Love Muscle

Did you guys know the human body has around 640 – 850 muscles? Some research shows variations in the number of muscles, but who really cares, there’s heaps of muscles to help us get around.

Your muscles keep your blood flowing. Muscles turn energy into motion. Without muscles, it would be impossible to do anything.  We use our muscles to speak, breathe, run, dance and smile!

And did you also know…we have 3 types of muscles:

Skeletal, visceral, and cardiac. The skeletal muscles are voluntary, while the visceral muscles are involuntary. Skeletal muscle is the muscle used when we exercise. These muscles attach to bones and come in pairs; one to move the bone in one direction and the other to move it back the other way.

We can love and hate muscles sometimes. They can tighten up and cause havoc compressing joints, cause some tenderness and be inhibited. In addition to this, any change in our Central Nervous System (CNS) is also associated with changes in the muscle, therefore we can see that muscles can be viewed as one of the most overstressed systems in the body. But… these troublesome muscles also support our joints and unload the passive tissue that can get quite angry when overworked.

At PhysioHealth we think muscles are pretty awesome, and we encourage most of the people we see to build some. Sometimes this can be a bit tricky to find that very important little muscle that holds things altogether. Physio’s are great at helping you find them and turn them on. It’s super important to train both the dynamic and the stabilising function of muscles in the kinetic chain, depending on what you need.

Whether they are the stabilising muscles or bigger powerhouse muscles, here’s a few reasons we want muscles on you:

1. Building and strengthening skeletal muscle can protect the bones, ligaments, and tendons. This will minimize the risk of injury that can occur in sport, training, getting out of your car, or playing with your kids.
2. Muscular training help reduce sarcopenia by strength training. Sarcopenia is the age-related loss of muscle tissue. The sad reality is we lose muscle mass as we age, up to 50% between the ages of 20 and 90. Additionally, women between the ages 40 and 50 will lose 1% of their muscle mass each year. Let’s fight back with building some awesome muscles!
3. Strength training our muscles also helps with cardio training. Strong calves, glutes and other lower leg muscles can help with running mechanics and efficiency.
4. Skeletal muscle is metabolically active. Build it and it will burn more calories throughout the day. Work it hard and it will require more energy during the recovery process.
5. Active tissue such as muscle can help relieve pain, by unloading and supporting the joints. The muscles takes the load not the passive structures such as joints and ligaments.
6. Skeletal muscle gives you a “beach body”. Yes it does, but our goals with muscle building are to get you ready for the beach- to be able to walk on soft sand, dodge rogue waves and enjoy the physical side of hanging at the beach, not just the bikini body!
7. Skeletal muscle can improve your posture. Having the strength to hold good posture can help other things, as well – it can help with chronic pain due to sciatica and other back ailments. The strong upper back muscles will be the guys unloading the sore neck and the upper back after sitting at the desk all day.

And if we don’t use muscle we lose it. So let’s use them…