What’s a completely useless fact you love sharing?
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The gas exchange surface area of the lungs of the average adult human (if one flattened out all those balloon-like alveoli) is about the area of a tennis court.
The Mind Electric: A Neurologist on the Strangeness and Wonder of Our Brains by Pria Anand
O my body! I dare not desert the likes of
you in other men and women, nor the
likes of the parts of you,
I believe the likes of you are to stand or fall
with the likes of the soul, (and that they
are the soul,)
I believe the likes of you shall stand or fall
with my poems, and that they are my
poems,
Man's, woman's, child's, youth's, wife's,
husband's, mother's, father's, young
man's, young woman's poems,
Head, neck, hair, ears, drop and tympan of
the ears,
Eyes, eye-fringes, iris of the eye, eyebrows,
and the waking or sleeping of the lids,
Mouth, tongue, lips, teeth, roof of the
mouth, jaws, and the jaw-hinges,
Nose, nostrils of the nose, and the partition,
Cheeks, temples, forehead, chin, throat,
back of the neck, neck-slue,
Strong shoulders, manly beard, scapula,
hind-shoulders, and the ample side-
round of the chest,
Upper-arm, armpit, elbow-socket, lower-
arm, arm-sinews, arm-bones,
Wrist and wrist-joints, hand, palm,
knuckles, thumb, forefinger, finger-joints,
finger-nails,
Broad breast-front, curling hair of the
breast, breast-bone, breast-side,
Ribs, belly, backbone, joints of the
backbone,
Hips, hip-sockets, hip-strength, inward and
outward round, man-balls, man-root,
Strong set of thighs, well carrying the trunk
above,
Leg fibres, knee, knee-pan, upper-leg,
under-leg,
Ankles, instep, foot-ball, toes, toe-joints, the
heel;
All attitudes, all the shapeliness, all the
belongings of my or your body or of any
one's body, male or female,
The lung-sponges, the stomach-sac, the
bowels sweet and clean,
The brain in its folds inside the skull-frame,
Sympathies, heart-valves, palate-valves,
sexuality, maternity,
Womanhood, and all that is a woman, and
the man that comes from woman,
The womb, the teats, nipples, breast-milk,
tears, laughter, weeping, love-looks, love-
perturbations and risings,
The voice, articulation, language,
whispering, shouting aloud,
Food, drink, pulse, digestion, sweat, sleep,
walking, swimming,
Poise on the hips, leaping, reclining,
embracing, arm-curving and tightening,
The continual changes of the flex of the
mouth, and around the eyes,
The skin, the sunburnt shade, freckles, hair,
The curious sympathy one feels when
feeling with the hand the naked meat of
the body,
The circling rivers the breath, and breathing
it in and out,
The beauty of the waist, and thence of the
hips, and thence downward toward the
knees,
The thin red jellies within you or within
me, the bones and the morrow in the
bones,
The exquisite realization of health;
O I say these are not the parts and poems of
the body only, but of the soul,
O I say now these are the soul!
The love of the body of man or woman
balks account, the body itself balks,
account,
That of the male is perfect, and that of
the female is perfect.
The expression of the face balks account,
But the expression of a well-made man
appears not only in his face,
It is in his limbs and joints also, it is
curiously in the joints of his hips and
wrists,
It is in his walk, the carriage of his neck, the
flex of his waist and knees, dress does not
hide him,
The strong sweet quality he has strikes
through the cotton and broadcloth,
To see him pass conveys as much as the best
poem, perhaps more,
You linger to see his back, and the back of
his neck and shoulder-side.
The sprawl and fulness of babes, the bosoms
and heads of women, the folds of their
dress, their style as we pass in the street,
the contour of their shape downwards,
The swimmer naked in the swimming-bath,
seen as he swims through the transparent
green-shine, or lies with his face up and
rolls silently to and fro in the heave of the
water,
The bending forward and backward of
rowers in row-boats, the horseman in his
saddle,
Girls, mothers, house-keepers, in all their
performances,
The group of laborers seated at noon-time
with their open dinner-kettles, and their
wives waiting,
The female soothing a child, the farmer's
daughter in the garden or cow-yard,
The young fellow hoeing corn, the sleigh-
driver driving his six horses through the
crowd,
The wrestle of wrestlers, two apprentice-
boys, quite grown, lusty, good-natured,
native-born, out on the vacant lot at sun-
down after work,
The coats and caps thrown down, the
embrace of love and resistance,
The upper-hold and the under-hold, the hair
rumpled over and blinding their eyes;
The march of firemen in their own
costumes, the play of masculine muscle
through clean-setting trowsers and waist-
straps,
The slow return from the fire, the pause
when the bell strikes suddenly again, and
the listening on the alert,
The natural, perfect, varied attitudes, the
bent head, the curv'd neck and the
counting;
Such-like I love -- I loosen myself, pass
freely, am at the mother's breast with the
little child,
Swim with the swimmers, wrestle with
wrestlers, march in line with the firemen,
and pause, listen, count.
Body Am I: The New Science of Self-Consciousness by Moheb Costandi
The Exquisite Machine: The New Science of the Heart by Sian E. Harding
The Physiology of Yoga by Andrew McGonigle
Life at the Extremes by Frances Ashcroft
Yoga Anatomy by Leslie Kaminoff
Functional Training Anatomy by Kevin Carr
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Exercise regimens that improve the body’s ability to coordinate movements in order to carry out particular actions relevant to the exerciser’s life have increasingly come to be valued in recent years. (Traditionally, fitness regimens often focused on one muscle / body part at a time without an eye toward whether the strengthened muscles worked well together when applied to the required motion – or sometimes regimens focused entirely on how the muscles look.) This book is designed to show muscle activation for a wide range of functional fitness training exercises. It is one volume in a series of anatomy for sports / exercise books put out by the publisher, Human Kinetics.
Each exercise under discussion features an anatomical cut-away drawing showing the muscles that are working, as well as a list of the primary and secondary muscles, a diagram showing which planes are being worked in during the exercise, a step-by-step description of how each exercise is performed, and a brief discussion of what functionality is improved by doing the exercise in question — always with a supporting drawing of a relevant action / motion. Some of the exercises offer a variation.
The book consists of nine chapters. The first chapter gives an overview of what functional training is (and how it contrasts with other approaches,) and provides the necessary background to understand the exercises explanations (e.g. the planes of the body,) the rationale for what exercises are included, and what must be kept in mind with this approach to exercise. Chapters two through five look at various types of exercise, besides strengthening exercises. These include: mobility / flexibility exercises (ch. 2,) motor control / movement preparation exercises (ch. 3,) plyometric exercises and kettle-ball (ch. 4,) and power exercises using heavy weights (ch 5.) Chapters six through eight focus on strength exercises by body part: upper body (ch. 6,) lower body (ch. 7,) and core / rotational strength (ch. 8.) The last chapter provides advice on how to put a program of functional training together.
The book doesn’t include much ancillary matter. The front matter consists of a brief preface, and the back matter provides an “exercise finder,” a detailed index to find the desired exercise rapidly. [The latter has a nice feature. It includes a drawing of the exercise. That’s useful because exercise names, while prosaically descriptive, can often be confusing (e.g. what two trainers call a “hip extension” may vary, though they will both no doubt feature extension of the hip joint in some way.)] There is a page for those who are using the book for Continuing Education (CE) credit that explains what resources are available.
I found this book to be beneficial and educational. I learned a few new exercises, and was provided with some interesting food for thought. The drawings are clear, both in their representation of the exercise and the anatomical cutaways. If you are looking for information on functional training, particularly which discusses muscle activation, I’d recommend you give this book a look.
