Frustrated with a particular KSA - Personal Trainer Community - Forum

[BrianB]

I'm hoping for a little advice in studying for one particular KSA - 1.1.26, "knowledge of the primary action and joint range of motion for each major muscle group".

Referring to "ACSM's Resources for the Personal Trainer, 2nd Edition", I'm having a little difficulty knowing what I need to memorize. There are about 50 pages of information concerning joints including planes of movement, muscles involved, exercises for each movement of each joint, etc. There are two charts, one on p. 127 and one on p. 128 that list each major joint, the movements, range of motion (in degrees) for each movement, major agonist muscles, and examples of resistance exercises.

Since about 30 to 36 questions on the exam will come from "Exercise Physiology and Related Exercise Science" (of which this KSA is a part), I would assume lots of questions will come from this area given how big it is in the text.

Trying to get to the point, do I need to memorize every last detail of pages 126 to 175 in that book? The wording of the KSA ("knowledge of the primary action and joint range of motion for each major muscle group") implies that it might be sufficient to know just the biggies - a) biceps/triceps (elbow), b) quadricep, hamstring (knee), etc.

Please don't take this as me wanting to be lazy and do the bare minimum. My problem is that I think I grossly overstudied Chapter 6. I have like 40 pages of notes and like 240 flash cards from Chapter 6, and honestly a lot of that information (notes and cards) doesn't seem to correlate to a KSA. If I overstudy to that level for every chapter, I'll end up sacrificing what I actually need to know in a vain effort to know everything (which isn't possible).

This is the first KSA I've hit that I found it difficult to really know what I needed to know.

Sorry if I'm rambling. Thanks for any advice.

[C Lenart]

Brian:

I took the Health/Fitness exam, not the CPT exam, but here are my ideas.

I'm looking at my ACSM Resource Manual for Exercise Testing and Prescription-Fifth Edition showing the major movements of the Lower and Upper Extremities. In my book, it shows the movement, major agonist muscles, and examples of resistance exercises. This is important stuff.

You should be able to go to a major muscle group and show the action that the muscle/s perform and demonstrate a type of resistance exercise that performs this action. The exam may not get into the smaller muscles like the piriformis, obturator, and the gamellus but everything else is pretty much fair game, although I only found questions covering the big muscle groups on the HFI exam.

Frankly, the material on the muscles took me an entire quarter to learn when I took a course in anatomy and biomechanics at UCLA two years ago. This material was also helpful in helping me design flexibility exercises for my current clients as well as understanding postural abnormalities and injury related muscle substitution patterns. Some of my clients are just out of spinal surgery and follow-up physiotherapy.

Curt

[BrianB]

Thanks Curt. I don't know why, but I'm just having a hard time coming up with a way to make all of the various articulations of the various joints stick in my head. I'm much more adept at things like the chemical process of anaerobic respiration and such.

This is somewhat surprising since I am very much a visual person. You'd think I'd just be able to visualize the joint, visualize the ways it can move, and then think about which muscles are necessary to make it move that way. Seems straightforward enough.

What about the degrees of rotation? The chart says so and such can move 60 - 90 degrees, and this can move 100 degrees, etc. I'll memorize it all if I have to. Worst case scenario I'll make flash cards for every joint. One card for the bones in the joint, one card for the muscles, one card for the movements in each plane, etc. It seems like I'll end up with about 200 cards from just the two charts. :shock:

At least your description of how long it took you to cover the material tells me I'm not crazy for feeling a little overwhelmed by it. Honestly, everything else to this point -- even very detailed things like all of the structure and functions of the nerves, muscles, etc., are no problem. I know this part is one of the most important parts to being a good trainer, so I really want to learn it well, but honestly I'm struggling a bit with the best way to try and study it.

I'm somehow hoping that the instructor at the 3-day workshop I'm going to this weekend will have some sort of brilliant suggestion as to how to study/remember this particular topic.

Of course any suggestion from those of you here that have done it is welcome too!

[C Lenart]

Brian:

Memorizing "all" the degrees of rotation in the joint/muscles seem a little over the top, at least for the CPT exam. In my opinion, that degree of detail would be of more interest for an advanced certification like the CSCS. The degrees of rotation in a muscle like the subscapularis might be of interest for example, when assessing if an individual has proper flexibility or can demonstrate proper range of motion in a joint like the shoulder. In my opinion, I would say that for now that you should be able to locate the muscle and the action that it performs. For example, the anterior deltoid muscle performs abduction and the vastus lateralis muscle performs extension etc.

Be sure and post up what happened at the 3 day workshop this weekend.

Curt

[BrianB]

I took the ACSM practice exam last night just to get a level set about things. I know the real exam is going to be harder, but how well I did on the practice exam really made me feel better. I've only been through like 25% of the study materials, and I got a 75% on the practice exam (scoring 100% in many areas, and scoring reasonably well even in the areas that I've not read any of the materials for). My pre-existing background on this stuff certainly helped a lot.

I'll definitely give a full run down of the workshop sometime Monday or later.

If the real exam bears any resemblance at all to the practice exam, I think I'll be just fine.