Muscular Muscles

Our bodies consists of many different types of systems that work together to keep our bodies functional. One of these systems is the Muscular System, which is the system most people take for granted. The Muscular System is an organ system; it’s purpose is to allow movement for our bodies and maintain our posture. Our muscles also circulate blood throughout our bodies. In order to allow movement, our muscles need to both contract and expand.

Contracting and extending muscles don’t just happen; there are many different pieces in play and all are essential in providing us our ability to move. First of all, muscles are made of groups of stretchable fiber-like materials. Each muscle can have up to thousands, or even ten thousands, of small musculus fibers; among these fibers are thin and thick filaments. Thin and thick filaments are the actual workers of the muscles. Thick filaments are made of a protein called myosin- at the

Skeletal muscles contract voluntarily, meaning that when you think about contracting them your Nervous System relays the message, causing the muscle to move. This type of muscles can do short, single contractions (twitch) or long, sustained contractions (tetanus: a prolonged contraction of a muscle due to hastily repeated stimuli). Smooth muscles differ than Skeletal muscles because they contract involuntarily- you don’t need to think about contracting these muscles because your Nervous System automatically contracts it. For example, your stomach and intestines work these muscles all day, but you can’t tell because you don’t think about using the muscles in them. Now, because you don’t think about contracting these muscles the Nervous System automatically does it for you, hence the involuntary contraction. Cardiac muscles are only twitch muscles. Much like Smooth muscles, Cardiac muscles can stretch a limited way- involuntarily contracts- and contracts with the force of a Skeletal