Something that I have used in my teaching is Anatomy Arcade and with more and more people having access to computers and mobile devices you can access to it too! I find this website a massive help in taking away barriers and making learning fun.

The games on Anatomy Arcade are organised by body system and game type. The two main games are Whack-A-Bone from the skeletal system and Poke-A-Muscle from the muscular system. In addition, there are jigsaws, crosswords, word searches, match twos, and just for fun.

Whack-A-Bone is an excellence main activity in the class and will lead your learners towards an instinctive knowledge of the major bones of the body. You can build up, scan and whack the arm, leg and core and when this has been perfected, you then scan the entire skeleton! To advance you have to score 80% or higher which is a good standard to set for learners. There is a chart that will allow learners and teachers to monitor progression and set new goals.

Be warned however phalanges is used for both your finger and toe bones. There’s a written distinction (“(toe) phalanges”) but the vocals don’t distinguish between the two and you have to choose correctly or it’s counted against you.

Overall, I love this game! The learners can play it to learn and use it as a homework task. I tend to run a league table throughout the year and award a prize for the best score and the most improved score of the month!

The first thing that hooked me on this site was Poke-A-Muscle is its excellence for learners on BTEC & GCSE pathways again I run beat the teacher (Just to add I’ve never been beat yet!) and the students love it. Poke-A-Muscle is designed to help the learning of the major superficial muscles of the body. You do this in a way where you hunt for muscles with an x-ray scanner and poke the right muscles with your finger. There are 10 stages in all that will challenge most students and allow you the teacher or parent to monitor progress.

Try it out and tell us what you think?

Thanks,

Here are some really usefully videos for students to analyze in BTEC Sport.

Thanks,

Biomechanics is an interesting and at times a complex element that is essential in sport science. It is the study of mechanical force in living bodies (Kerr, 2010). Within sport it allows us to understand how force can produce movement, lead to injury, prevent injury and in sport allow us to enhance our performance.

Some times some of the elements in biomechanics can be tricky but if you stick to the basic principles and take your time to develop your skills you will be fine.

Key areas to develop an understanding in are:

• Force
• Velocity
• Acceleration
• Projectile motion
• Newtons Laws
• Torque
• Centre of Mass
• Friction
• Moment of inertia
• Momentum

By understanding these key elements you will be able to to perform notational analysis for sport in a way to implement numerical models to sporting performance as well as being able to watch athletes and devise a  technical model to help them improve their sporting performance. In order to do this you must be able to have great coaching skills and comfortable in providing feedback in a coach friendly way so that the athlete can benefit from the process and improve.

It is also worth noting that biomechanics has come a long way in its development and there is plenty of ways that video analysis and software such as quintic can assist the coach. For the novice out there wanting to improve or for the teacher in the classroom or sports hall/gym there are now numerous apps on the Apple store for iPhone, iPad and MacBook Pro that can assist in educating your athletes as well as using the apps to coach and analyses their sporting performance.

Thanks,

I always found a diagram of the human body to be very useful when it came to training. Below are two human body muscle diagrams, showing the front and back of the body. I’ve labelled the diagrams up to show the main human body muscles. I hope you find them as useful as I do.

Now that’s my bit over, making pretty pictures. I’ll leave it to the experts now, to explain a little bit more about the human body. The following information was taken from a range of professional websites, so thanks! I had no idea that the human body has over 656 muscles, although there are some experts who claim that there may be upward of 850. Muscles play an important and vital role in the body. There are three types of muscle found in the body: cardiac, skeletal and smooth. Muscles cause motion, either in the structures of the body or of the internal organs.

The neck muscles and massive triangular muscles of the back stabilise the head and shoulders and permit a range of complex movements. The most powerful muscles in the body and those that run along the spine. They maintain posture and provide the strength for lifting and pushing. The face muscles control a wide range of movements and are especially complex around the mouth and eyes.

Thanks for reading,