Study skills
Active vs passive studying: how I learned bones and muscles.
The biggest mistake I see A&P students make is not laziness. They study for hours, but they study passively: reading, highlighting, rereading. It feels like work, and very little of it stays. This is the difference between passive and active studying, and exactly how I used active studying for bones and muscles.
The short answer
Passive studying means taking information in: reading, highlighting, watching. Active studying means doing something with it: explaining a structure on a model, drawing and labelling it, and answering questions from memory. For anatomy, break the topic down and see it first, then explain it out loud, then test yourself.
Passive vs active, in one table
- Passive: reading the chapter. Active: closing it and explaining what you just read, out loud.
- Passive: highlighting every bony landmark. Active: pointing to each landmark on a model and naming it.
- Passive: looking at a labelled diagram. Active: covering the labels and filling them in yourself.
- Passive: rereading your notes. Active: answering questions on them without looking.
The passive version always feels easier. That is exactly why it doesn’t work: your brain never has to pull anything out.
Explain it on the model
When I studied bones and muscles, I didn’t just read about them. I took the actual model and explained each structure to myself on it: this is the landmark, this muscle attaches here, this nerve runs through here.
Doing it on a model means you can see where everything is in relation to everything else. Anatomy is about position. Text can describe a groove on a bone, but holding the bone shows you where it is in seconds.
Most universities have models in the anatomy lab, and many let students borrow them. Ask.
No models? Make your own
In my first semester, I didn’t know models existed. So I drew the structures on cardboard, cut them out and studied from the cut-outs.
It was rough, but it worked for the same reason a model works: I was building the structure myself and could hold it. If you have no model, draw the bone or muscle yourself, as roughly as you like, then label it from memory.
Pick 1 bone. Draw it. Label every landmark from memory.
Then check your notes. Every label you missed is tomorrow’s first job.
The order matters: see, then recall
Active recall, testing yourself from memory, is the most talked-about study method. But it is the second step, not the first.
- Break the topic down. One bone, one muscle group, one process at a time.
- See it. A diagram, a model or your own drawing.
- Explain it out loud. To yourself, on the model.
- Then test yourself. What is it? Why is it like that? What attaches here?
If you skip straight to testing, you are testing something you never understood. That is just guessing.
How to know you have actually learned it
Ask yourself the same question a day later, worded differently. “What protects the spinal cord?” becomes “What does the vertebral column protect?” If you can answer both without notes, you have learned it. If only one works, you memorised a sentence.
This is exactly how I teach. In my lessons, I ask a question, move on, and ask it again later in different words.