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Strength Training and Anatomy

Instead of looking down at your body, thinking judgmentally, "OK, all I need to do to make this look better is to pump some heavy weights," take a little time to learn how your body works. Then your exercise sessions will make much more sense. Your arm, butt, or any other part of you is not just a single entity -- what you don’t see under the skin is a beautiful sculpture of many individual muscles that make up what you do see.

Knowing what muscles look like, where they originate, and how they move can make working out make more sense. So to work that butt muscle correctly, it helps to know what it looks like and how it functions.

If we all had 0% body fat, it would be easy to see our muscles, but since most of us can't see them that clearly, the next best thing is to find a good anatomy book with illustrations.

One great place to start is with The Anatomy Coloring Workbook . It takes this complex subject and simplifies it into terms that are understandable. When you color the muscles yourself using colored pencils, you'll develop a concrete sense of how you're put together. This book also has easy-to-understand explanations of how your structure works.

Another suggested read is the Manual of Structural Kinesiology (if you can find it). It’s a brief overview broken down into short sessions you can pick up and read without dedicating the rest of your life to intense anatomy study. Includes examples of exercises that will develop every muscle in your body are included. It's pretty much all you need to know as a well-informed athlete.

Keep a book like one of these next to the potty -- it’s amazing what valuable information you can teach yourself in the short time it takes to go to the bathroom. So, the next time you go to the head, go to the head! Use your brain to maximize your workouts.

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