The Human body is packed with muscle, in fact roughly half your body weight is muscle and there are about 700 names muscles which attach to the skeletal system.
Muscles and joints
Each muscle in its self is a discrete organ, made of skeletal muscle tissue, blood vessels, tendons and nerves.
We can break up muscles tissue into 3 types.
Visceral, Cardiac and Skeletal
Visceral muscle is found inside the stomach, intestines and blood vessels. They are the weakest of all the muscle types.
They help organs contract and move substances through them. Visceral muscle is also know as an involuntary muscle, because it moves without conscious thought.
Cardiac muscle is a special type of muscle only found in the heart.
Like visceral muscle, this is an involuntary muscle, because it can’t be controlled by conscious thought.
Skeletal Muscle is the only type of muscle which is voluntary, meaning we can consciously control its movements.
Everything from talking to walking requires skeletal muscles.
Movement. When we want to move, our muscles contract and relax. If a muscle contracts to create movement, then its called an isotonic movement.
We can break isotonic movements into 2 types. Concentric and eccentric. If the muscle shortens to create movement, it is concentric. If the fibres lengthen as the muscle contracts it is eccentric.
An example of eccentric is lowering a dumbbell. Your biceps still have to be working while the lengthen or else the dumbbell would just fall.
