The TuneUp Program

Throughout the program you'll find terminology that accurately describes certain positions. The common front/back, top/bottom, side/middle descriptions work well enough for someone standing in an anatomically neutral position, but we need terms that are still clear when we change shape.

3D

We reference particular locations on the body in a three dimensional space. At school you learned to do this using a graph with three axes labelled x, y and z. We won't be measuring distances but we will be moving around in the three planes: xy, yz and xz

The Transverse Plane (xy)

The Transverse Plane
By dividing the body along the transverse or xy plane we can refer to points closer to the head as superior and those closer to the feet as inferior. When you're standing on your feet like this superior is the same as higher and inferior as lower but if I was standing on my head, or lying on my side, these common terms would not be clear enough.

So in this photo my guitar is superior to my knees and my sandals are inferior to my belt, simple.

The Coronal Plane (yz)

Coronal Plane

Standing in the usual position The Coronal, or Frontal Plane, distinguishes between the front and the back of the body. We refer to the region at the front as anterior and behind as posterior.

My guitar here is anterior to my spine which is posterior to my hands

The Sagittal Plane (xz)

The Sagittal Plane
So the only one left divides the body in half straight down the middle when you're looking front on. This plane enables us to refer to points as being closer or further from the midline. If something is away from the midline we refer to it as bing lateral and if it is closer to the midline we say that it is medial.

In this picture then my right hand is medial to my right elbow while my left shoulder is lateral to my head. Notice too that in this photo I've positioned this smaller auditorium guitar so that my left hand is way too low, this is drawing my shoulder down and my head to the left.

To summarise

• Superior is toward the head and posterior is toward the feet.
• Anterior is toward the ventral side (the front when we're standing) and posterior is toward the dorsal side (the back).
• Lateral is away from the midline and medial is toward the midline.
• Two more that haven't been addressed yet are proximal, which means closer to the torso and distal which means further along the extremeties. They are more useful when referring to the limbs.