Step into a real anatomy lab. See what the textbook can't show you.
For everyone who works with the human body…..Making under the skin come alive….
Who is this day for?
This day is built for the movement professionals who didn't get cadaver lab access in their initial training:
Personal Trainers and S&C coaches
Pilates and yoga teachers
Sports massage and soft tissue therapists
Movement coaches, dance teachers and somatic practitioners
Qualified sports therapists, osteopaths, chiropractors and manual therapists are also very welcome — many come back for the depth and the perspective shift.
Most of our attendees walk into an anatomy lab for the first time on the day. No prior cadaver experience needed.
What if I've never been to a lab before?
You're in the right place. That's exactly who this day is built for.
Because the specimens are prosected — already prepared by the King's College team before you arrive — you spend the entire day learning, not preparing. Two lab technicians guide you through everything. You will never be left wondering what you're looking at.
Most people leave saying the same thing: "I wish I'd done this years ago."
What will you take home?
Each university has its own quality of teaching and access. To stand inside one of these labs is a humbling thing — these are the same spaces where the country's leading surgeons trained.
You'll be guided by King's College lab technicians and by Mike Grice from LearnAnatomy.Online and Movement Therapy Education — an osteopath, clinical anatomist and university lecturer who has spent thirty years bridging fitness, therapy and the lab.
At Dundee, Mike is joined by Senthil Kumar, Consultant Orthopaedic Foot and Ankle Surgeon at NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde.
What you leave with: a way of seeing the human body that doesn't fade. Coaches stop guessing. Therapists stop palpating blind. Teachers stop teaching from a one-line diagram.
How the day runs
Maximum 24 attendees at King's College London (30 at Dundee), split into two groups. Each group is assigned a King's College lab technician, and you'll spend the day moving between specimens with their guidance.
Specimens are prosected, meaning the King's College team has prepared everything in advance. The benefit: every minute of the day is spent learning what's in front of you instead of cutting your way to it. This is what makes the day approachable for first-time visitors and useful for everyone — no preparation time wasted, no fumbling, no guessing where structures should be.
Start: Arrive 9.30am, begin 10am · Finish: 4.00–4.30pm Locations: King's College London (steps of the medical school) · Dundee, Centre for Anatomy (CAHID) Bring: Something warm (labs are air-conditioned), no sleeves recommended
Who this day isn't for
If you're hoping for hands-on dissection, this isn't the right day — and that's deliberate. The prosected format means you're learning from specimens already prepared to a teaching standard you couldn't replicate in a single day.
If you've been to dissection workshops before and specifically want that experience, we usually run these from King’s College in December - contact me: mike.grice@mte.education
What will you see?
The quality of the specimens that you see can differ in each visit. Typically we will be able to access and view the following structures:
Full lower limb and upper limb (including all muscles, bones, joints), thorax, viscera, spinal column, nerves of the upper and lower extremity, head and neck.
There are also many specimens around the lab that are kept in jars and these are excellent for being able to observe the specific areas in 360 degrees.
At the weekend I announced to my husband that we are taking a trip down to London to see his brother in March.
Then after listing all the logistics behind the trip that we needed to sort (kids/ dog/ transport/ work/ hotel/ parking/ etc) I then confessed that he would be the one spending time with his brother. I am, in fact, off to geek out for the day on a Cadaver Workshop.
This will be my third time attending the labs and I am possibly even more excited this time round than the previous two. My first time was in 2017. I was so in awe of being able to witness the human body in it’s purest form that the only thing I really remember is seeing the body as a ‘whole’. Everything was connected with layers upon layers of muscle, nerves, fascia. And from then on I questioned everything about anatomy that I had learned in my career. A real body is NOTHING like the textbooks. Then in October 2019 I attended another Cadaver Lab, this time in Keele. And this time I was able to see the body not only as a whole, but as the separate parts. I remember being amazed at the sciatic nerve, the size of the which was the same as my finger and which separated in completely different ways than it did in the textbooks that I had studied. I remember seeing how a degenerative knee looked in relation to a ‘normal’ knee with all the ridges on the back of the patella and how it fitted with the ridges on the epicondyles. I remember seeing the thickness of the psoas muscle in the pelvic specimen and how the viscera sat on top, making me question everything I had learned about palpating and massaging this muscle. I remember holding a pelvis with the pelvic floor muscles and thinking how much it looked like a birds nest or a deep woven basket. I remember how the meniscus within the knee looked like a rugby player’s mouth-guard and how rubbery it felt in my hands. I remember observing a specimen that had had a hip replacement, with the psoas muscle being thinner on the side with the replacement and the spine showing evidence of scoliosis. I remember talking to the lab technicians about the possible tumours on a glute max, how the bicipital ridge was deeper than I thought, how the nerve roots do not always correlate with the books and how not everyone had a palmaris longus. I never thought I could appreciate anatomy any more than I already did, but seeing exactly what lies beneath the surface made me realise just how freakin’ amazing the human body is. So if you ever get a chance to attend a Cadaver Lab…go for it. You will never look at the human body in the same way again. It’s not only a fascinating experience but a humbling one too.
Course Dates - Anatomy Lab Visits
Education Director
Movement Therapy Education
Mike leads the Anatomy Workshop with the clinicians from King’s College London. Mike has been an Anatomist for over 10 years and teaching anatomy for over 20.
