means and it's just anything closer to the front of the body so your nose is anterior on your body your uh chest is anterior on your body your sixpack your rectus abdominis is anterior on your body an opposite to anterior is posterior so that's anything that's closer to the back of your body in anatomical position so um your shoulder blades are posterior your glutes are your glute Max are posterior um your hamstrings are posterior on your body the next ter we're going to look at is superior Superior refers to anything that's closer to the top of the body closer to the head so Superior just means at the top so um obviously your head is superior your shoulder blades are superior to your feet anything moving up towards that moving up towards your head is considered a superior move movement and then opposite to Superior is inferior anything moving down closer to your feet or anything located uh closer to your feet so your knees are inferior to your pelvis your knees are inferior uh inferior to your heart the term proximal refers to anything that's closer to your trunk I also remember the definition of anything that's closer to the heart is considered proximal so um your rib cage is proximal um your shoulder is proximal your hands are not proximal and so distal is the opposite of proximal your hands your fingers they're distal and that means that they're located further away from the trunk or further away from the body's midline so your fingers are distal your toes are distal your calves are distal the next term we're going to go over is superficial superficial pretty much refers to anything that's closer towards the surface of the body anything that's closer to the skin so you have superficial muscles and you have deep muscles deep muscles are going to be the opposite to superficial they're going to be muscles that are located farther away from the surface of the body so your glute Minimus is deeper than your glute Maximus and it might make more sense to think about one body part in relation to the to another body part so your pectoralis major is superficial in relation to your rib cage because it's closer to the surface closer to the skin than your rib cage is and then your rib cage is opposite to that with relation to the pectoralis major your rib cage is deep a structor deeper in the body so even though the rib cage isn't super deep in the body it's still towards the top in relation to the pectoralis major it's considered deep but if we compared the re the rib cage to the heart that would flip so the rib cage would be superficial in relation to the heart but your heart would be deep in relation to the rib cage the next category we're going to look at are the planes of movement there are three directions in which your body moves and we call these the three planes of movement there's median sometimes called sagital frontal sometimes called coronal and transverse in anatomical position median or sagittal plane cuts the body in half half right through that midline so a lot like a median on the street cuts a street in half and you drive on one side or the other the median or the sagittal plane cuts the body right through the center another way to remember sagittal um if you look at the first part of the word it's the same as Sagittarius so a Sagittarius is one of the centors in uh Greek mythology and that half man half horse really just moves forwards and backwards so that would be sagittal movement the next plane of movement that we have is frontal or coronal so this plane divides the body from the front and the back um your PEX your face would be on the front half of that divide your glute Maximus and your shoulder blades would be on the back half of that divide and so in the body or a part of the body is moving to the right or to the left it's moving in that frontal or coronal plane which you can see in this example of side splits and if you look at the example for front splits you can see that the body is moving forwards and backwards which means it's moving in that median or sagittal plane the last plane of movement we have is the transverse or sometimes called horizontal plane This Plane Cuts right through the center of the body and it divides the top from the bottom movements in this plane tend to involve your obliques twisting the body from the top in one direction to your bottom in the opposite direction or holding one side stable as either the lower or upper part of your body twists from one side to the other this has your obliques working contralaterally so internal external left and right we contralaterally to make this movement in the transverse plane our next category is movements at the joints your joints move in a variety of different directions and the body parts attached to those joints are going to follow those movements depending on the type of joint the first movement at the Joint we're going to look at is flexion and extension flexion is when the bones get closer together and then extension would be the opposite to that when the bones move farther apart so in anatomical position most joints are in extension if you're studying stop Pilates lift and lower with your feet in the straps would be an example of flexion and extension at the hip lateral flexion is when you bend your spine to the side laterally and it can only be done in the spine including lateral flexion at the neck next we're going to look at adduction and ab duction abduction or AB duction happens when a limb moves laterally away from the midline of the body abduct literally means to take away so that's essentially what you're doing with that limb you're taking it away from the body opposite to abduction is adduction or adduction looking at the root word add will help us remember that we're adding the limb back to the body adduction lateral rotation or external rotation happens when you rotate or swing your arm or leg away from the midline of the body medial rotation or internal rotation happens when you rotate that limb towards the midline of the body both medial and lateral rotation only happen at the shoulder and hip joint because they're ball and socket joints another movement that can only happen at the hip and shoulder joints is circumduction so this is when we do feet and straps leg circles um the legs move in all directions flexion extension adduction and abduction all of these movements can happen again because of that ball and socket joint that is at the hip joint and the shoulder joint and these are your most mobile joints next we're going to look at movements of the shoulder blades your shoulder blades or scapula move in three different directions retraction is when your shoulder blades Glide towards each other or towards the spine protraction is when the shoulder blades slide away from each other or they slide away from the spine elevation is when your shoulder blades slide upwards they elevate they move up like an elevator depression of the scapula is when the shoulder blades slide down the opposite to Elevation depression upward rotation is what happens when your shoulder blades rotate upwards the Trail Guide to the human body says to think of a bell ringing to help you remember and downward rotation is when your shoulder blades rotate back down if you're studying through stop Pilates we do this upward and downward rotation in the midback series number four now we're going to look at planter flexion of the ankle so planter flexion is performed by moving the ankle to point your foot into the Earth or stepping on a car's gas pedal an easy way to remember this is just thinking that plantar flexion starts with a p and so does point paint and opposite to plantar flexion is dorsy flexion so instead of pushing on the gas pedal you're lifting your foot off the gas pedal and your heel goes down and an easy way to remember this is just to think of a dorsal fin that's what your foot looks like in dorsy flexion supine is when you're lying on your spine facing up and supination of the forearm is when those Palms are facing up as if you're carrying bowls of soup and pronation is the opposite to that so when you're lying prone you're lying face down and your palms are face down our final category is going to be muscular contractions your muscles react to tension and resistance in a few different ways creating a muscular contraction a concentric contraction creates a shortening of the muscle where the insertion and the origin moves closer together the way I was taught to remember concentric was to think of your muscles moving up towards the clouds and concentric and clouds both start with the c also if you think about a bicep curl it kind of looks like a cloud opposite to concentric is Ecentric a lengthening of that muscle and what helped me to remember that is that Ecentric and elastic both start with an e and it's like you're lengthening that muscle like an elastic band both concentric and Ecentric contractions are isotonic that means that the muscles are moving moving so any movement of the body is using isotonic contractions and opposite to isotonic is isometric that's when there is no change in the muscle length or movement in the body when the muscles are reacting to tension a plank is an excellent example of where you would use isometric contractions and that's it for the video guys if you have any tips or tricks to help Pilates instructors and student instructors learn and remember anatomical terms and references for Pilates please feel free to write that down in the comments below I do plan on making more videos going a bit deeper into Pilates Anatomy so if that's something that you're interested in please make sure to subscribe and you'll get that notification as soon as I can upload it