Knowing Your Body Muscles

You need to know a little about how your muscles work in pairs, and all the fancy names that are used to describe this. We will also be cover the effects of exercise and inactivity.

The Pull on Bones

• Muscles are attached to two different bones with tendons.
• To make a joint move one of these bones move whilst the other won't.

The Origin - the place where the muscles attach to a stationary bone.
The Insertion - the place where the muscle's attached to the moving bone.

An example of this is :- The origin of the bicep is attached to the shoulder and the insertion of the bicep is attached to the forearm/elbow joint.

Antagonistic Muscles Work In Pairs: Muscles can only do one thing and that's pulls, to make a joint move in two directions, you need two muscles that pull in opposite directions.

• Antagonistic muscles are pairs of muscles that work each other.
• One muscle contracts (shortens) while the other relaxes (lengthens) and visa versa.
• The muscle that's doing the work (contracting) is the prime mover or agonist.
• The muscle that's relaxing is the antagonist.

Muscles called flexors and extensors occur opposite each other. Flexors make joints close (flexion) while extensors make joints open (extension). Adductors and abductors are another pair of opposite muscles that work together in joints.

There are Two Types Of Muscle Contractions: There are two types of contraction that a muscle can undergo, these are isometric and isotonic.

• Isometric Contraction - the muscle stays the same length and so nothing moves. Like if you pull on a rope attached to a wall.
• Isotonic Contraction - the muscle changes length and so something moves. Like if you exercise with weights that are free to move.

Effects Of Using Muscles And Muscle Contraction: If you use your muscles constantly or you under use them several things can happen.

• Muscle Fatigue - if you use your muscles a lot and they don't get enough oxygen they will fell tired and or fatigued.
• Muscle Atrophy - if you don't use them they will get smaller, this is called atrophy.
• Cramp - Cramp is a sudden contraction of a muscle that wont relax.

Muscles never ever relax completely, there is always some tension in them, and this is called muscle tone. Exercise improves muscle tone, which in turn improves posture, if you improve your posture you put less strain on your muscles, joints and bones and you wont get injured so easily.

Flexibility: Flexibility, suppleness and mobility are all basically the same thing; they're all to do with how far your joints move, the type of joints you have and the stretchiness of the muscles around it.

Flexibility has many benefits - Its often forgotten about but suppleness is very useful for any sport, the reason for this is:-

• STRETCHES GET YOU READY TO WORK
  • Stretching is a good way to warm up and get your body ready to work this means you are less likely to pull or strain a muscle.
• BETTER PERFORMANCE
  • You cant do some sports without being flexible like gymnastics and trampolining.
• FEWER INJURIES
  • If you are flexible you are less likely to over stretch and injurer yourself.
• BETTER POSTURE
  • More flexibility means better posture, fewer aches and pains prior, during and after training. Flexibility in certain joints is especially important because they are used all the time in sports.

Back: Most movement needs flexibility here, it is often injured because not many people have supple backs.

Hips: Anything involving raising and lowering of the legs needs you to bend at the hips, not many people are flexible here (this is a good place to test your flexibility).

Legs: Flexibility of the knees and ankles are very important for gymnastics and trampolinists.

Shoulders & Arms: Flexibility in the shoulders is a must for bar and vault work.

• Remember strength training can limit your flexibility, to ease this always complete plenty of stretching prior and after your training session.
• Flexibility is a good thing, you should always try and improve yours daily, in a nutshell you need to move the joint past where it normally goes, there are two ways to do this:

Active Stretching:

• You do the work of stretching your muscles without help from an external source.
• You take it slowly and gentle.
• If it hurts or your muscle starts to shake, ease up.
• DON'T BOUNCE into a stretch because this will tear your muscle fibres.

Passive Stretching :

• A partner does the hard work of stretching your muscles.
• Tell them straight away if you feel any pain.