January 14, 2008

January 14 Blog
Parker Konschuh ( Make-up for my last one) 3/3

Class Summary
- Began the muscle / motor system unit-
Three Main types of muscle tissue
- Cardiac: found in heart, involuntary (autonomic)
- Skeletal: moves bones, voluntary
- Smooth: found in organs, veins, arteries etc, involuntary
- Started looking more in depth with skeletal system
- Antagonistic pairs
- Muscle contraction (actin and miocin)

Thoughts on the Lesson

I thought the lesson gave a reasonable introduction to the motor system. For once I actually kinda understood what was going on during the first day. I dislike that we were assigned things with 10 minutes to go, but whatever. At least I could answer the questions. I think that the function of the muscle system is a little more obvious, and there will be less to do. I think that we will have to do some more work with muscle contractions before I understand the miocin / actin thing.

Above and Beyond

During this lesson I started to think of how going to the gym builds muscle strength. I didn’t really know how muscle fibre was produced or whatever makes you stronger. Mostly I was daydreaming and wondering what to put for above and beyond in my blog. Before finding this website I would have never guessed that this is how muscle growth occurred. So here it is:

Muscle fibre growth

Your muscles are made up of thousands of fibres called 'myofibres'. Lifting weights causes microscopic tears in the muscle fibres. Training actually breaks down the muscle.
Your body rebuilds the damaged fibres making them bigger and stronger. It does this to adapt to the stress of training. The next time you go to the gym, you'll be bigger and stronger. Your body can cope better, and so, less stress.
Many believe that muscle growth happens when they train. It is only between workouts, when we rest and feed the muscles that growth occurs.
How to increase muscle size.
We must train hard enough to damage the muscle fibres so our body rebuilds them bigger and stronger.

http://www.bodybuilding-for-beginners.com/muscle-growth.html