The Complete Guide to Locomotor: (No Big Books!)

2 weeks in and you’re starting to get stressed about Upper Limb? The videos are building up and the anatomy keeps getting more and more wound up in a tangle of incredibly confusingly named muscles, complex nerves, and blood vessels and their branches and their various movements not to mention 34849834 other things.

It’s time to take a deep breath and calm down. Locomotor, like most of the modules in the second year, looks harder than it is. Once you get the hang of it, it’s quite straightforward. Luckily for you, we’ve come up with a step by step plan for you to follow based on what worked for us (and what didn’t) so you can save time and get straight to it!

{Disclaimer: While this has been written as more of a step by step guide, it’s a fact that every student studies differently. Some love poring over the powerfully illustrated diagrams in Grays and KLM and reading the explanations in Guyton while others(like me) are better suited to visual and sometimes more concise learning. Feel free to pick and choose whatever you feel resonates with you best from this article. For the students more inclined towards textbooks, we’ll have another article soon.}

With that out of the way, let’s dive right into the good stuff:

First things first you MUST know what exactly you have to study. For this I recommend (if you don’t or haven’t already) you take a good look through the study guide that the university gives us and read through the course objectives for the module. This is one of the most important things you can do to start your preparation off right because it shows you exactly what the university wants you to learn and (importantly) will test you on.

Personally speaking, I used to print this out and then mark the objectives according to the subject. This gives you a rough idea of which subjects are most extensive and important for the module and which are not and so you can focus your prep accordingly.

In Locomotor, as in every module, there are 2 components to effective preparation. They are:

Concept Building: this refers to the first phase of your study where you’re trying to understand what you’re studying. This can be both through videos or written sources or a combination of the two.

Memorization: this refers to the second phase where you’re trying to actively store in your brain everything that you understood in the first phase. This is mostly through written sources.

For the rest of this article, I’m going to go subject by subject and focus on some of the best ways you can do both of these so you have an effective well-rounded preparation plan.

ANATOMY

The biggest subject around for this module, and the scariest! And for good reason too, the contents are truly MASSIVE. From the muscles and bones in every limb to their innervation, nerve, blood supply, movements, everything seems like a nightmare. But fret not for we’ve got you covered (or sort of):

Concept Building:

Again, if you’re not a textbook learner, I feel there are two elements to this as well:

• Videos and other visual aids to make an image in your mind (EXTREMELY IMPORTANT).

• A concise, but comprehensive, text source to reinforce everything that you learned through watching the videos.

Let’s try to see how this works. For the visual part, the best resources around are:

• AnatomyZone: the absolute best free resource on YouTube for understanding how the human body works, in 3D. The best thing about the tutorials is that they’re short; hardly ever more than 10 minutes, extremely well explained, and arranged neatly into playlists by modules. Some people would take notes while watching the tutorials but I feel that’s not as useful. While excellent, the videos don’t cover everything there is to know and it takes too much time to try to note down everything. I’d personally recommend watching the whole video and then trying to write down (or type) as much as you can remember and then going through the video quickly again to see what you missed. This forces your brain to work to remember what concepts it learned a few minutes prior and hence uses Active recall. This is a powerful technique to ensure you remember concepts better.
  

• https://human.biodigital.com/: When you’re done with the videos, or even if you’re not, you might want to check another excellent free resource out. This is an interactive 3D Atlas. The best thing about it is that the free version does include the complete human body model. You can play around with it any way you like; isolate individual parts, muscles, nerves, bones, etc. to see how everything works in conjunction with each other. I found it incredibly helpful anytime I had trouble visualizing anything. However while it’s a great source to build an image in your mind, sometimes it’s not as detailed as you’d like or need so keep that in mind.

Netters:

{I know I said “no big books”. But netters is an Atlas so it’s not technically a textbook.}

It’s a little difficult to understand in the beginning but there is a reason this book is the most well-known resource around in its niche. The diagrams are beautiful and as detailed as you could need to drive those concepts home. Be sure to check it out!

{Honorary mention: Sam Webster’s channel on YouTube has some great videos explaining anatomy in detail using lab models in the way our practical in university do. It’s a great channel but sometimes the videos are a bit long}.

So now you’ve made your concepts with visual aids. Now you need to complement those with reading material. You may not be using the textbooks but you still need a comprehensive, albeit concise source to drive those concepts home. The best resources are:

• Lecture Slides: if you want to score decently on the ZU exams, you should study the slides thoroughly. Especially for anatomy in Locomotor, most of the slides are extremely comprehensive while also being easy to read. The fact that the content is usually presented in bullet form instead of paragraphs makes it a lot better. Plus they’re a combination of all the big books you’re supposed to be reading so you get the best of everything and all the important diagrams.
  

• BRS Anatomy: As always, the BRS series never fails to disappoint. The most important information is always present in bullet points to make everything easy to remember. However, for the ZU exam, this might not be the best resource since it’s made for the USMLE.
  

TeachMeAnatomy

is something a lot of students use to prepare for their anatomy but I wouldn’t suggest it as your primary source. It doesn’t contain a lot of the stuff that you’re required to know.

Memorization:

Onto the tricky part. You’ve seen the videos and read the slides. Now how do you ensure you memorize it all? Again, there are two parts to memorizing Anatomy in Locomotor. You need to memorize the location of everything; where the various muscles, bones, blood vessels, nerves, etc. lie, and then you need to memorize what they all do and their innervation, etc. For both of these, I would say the best and the fastest way to do so is flashcards:

Gray’s Anatomy and Netters Flashcards: These are flashcard versions of the original textbooks and they’re a lot simpler and smaller. They contain the most important diagrams of the respective books in a flashcard format. One page labels the various parts by numbers so you can test your memory and the next contains the answers. This will help you remember not only the location of muscles and bones but the course of various arteries, nerves, and veins. I would suggest downloading the PDF versions even on your phone because the small size means a reasonable view even on your phone. Plus you can do them anywhere when you’re free but unable to access your other study materials. If drawing complicated diagrams to aid your memory is not your cup of tea, this is the way to go!

Anki: This is a flashcard app that can be downloaded on your phone or PC to help your memorization. The way it works is by using a technique called Spaced Repetition (explaining what this is would be a whole other article, for now just understand that is the single, most effective, and the fastest evidence-backed way to memorize a lot of information). I discovered Anki around this time too in the 2nd year, and I found it the single biggest factor in reducing my study time dramatically while still ensuring I scored relatively decently.

The best and the simplest way to use it for Locomotor if you’re running short of time is to take all the tables that show the muscles with their respective functions, attachments, and innervation and make flashcards out of them. It’s a bit difficult to use it the first time but you can do this on the PC app once properly and then this automatically syncs over to your phone so you can whip it out to memorize everything anytime you’re free. Trust me, once you figure it out, it works amazingly well.

For everything else, a BRS review, in the end, is never a bad way to go. Once you’ve got your bone and muscle locations and functions with innervation and blood supply nailed in with flashcards, the other high yield is to memorize the clinical correlates and BRS does a great job at highlighting and explaining all the important ones. Try to memorize as many of them as you can towards the end and you should have a very strong preparation of some of the most important parts of the syllabus going into your exam.

PATHOLOGY

Pathology is another extremely important subject in Locomotor. It’s extensive and also very relevant since a lot of the conditions you read about here are very common in real life.

Concept building:

For this, I would suggest watching the lecture videos that are uploaded by the faculty on 1.5 or 2x. The Pathology Department at Ziauddin is pretty good and they do a decent job of explaining the concepts well. Most importantly, they’re the ones who are going to test you so it’s worth taking a look at what they tell you is important.

If you’re working through the lectures, the natural reading source you should use is the slides. Most of them contain more than enough and are pretty clear and to the point.

Alternatively, you can use the ever-reliable Pathoma videos and lectures to effectively complete both your visual and book learning components effectively. However, the only caveat is that Pathoma does not always have what ZU examiners are looking for, and sometimes it has too much so you end up focusing on the wrong stuff and wasting time there. This is because Pathoma has high yields for the USMLE and the ZU examiners have a slightly different idea of high yields, for some reason.

Honorary mentions: Kaplan, BnB, and Osmosis all have excellent videos of various lengths but they’re not exactly oriented according to our syllabus so they’re much more useful as a secondary resource if you don't understand anything from the primary sources.

Memorization

Flashcards and Question banks are the way to go here. Doing well on Pathology means both memorizing effectively and then deducing the correct disease or condition based upon a series of symptoms or signs.

Flashcards: If you’re studying from Pathoma, you might find it useful to download a pre-made deck online from the Anki server and install it in your account. There are a lot of excellent decks made for Pathology for USMLE prep based on Pathoma and they can help you prepare if you’re short on time. Alternatively, an even better (but much more time taking approach) would be to make our flashcards of important facts from the slides and then learn. This would be based on your exams more.

Question Banks: There are lots of question banks available but you want to look for the ones which have a proper explanation of the answers such as the ones in BRS Pathology and Robbins and Cotran Review of Pathology. They’re usually pretty hard but even if all you do is look through the answers and try to understand them, you’ll have done a pretty good job.

Medangle might also have a decent question bank for Upper and Lower Limb although I wouldn’t know personally since it came out after we were done with Semester 3.

PHYSIOLOGY

This is a pretty chill subject for Locomotor thankfully. And lots of it is the stuff that’s been done in A-Levels or Inter.

Concept Building:

Not a lot to stress out about. Watch lecture videos and you should be fine. If you don’t get something, try the vast world of YouTube and resources such as Ninja Nerd, Armando Hasudungan, or Osmosis but don’t sweat it too much unnecessarily.

Read the slides to complement the concepts learned.

Memorization:

Not a lot to memorize if you get the concepts.

PHARMACOLOGY

Concept Building:

The lectures are pretty decent and do a decent job of explaining everything you need to know. The slides from the Pharmacology Department are usually pretty detailed. If you manage to get through them, you should know and understand pretty much everything.

If you have the time and want to improve your concepts and make an effort at retaining these drugs long term, you might want to check out Sketchy Pharma. Sketchy is great because it makes a perfect image in your mind of what the different drugs do using a technique called a memory palace. In the long term, the memory palace is the most superior technique for memorizing stuff. However, it’s not used as commonly because it takes A LOT of time to understand and make memory palaces in the first place.

Memorization

Make flashcards from the tables in Katzung. They cover pretty much everything.

For a more detailed and comprehensive review, however, of topics that are not available in Katzung, you can make a proper table in the format of Katzung, in any word processor summarizing all the side effects and functions of the drugs mentioned in the slides. If you can take out the time to do this once and then make them into flashcards, you almost guarantee the chances of memorizing them perfectly. However, this is understandably quite a time taking task. If you manage to do this, Kudos to you!

BIOCHEMISTRY

Concept Building:

Again, the best primary resource would be lecture videos and slides. While the syllabus for Biochemistry isn’t too much, it’s more memorization than concept building and it’s not exactly bound to a single important concept that’s demarcated properly in any other source. The biochemistry lectures and slides should be enough to tide you over for the most part.

Memorization:

Flashcards can work here too but since the topics for Locomotor are rather specific in ZU and not properly given, at least to my knowledge in any other places, you’ll have to make them yourself. This could take a bit of time but for the long term, it would be worth it.

Apart from that, you’ll have to go through the material once more if you want to revise it properly.

So there you have it, a more or less complete guide to prepping for Locomotor without any big books. If you have any questions or queries, please do mention them. Happy studying!