By David Tepera, July 31, 2024

A few weeks back, I had quite a response from my column about the skeletal system. Since we all have the capability to build our muscles, no matter what age, here are some basic and fun facts about our muscular system.

There are 600 skeletal muscles that make up around 40 percent of our total weight. The 5 main functions of the muscular system are movement, support, protection, heat generation and blood circulation.

Also, muscles make up the walls of many organs. The heart is the hardest working muscle in the body. It pumps 5 quarts of blood per minute and 2,000 gallons daily.

 Now for some fun facts; Guess which muscle is the most used? The answer is the tongue, so shut up and give it a break. The largest muscle is the gluteus maximus, and yes, that’s your butt, so you can input your own jokes.

The strongest muscle based on it’s weight is the masseter, which is the primary chewing muscle. I’m sure we’ve all accidentally bit our tongue and fingers at some point and realized how hard we chew.

Okay, here is an anatomy lesson that I’ll try to keep simple because too much detail will be boring. For those of you who are watching the Olympics, look at the muscularity difference between a marathon runner compared to a sprinter.

There are two types of muscle fibers in our muscles. One is known as slow twitch and the other is fast twitch. The slow twitch is aerobic, which requires oxygen. These are your marathon runners who run for hours. Their slow twitch muscle fibers are long and lean needing oxygen to perform. If you think about it, the skinny Ethiopians have the perfect body type for marathons.  

Now, the fast twitch muscle fibers are anaerobic, which means without oxygen. These are your sprinters. They typically run for less than 10 seconds and maybe take one breath. To me, their body types look like bull frogs. Their leg muscles are huge with vascularity.

These fast twitch muscle fibers are the same ones that develop from heavy weight training to create bulkiness.

One of the biggest mistakes for women is spending too much time on cardio machines. You want to be lean, but all you end up with is jiggly skinny muscles because you need to lift weights. And, NO, women, you’ll not get too bulky from lifting weights, so that’s no longer an excuse. You don’t have the testosterone levels for it.

Lastly, it takes 43 muscle to frown and only 17 muscles to smile, so obviously, it takes less effort to be happy. Enjoy your day my friends.