Illustrated Principles of Exercise Physiology

Illustrated Principles of Exercise Physiology

K. Axen (rehabilitation medicine, New York U. School of Medicine) and K.V. Axen (health and nutrition sciences, Brooklyn College of CUNY) overview the principles of exercise physiology. Includes some 350 color-coded original illustrations. Suitable for undergraduate courses. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com) This unique, beautifully illustrated handbook presents a "back-to-basics" approach to exercise physiology, emphasizing understanding of fundamental principles rather than memorization of facts. Written and illustrated by authors who are both research scientists as well as teachers, it features 350 original illustrations that can be colored, allowing readers to quickly learn important concepts. Illustrated Principles of Exercise Physiology is an invaluable resource for students in disciplines including exercise science, physical education, anatomy and physiology, nursing, physical therapy and nutrition. FEATURES Concise, clear presentation covers all major topics in exercise physiology. - Addresses varied learning styles, presenting information in three ways: once in a concisely written text, once nonverbally as a memorable diagram that can be colored, and once in a conversational figure legend that bridges the gap between text and figures. - Includes 350 original pen-and-ink illustrations (ranging from simple to complex) designed to be colored, allowing readers to see information as it emerges. - Unique, logical coloring scheme based on functional, anatomical, and/or artistic considerations enables readers to color every illustration without referring to a legend. PREFACE Our goal was to create a clearly written, beautifully illustrated overview of the principles of exercise physiology that would be an ideal book for a one-semester, undergraduate course in exercise physiology, as well as a useful prerequisite text for more advanced exercise-related courses. The text evolved from extensive lecture notes that were prepared while teaching undergraduate and graduate courses in exercise physiology in the Department of Physical Therapy at Long Island University, and graduate courses in nutrition and exercise in the Department of Health and Nutrition Sciences and the Department of Physical Education and Exercise Science at Brooklyn College, CUNY. The text was designed to follow a logical progression, to provide a reasonable reading assignment for each lecture, and to emphasize tie basic concepts of exercise physiology. These features enable our book to be used as a primary text in the hands of a knowledgeable instructor or as a supplemental review book that is compatible with any existing exercise physiology textbook. Writing style Instead of providing a broad compendium of information, we adopted the concise writing style utilized by scientific journals. This permitted us to cover the major topics in exercise physiology while eliminating ancillary material that drives students to skip and skim. Following the philosophy of our previous book, we use the topics we cover as vehicles to explain basic principles, to promote quantitative reasoning, and to teach the mechanistic thinking required to understand the fundamentals of exercise physiology. Rather than avoiding graphs and equations, for example, some figures were specifically designed to teach students how to interpret information presented in graphical and algebraic form. Illustrations Our book contains 350 original, elegant, pen-and-ink illustrations that were hand-drawn by one of the authors. The ability of the author and illustrator to communicate via the corpus callosum produced a book with unparalleled correspondence between text and figures and unprecedented coherency among its illustrations. The wide variety of drawings are clearly labeled in plain English and are related to one another through the use of extensive cross-referencing, recurring icons, and consistent color symbolism. Nearly two-thirds of the illustrations are completely new and have no counterpart in any of the existing exercise physiology books. The clarity, legibility, and simplicity of our line drawings make them an ideal source of transparencies for lectures. Our experience with our previous book has shown that students bring their lightweight, inexpensive books to class and actively take notes on the figures during lectures. Pedagogical features In accordance with our premise that color contains information that can be used to teach exercise physiology, we developed a logical coloring scheme in which colors are chosen according to functional, anatomical, or artistic considerations. The colors are indicated on each figure by a simple, unobtrusive code that enables the reader to color every illustration without referring to a legend. This unique feature of our book enables relevant information to be presented in three different ways—once in a concisely written text, once nonverbally as a memorable diagram that can be colored, and once in a