I was in Phoenix for an event today and happened to have paid for all-day parking walking distance from the
BodyWorlds exhibit! It was basically an anatomical display of human bodies. I guess people donate their bodies and there's a whole process the artist/anatomist folks do to preserve them using plastination. They were put in different poses to illustrate different uses of the human body. I kind of realized when I was looking at some of the female plastinates that I've really seen very very few female models in studying anatomy; it's almost always primarily men. So that was really really cool. They also had fetuses at different stages of development. Oh, and in some cases they compared individual tissues and organs that were healthy with those that were unhealthy, showing smoker's lungs next to healthy lungs, knees with and without arthritis, examples of scoliosis, hip dysplasia, etc. It was pretty incredible. Also they had...oh I forget what it's called when you take a slice of something and then put glass on both sides, but they had all kinds of those...brains, organs, etc. Even an entire body of a very obese man that eventually died of heart failure. I mean the whole thing really captured the good, the bad and the ugly. Just fascinating.
Also they had these great books which I fell in love with at the gift shop--one was called Strength Training Anatomy and the other is Strength Training Anatomy for Women. Both are by Frederic Delavier, and they basically show you each muscle used during an exercise and how it interacts with the joints and skeletal structure that surrounds it. It's got the exercise description (with anatomical analyses of common training injuries and how to prevent them) side by side with the X-ray drawings of the exercises. I thought they were amazing! The exercises featured are mostly isolation exercises and are divided by body part, but whatever. It's cool enough to make up for it. Anyways, you can look at it here:
http://www.amazon.com/Strength-Train.../dp/0736041850 and the girl book is here:
http://www.amazon.com/Strength-Train...3167328&sr=1-2 and I think the book is way cool enough to make up for some of the ineffective exercises a lot of women do. I have the Anatomy Coloring Book and am always looking up muscles, etc. when people describe what someone might be doing wrong form-wise, but I can never really connect what they say with my very limited understanding of anatomy, but this book makes it soooo easy. And it's especially useful I think for people who are mostly interested in anatomy in the context of strength training.
I'm almost as excited about these two books as I am about finding McGill's Ultimate Back Fitness and Performance for $40 instead of $98! I am a happy girl.
Thought I'd share.
Bodyworlds
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