What's so amazing about muscles?

At Simple Strength we talk about muscles all the time, so let’s take this opportunity to focus on an overview of these ‘power-packs’ in order to give you some understanding of their importance to your overall health.

There are three types of muscle tissue – skeletal (movement under conscious control), smooth (involuntary, outside of our control e.g. digestion, breathing, renal function) and cardiac (highly specific smooth muscle found only in the heart) – and they come in all shapes, textures and sizes.

We have around 650 or more named skeletal muscles and whilst our strengthening sessions focus on exercising many of the larger ones for movement of the body, good balance, and stable posture, it is worth noting that these muscles have other very important functions, like affecting regulation of body temperature(remember running on the spot when you’re cold?), being a source of nutrients for building up and restoring body tissue, helping to maintain bone density, and serving as an energy store when food is limited, such as times of illness. Collectively, all muscles types are interconnected and affect the overall health, function and well-being of the whole body.

When I woke this morning, and knowing that today I was going to put some thoughts together about muscles for this snippets page I decided to do a little ‘noticing muscles’ exercise from waking up. I stirred from sleep (yep, there was the familiar gentle heartbeat and rhythmic breath(smooth muscle) and , opening my eyes, moving my head and arms, yawning, stretching, taking deeper breaths, sitting up and swinging legs off the bed, standing up, walking to the little room and doing what comes naturally in there, preparing my cup of tea and breakfast, sitting and eating, swallowing, having a wash, getting dressed and sitting and reading notes (did you know that to read for an hour uses approximately 10,000 eye muscle group movements!!), talking, singing, and many other incidental activities, and all of these movements were under my control (skeletal muscle). In my inner body, there were other muscle activities happening in response to my moving, such as heightened breathing rate, movement in the digestive tract, increased heart rate and circulation and management of waste products (all smooth muscle). I was impressed at how busy my muscles had been, and all within that first hour of my day! We do tend to take it all for granted until something isn’t working properly.

It is a researched fact that under-used muscles shrink and get weaker in all the functions mentioned, but by building up and maintaining muscle mass in skeletal muscles, the rest of your body’s muscles and general health is improved dramatically. Isn’t that amazing? Strong muscles can be your health’s ‘Besties’!

Our mission at Simple Strength is to assist you to achieve that goal. We’ll look at some more muscle ‘good news’ next time. Until then, enjoy some of our sessions with your ‘Besties’. They’ll thank you for it!

Lesley