What are muscle tension points and how to treat them. Muscle shapes Same as muscle

Probably most of us, leading an active image, will find it useful and interesting to learn about our muscles, about the anatomy of our body. Moreover, you have already understood that running alone is clearly not enough to maintain health, especially to achieve certain results.

If you have already finally decided to go to the gym, then it would be nice to acquire knowledge of elementary human anatomy and the functional purpose of the main muscles, to find out the composition of muscle groups. This is necessary in order to compose training sessions and perform the correct technique in the exercises. So how are muscles and. what can you train there?

human anatomy

A very understandable and interesting video about human anatomy, I think it will be clear and interesting to everyone.

To get started, here are ten of the most interesting facts about muscles, find out why muscle training at an older age is even more necessary than at a young age.

Muscle characteristics

Muscle or muscle- organs of the human body (animals), consisting of muscle tissue capable of contracting under the influence of nerve impulses, in other words, muscles can change their size and moreover quickly.

Therefore, the main property of muscles is to be excited and contract, receiving signals from the nervous system in the form action potentials... The more often nerve impulses pass, the more often we stimulate the muscle, the more often the muscle contracts.

You can raise, for example, your hand slowly, or you can quickly. We can control our muscles. But there is a limit to everything, and therefore if the signals come to the muscle too often, then the muscle does not have time to relax. An example of this is the exercise in Raising an arm with a load, I force the arm to be in one kind of tense position. The impulses go very quickly and the muscle does not have time to relax.

The nervous system, in turn, provides a connection between the brain and spinal cord and muscles. Not only your appearance, but also the correct functioning of individual systems, organs and the body as a whole depends on the correct and well-coordinated operation of the chain "brain - nervous system - muscles".

Muscles are designed to perform various actions: body movements, contraction of the vocal cords, breathing. Muscles are made up of tough, resilient muscle tissue, which in turn is made up of cells myocytes(muscle cells). Muscles are characterized by fatigue, which manifests itself with intense work or exertion. For example, when running for a long time. Therefore, in order to achieve some results, you must first train your muscles. For a runner, for example, these are the leg muscles.

The muscle mass of an adult is approximately 42%. In newborns - a little more than 20%. With age, muscle mass decreases by up to 30%, and fat becomes more.

There are 640 muscles in the human body (depending on the method of calculating differentiated muscle groups, their total number is determined from 639 to 850). The smallest ones are attached to the smallest bones in the ear. The largest are the gluteus maximus muscles, they set the legs in motion.

The strongest muscles are the gastrocnemius and chewing muscles.

The longest human muscle - the tailor's one - starts from the anterior superior spine of the wing of the ilium (antero-upper parts of the pelvic bone), spirals over the front of the thigh in a spiral manner and is attached by a tendon to the tuberosity of the tibia (upper parts of the leg).

Muscles are very diverse in shape. The most common are fusiform muscles, characteristic of the limbs, and broad muscles - they form the walls of the body. If the muscles have a common tendon, and there are two or more heads, then they are called two-, three- or four-headed.

Muscles and skeleton determine the shape of the human body. An active lifestyle, a balanced diet and exercise will help develop muscles and reduce the amount of adipose tissue. Leading weightlifters have muscle mass of 55-57% of body weight.

Muscle types

Depending on the structural features of a person's muscles, they are divided into 3 types or groups:

The first muscle group - skeletal, or striated muscles... Each of us has more than 600 skeletal muscles. Muscles of this type are able to contract voluntarily, at the request of a person, and together with the skeleton form the musculoskeletal system.

The total mass of these muscles is about 40% of body weight, and in people actively developing their muscles, it can be even more. With the help of special exercises, the size of muscle cells can be increased until they grow in mass and volume and become embossed.

By contracting, the muscle shortens, thickens and moves relative to adjacent muscles. The shortening of the muscle is accompanied by the convergence of its ends and the bones to which it attaches. Each movement involves the muscles, both making it and opposing it (agonists and antagonists, respectively), which gives the movement accuracy and smoothness.

The second type of muscle, which is part of the cells of internal organs, blood vessels and skin, is smooth muscle tissue composed of characteristic muscle cells (myocytes). The short spindle-shaped cells of smooth muscles form plates. They contract slowly and rhythmically, obeying the signals of the autonomic nervous system. Their slow and prolonged contractions occur involuntarily, that is, regardless of the person's desire.

Smooth muscles, or muscles of involuntary movement, are found mainly in the walls of hollow internal organs, such as the esophagus or bladder. They play an important role in processes that do not depend on our consciousness, for example, in the movement of food through the digestive tract.

A separate (third) muscle group is cardiac striated(striated) muscle tissue (myocardium). It consists of cardiomyocytes. Contractions of the heart muscle are not under the control of a person's consciousness, it is innervated (innervation, this is the supply of organs and tissues with nerves) by the autonomic nervous system.

Skeletal muscle. Structure.

Skeletal muscles are attached to our bones. It is not the muscle itself that is attached to the bone, but what is called the tendon. The latter consists of dense connective tissue. In most cases, the tendon is located at both ends of the muscle. The tendon itself is not extensible and cannot contract. It is simply the connective tissue by which the muscle is attached to the bone. The tendon can be torn or pulled. it is all very painful and the treatment is usually long-term.

If you look at the muscle section. then it can be seen that the muscle consists of bundles. If we consider the structure of the bundles, it can be seen that they consist of muscle fibers. Muscle fibers are made up of individual cells.

So, once again - muscle cells are combined into muscle fibers. fibers are combined into muscle bundles, bundles are combined into a whole muscle.

Skeletal muscle is composed not only of striated muscle tissue, but also of various types of connective tissue, nervous tissue, endothelium and blood vessels. However, striated muscle tissue predominates, due to the contractility of which the muscles are the organs of contraction, making movements. The strength of a muscle depends on the number of muscle fibers included in its composition and is determined by the area of ​​the physiological diameter. In other words, thicker and more massive muscle produces more strength.

Muscle cell. Fine structure.

Most of the cell is occupied by myofibrils. Myofibrils can be translated as muscle rope, rope, or thread. To whom it is more convenient and more understandable. In general, these myofibrils are contracting.

In the striated muscles, the cells are multinucleated. The picture shows a lot of cores. The nuclei are large, as they were formed in the process of fusion of many cells.

Muscles also have a lot of mitochondria, since muscles constantly need energy. It is produced by mitochondria in the form of ATP. Remember, the more mitochondria in the muscles, the more resilient a person is. They also say that he got in good shape. In untrained muscles, myofibrils are located, scattered, and in trained muscles they are grouped into bundles

Myofibril structure

Myofibrils are cylindrical filaments 1 - 2 microns thick, running along from one end of the muscle fiber to the other. An isolated myofibril is able to contract (in the presence of ATP), and it is this myofibril that is the contractile element of the muscle cell.

Myofibrils consist of alternating bundles of parallel thick and thin filaments, which ends overlapping each other. These threads are called sarcomeres. Thick filaments are twice as thick as thin ones, 15 and 7 nm, respectively.

Sarcomere- the basic contractile unit of striated muscles, which is a complex of several proteins, consisting of three different fiber systems. Myofibrils are composed of sarcomeres.

Thin and thick threads are formed by proteins. Thick filaments (microfilaments) are made up of protein myosin(blue threads in the picture). These proteins form a double helix with a globular (spherical) head at the end attached to a very long rod.

Thin threads are made of proteins actin, troponin and tropomyosin. The main protein in this case actin... (red threads in the picture).

The figure above shows a schematic diagram of a relaxed muscle. When actin slides along myosin, the distance between the actin filaments is reduced. This means that the muscle also contracts. Below in the figure is a contracted muscle.

There are a lot of such shrinking areas. The myofibril consists of such an actin-myosin system located along the entire length of the myofibril. With the help of actin protein and myosin protein, the myofibril is reduced.

Calcium is needed to reduce, naturally, all this happens with the expenditure of energy. Actin-myosin filaments cannot slide by themselves, they have to be dragged with energy expenditure. This requires ATP.

Magnesium is needed to relax the muscle. During a long run, for example a marathon, magnesium is washed out with sweat, which causes cramps in runners, for this you need to drink special drinks containing all the necessary substances .. For example, isotonic drinks. The simplest and most affordable remedy is rehedron.It contains all the necessary salts.

Muscle control or why do muscles contract?

We are talking about all the same skeletal muscles. All signals for any action come from our brain. This is a kind of control center. But the request comes from the spinal cord. The brain sends a signal or impulse to the motor neuron which is located in the spinal cord for muscle contraction.

NEURON (nerve cell), the basic structural and functional unit of the NERVOUS SYSTEM, which carries out the rapid transmission of NERVOUS IMPULSES between various organs.

A motor neuron is discharged by an action potential that comes to the muscle, that is, it gives a signal to the muscle to contract or relax.

The branching at the end of a neuron is called an end plate, this end plate covers a piece of muscle and in this place it turns out synapse, that is, there must be a contact or connection between the nerve and the muscle cell.

Synapses (from the Greek sýnapsis - connection, connection), specialized functional contacts between excitable cells, which serve to transmit and convert signals.

The end of a nerve or neuron releases a transmitter. MEDIATORS nervous system (lat. mediator mediator; synonym: neurotransmitters, synaptic transmitters) - chemical transmitters of a nerve impulse from a nerve ending to cells of peripheral organs or to nerve cells.

Simply put, it is a chemical that will make a muscle do something. Mediator between a nerve ending or synapse and a muscle cell. This neurotransmitter binds to the muscle and opens channels in it. Channels are a kind of roads along which chemicals - ions - can move.

For example, in order for a neighboring nerve to receive a signal, sodium channels must open. For muscle contraction, calcium channels must open. Just a bunch of calcium enters the cell, moreover, the calcium stored inside the cell is used. All this calcium makes actin and myosin proteins slide relative to each other. The muscle contracts.

When the action potential disappears, the calcium returns to its reservoirs and the muscle relaxes.

Each muscle is made up of cells called muscle fibers (myofibrils). They are called "fibers" because these cells are very elongated: with a length of several centimeters, in cross section they are only 0.05-0.11 mm. Let's say there are more than 1,000,000 such fiber cells in the biceps! 10-50 myofibrils are collected in a muscle bundle with a common sheath, to which a common nerve (motoneuron) fits. At his command, the fiber bundle contracts or lengthens - these are the muscle movements that we make during training. And in everyday life, of course, too. Each bundle is made up of the same type of fibers.

Slow muscle fibers

They are red or oxidative, in sports terminology they are called "type I". They are quite thin and well supplied with enzymes that allow them to receive energy with the help of oxygen (hence the name "oxidative"). Please note that both fats and carbohydrates are converted into energy by oxidizing, that is, burning, These fibers are called "slow" because they are reduced by no more than 20% of the maximum, but they can work long and hard.

And "red" - because they contain a lot of the protein myoglobin, which in name, function and color is similar to blood hemoglobin.

Long-term uniform movement, endurance, weight loss, cardio and fat burning workouts, slim, sinewy figure.

Fast muscle fibers

Either white or glycolytic, they are called "type II". They are noticeably larger than the previous ones in diameter, they have little myoglobin (therefore they are "white"), but they have a large supply of carbohydrates and an abundance of so-called glycolytic enzymes - substances with which the muscle extracts energy from carbohydrates without oxygen. Such a process, glycolysis, (hence the name "glycolytic") produces a rapid and large release of energy.

These fibers can provide a powerful push, a jerk, a hard hit. Alas, the release of energy will not be enough for a long time, so fast fibers do not work for long, they need to rest often. The strength training designed for them is therefore divided into several approaches: if you move continuously, the work is transferred to slow fibers.

What is associated with these muscle fibers. Strength training, sprints, acceleration, muscular, pumped-up figure, body modeling, voluminous muscles.

Two types of fast muscle fibers

Yes, it's not that simple! Fast muscle fibers are also divided into two “divisions”.

Rapid oxidative-glycolytic or intermediate fibers (subtype IIa) - fast (white) fibers, which nevertheless contain the same enzymes as slow ones. In other words, they can receive energy with or without oxygen. They are reduced by 25-40% of the maximum, and they are “included” in the work both in strength training and in weight loss exercises.

Fast non-oxidative fibers (subtype IIb) are designed exclusively for short-term and very powerful efforts. They are thicker than all others and during strength training they increase in cross section more noticeably than others, and decrease by 40-100%. It is at their expense that bodybuilders grow muscle volumes, weightlifters and sprinters set records. But for fat burning workouts, they are useless. It is important that about 10% of muscle fibers (those fastest intermediate - subtype IIa) can change their type.

If you often give your body a long-term medium-intensity load (one that includes a maximum of slow fibers in the work), then the intermediate ones will also be rebuilt into a slow mode in a few months. If you focus on strength, sprint training, then intermediate and even red fibers will approach the fast ones in terms of their parameters.

Muscle fibers: how to determine your type

Typically, a person has about 40% slow and 60% fast fibers. Their exact number is given genetically. Analyze your physique and perception of stress. As a rule, people who are naturally "wiry", short in stature, with thin bones, who are easily given walking, jogging, cycling and other long-term loads, have a slightly higher percentage of slow and intermediate fibers.

And those who have a wide bone, muscles easily grow even from small loads, but the fat layer is added literally from one glance at cakes or pasta, are often "carriers" of some excess of fast fibers. If you know a person who, without really exercising, suddenly amazes everyone with his strength - in front of you is the owner of a large number of fast non-oxidative fibers. On the net you can find tests that offer to determine your predominant type of muscle fibers. For example, doing an exercise with a weight of 80% of the maximum. Have mastered less than 8 repetitions - fast fibers prevail in you. More - slow.

In fact, this test is very conditional and speaks more about training in this particular exercise.

Muscle fibers: exercise selection

The names "fast" and "slow", as you already understood, are not related to the absolute speed of your movements in training, but a combination of speed and power. In this case, of course, muscle fibers are not included in the work in isolation: the main load falls on one type or another, and the other acts "in the wings."

Remember: if you are working with weights, then the higher they are, the more actively fast fibers are trained. If the weights are small, the movements for training fast fibers should be sharper and more frequent. For example, jumping out instead of squats, sprinting 100 meters instead of a leisurely cross, etc. But to train slow fibers, you need long, calm workouts such as even rolling, walking, swimming, quiet dancing. Any acceleration and jerk will additionally connect fast fibers.

Muscle fibers: planning training

* If you need to add volume to a particular part of the body (say, swing your arms, shoulders or hips), train mainly fast fibers in these zones, doing weights and doing jumps, push-ups, pull-ups.

* Want to get rid of excess fat - "load" slow fibers throughout the body. Pole walking, jogging, swimming or dancing are best suited for this.

* For additional study of problem areas, add exercises for slow fibers: abduction-adduction of the leg, flexion, etc.

* Train both fiber types equally for overall muscle tone. Let's say, in the mode of a half-hour strength lesson and a half-hour cardio load after it 3-4 times a week.

By understanding what fast and slow muscle fibers are, you can train your workouts more efficiently.

Taken as a whole, the musculature is considered a large single organ of the body. The system includes approximately 200 paired muscles (located on the right and left sides of the body), accounting for 40-50% of the total body weight. Muscles - from the largest to the smallest, from bony to organic - are involved in all body movements. They surround our internal organs, help maintain posture by contracting, they help maintain body temperature.

When muscles are damaged and unable to perform their functions properly, the systems they support and affect also become less powerful. The takeaway is simple: when muscles fail to do their job, it affects the whole body. Nevertheless, muscles are still often the "abandoned children" of conventional medicine. No medical specialty is truly focused on treating muscles. They are often simply overlooked and may even be considered irrelevant in general trauma management.

When an injury occurs (fracture, sprain, or dislocation), treatment is mainly directed at the fracture, damaged joint or tendon. As a result of unilateral treatment, innumerable injured people have returned to near-normal functioning, but not to full functioning. A number of their movements remained, albeit slightly, but still limited; some developed slight numbness. The final part of the treatment, the restoration of the muscles, has not been carried out.

Muscles are conductors that provide stability of movement and condition of joints. When a bone or joint is damaged, care must also be taken to ensure that the muscles adjacent to it are as long and as strong as they were before the injury.

Athletes know better than anyone that even slight muscle pain and numbness, if neglected, can lead to chronic illness, inflammation, and decreased mobility. And over time, a more severe trauma may follow as a result of not receiving proper treatment. Coaches are very well aware of such cases. To avoid tissue inflammation, they typically include rest and cold in muscle treatment, the first two parts of RICE's renowned musculoskeletal injury formula. (Complete list of RICE prescriptions - rest, cold, squeeze, and lift.) Some trainers recommend massage and / or applying damp heat, hot baths to warm up tissues in the hope of restoring muscle elasticity. But there is one flaw in their actions: they are not aware that muscles are getting their own injuries.

Muscles are made up of individual bands (fibers) of muscle tissue that are parallel to each other. These ribbons interact when the muscle contracts. Muscle tension or injury can restrict the action of one or more of these bands, resulting in what we call a tight spot, or tight strand. The stress point is just in the stressful area. If you imagine a muscle spasm as a contraction of an entire muscle, then a tight cord is something like a microspasm of a separate muscle band. Muscle dysfunction caused by the tense area will remain until the tense area is relaxed.

The muscle structure is flexible, resilient, taut and strong. You feel when everything is in order with the muscles, because your movements are smooth, light, unlimited. You easily bend over, you can, without hesitation, stand up, stretch and turn. The joints move freely without discomfort or restriction. When muscles are healthy, you don't think about them. The movement brings nothing but pleasure and pleasant excitement. When you touch, you feel that the muscles are soft. You can easily feel the bones underneath. Healthy muscles are not sensitive to touch and do not hurt.

When tension points appear in the muscles, they contract, lose elasticity and flexibility, and become stiff to the touch. If a muscle is held tight for a long time, its blood supply decreases and it becomes looser. Then you may experience a persistent, deep, dull, aching pain called shingles syndrome.

Each stress point has its own predictable pain pattern that can be replicated by clicking on the pain point. Interestingly enough, the pain is often felt outside of the point of pain. The pain caused by such a point is known as distant pain and is felt at some distance from the point of pain. This is very important to keep in mind when choosing a pattern to identify the muscle that is causing pain in your body.

So how do stress points arise in a muscle?

It usually starts with some form of mechanical damage or muscle strain. People between their 30s and 50s who lead an active lifestyle are most susceptible to stress points, and as a result, to suffer from girdle pain. However, it is not only sports that can cause pain-causing points. Points can form due to the fact that you stumbled on the stairs, landed unsuccessfully while jumping, slept in an uncomfortable position, stretched too far to beat off a tennis serve, sat at an irrationally located computer, played football too actively after the winter break, selflessly practiced gardening on the first warm day of spring, carrying a box filled with books up the stairs, sitting on the plane for a long time ... The list of reasons for activating stress points is endless, just like the possibilities of movement are endless.

Mechanical damage to the muscle can occur as a result of either overuse or overload.

Overworking a muscle often occurs when it performs the same action over and over again. Practicing a backhand while hitting hundreds of tennis balls in a row is a good example of overwork. The next day, my elbow ached. What happened? It's just that the muscles of the forearm performed the same action for a long time, which strained them much more than usual. They shrank, tense areas and stress points formed in them. The pain from these points began to radiate to the elbow.

Something I call "coercive trainer injuries" are examples of muscle overload. A weight control coach forces you to stretch your quads, you have already done 3 sets of 12 reps. Your coach encourages you, "One more approach, just one." Your body is asking you to stop because your muscles are tired and you just can't imagine being able to do another set. And yet you do it. When you get out of bed the next day, you find that you cannot stand up straight because your hips are in terrible pain. Much more than usual after training. The pain persists for several days, does not subside, and noticeably affects your ability to walk, climb stairs, and sit down. An overworked muscle is a muscle that has had to work harder than it is physically capable of at all.

Muscles can be overloaded in three ways. In the above example, the injury was due to repetitive overload.

In the event of an acute overload, you suddenly exert too much muscle effort. Imagine the following scene. A martial artist demonstrates a throw on an inexperienced student. While he grabs the student and tries to knock him to the ground, the student resists life and death. The result was an acute overload of the back muscles in a martial arts master who unexpectedly had to cope with an 80-kilogram weight on his back.

Long-term overloading can occur, for example, when you need to lift a heavy box of books up the stairs to the 3-4th floor.

In addition to overworking and overloading, stress points in the muscles can be caused by direct injury (from a blow, for example, during a football match), as well as injury from a fall or car accident. Overcooling a muscle can also lead to the development of pain-causing tension points.

Stress points are of two types. Passive points represent the vast majority of tension points present in the musculature. Everyone has them. Passive stress points result from poor posture, sprains, overwork, chronic illness, and repetitive emotional and physical behaviors. Passive tension points lead to numbness and weakness in the muscles they affect, and to limit movement in the joints for which these muscles are responsible. Passive stress points do not disappear without direct exposure to them and can persist for many years.

The chronic compression of the top of the shoulders, which almost everyone experiences, is a good example of the presence of passive tension points in the trapezius muscle. You may feel muscular limitation of movement when you try to pull the top of your shoulder by tilting your head to the side. If you press on the center of the rounded part of the top of your shoulder, you will most likely feel a painful nodule there. This is your tension point. It is formed by the way you hold your arms and shoulders, or by pressing the handset to your ear with your shoulder while talking on the phone.

After a slight overvoltage or unexpected overload, this passive voltage point can become active. The active point of tension, formed in the muscle, gives a predictable pattern of distant pain, which is characteristic of a particular muscle. Each muscle has its own remote pain pattern. For example, when a passive point of tension in the trapezius muscle becomes active, in addition to numbness, weakness, and limited movement, you will feel a deep, aching pain that can travel down the skull to the place behind the ear. The muscle can be so tight and the point of tension is so irritated that the pain can travel from the ear to the temple.

In order for the tension point to become active, something must push this transition. This transformation can take place gradually and take a certain time. Muscles within the affected area may be sensitive to touch. But the painful sensations will go away only after the point of tension is cured.

The pain from stress points changes in intensity throughout the day. It increases with the use of the muscle, stretching it, direct pressure on the point of pain with prolonged or repetitive muscle contractions, in cold or damp weather, infection and stress. Conversely, symptoms may diminish after short periods of rest and with slow, passive stretching of the muscle, especially when moist heat is applied to it.

It has already been discussed that stress points can be directly activated by overwork, overload, direct injury, and hypothermia. But stress points can also be activated indirectly. Diseases of the internal organs, especially the heart, gallbladder, kidneys and stomach, can create tension points in the muscles associated with them. Joint diseases or joint dysfunctions, such as arthritis, add additional stress to nearby muscles and can cause tension points to develop in those muscles. They also form in muscles with lack of movement or, conversely, in those that are stressed for a long period of time. Emotional stress also leads to the appearance of such points.

If the muscle is in the diseased zone formed by other active stress points, such points can develop in it. These points are called satellite points.

In general, the degree of muscle condition is a factor that largely determines whether a passive tension point becomes active. Strong muscles are less likely to be activated by stress points than weak muscles. Active stress points often return to a passive state after being at rest for a sufficient amount of time. However, stress points will not completely disappear without direct treatment. People often complain that the pain comes back again, sometimes after several years. Lack of treatment is the reason.

So how do you treat stress points?

First, this point must be found in the muscle. This is done by palpation - feeling the muscles with the fingers of the hand. Once the tension point is found, the therapist can give an anesthetic injection, the acupuncturist will use acupuncture, the physical therapist will apply electrical or ultrasonic stimulation, possibly combined with a manual massage technique or a technique called post-isometric relaxation.

A chiropractor or massage therapist will apply targeted pressure to the tension point. This is a technique that everyone can use as self-medication. Its key point is to find a point of tension. Many of these points have predictable locations. However, due to physiological differences, stress points can be located in any muscle and anywhere in this muscle.

In a healthy state, the muscles are elastic and flexible, touching them does not cause any pain, but if your knee hurts and you need to bend it, then the muscle on the inner side of the thigh adjacent to the knee will no longer be so flexible. Fingering with your palms and fingers along this muscle, you will feel tight, tense areas. These are the points of tension.

You will need to palpate your muscles to get an idea of ​​the difference between soft, flexible muscles and muscles that have tight areas. This may sound more complicated than it really is. Just relax and put all your curiosity into your hands. Try to "see" with your fingers. You will enjoy what you can feel.

Palpation of the muscles should be done along the entire length. Feel your body right now - place your palm and fingers on the middle of your thigh. Imagine that your thigh muscle is the clay or dough you are kneading. Press down on your thigh with your entire hand: palm, fingers, and fingertips. The quadriceps muscle stretches along the entire length of the thigh, from the pelvis to the knee. Try to feel for tense areas by moving your hand in a criss-cross pattern along this muscle. Feel across the muscle fibers, not along. If you feel across the muscle fibers, you may feel a tight weight; it will be sensitive to touch. In a muscle as large as the quadriceps, the tension bands can be as wide as electrical wires. In smaller muscles, tense bands can feel as thin as guitar strings.

Once you've found a tense area, keep your fingers on it. Try to separate it from the surrounding muscle fibers. Follow its length, the willow will reach an area that is more sensitive than any other part of the tense tape. In addition, you may notice that during the directed pressure on this place, an involuntary muscle spasm occurs. This is what Janet Travel calls a convulsive flight. This most painful spot is the point of tension.

Once you have found a tension point, apply pressure with your fingers, an eraser, a tennis ball, or any other treatment tool (see the Appendices for information on these). You need to keep pressing for 20-30 seconds. Use moderate pressure, as hard pressure is not always good. Press hard enough to feel the tightness of the tape and the pain at the point, and keep the pressure at that level.

Then you will feel amazing things - the muscle under your fingers will begin to release from tension and pain will decrease. At this time, you can increase the pressure slightly. After several similar approaches, at some point you will notice that the knee no longer hurts at all.

Stretching is very important after working on a muscle. It lengthens the muscle and helps it return to its natural flexibility and length. (The description of each muscle in the book contains guidelines for stretching that only work for that muscle.) When doing muscle stretching exercises, it is very important to keep your body in the correct position during this time. You can only understand that you are in the correct posture by starting the exercise - you do not have to stretch too far for the muscle to feel it. It is very important to practice stretching several times a day. It is much more useful to do 6-7 short sessions than one long one. When you stretch, you teach the muscle to return to its normal 1 length. As with any training regimen, repetition is the key to victory.

Muscles are soft tissues in humans and animals that are responsible for the mobility of body parts, for voice formation, breathing, blinking and other movements.

The nervous system is responsible for their work.

The better the muscle tissue is developed, the faster the blood supply to the spine occurs.

Also, the shape of the human body depends on the development of the muscles.

This is especially true for athletes, but other interesting facts can be told about muscles:

How many muscles do we have?

It is generally accepted that in the human body 640 muscles... But, depending on the method of counting, their number reaches 850.But even if one of them fails, then it brings pain and restrictions in movement.

Participation in movements

When talking, a person can use more than 100 muscles when crying - 43 muscles, when laughing -17, when kissing - about 35. It is interesting that prolonged silence can lead to rapid muscle atrophy and their further recovery is extremely difficult.

Location in the body

Muscles make up 40% of the total body weight of a person(an average of 20 kg for an adult). About half of these muscles are in the lower body, 30% in the arms, and the rest on the head and trunk. Most of them are concentrated on our face. 25% of all muscles are responsible for the mobility of facial expressions, expressions of feelings and emotions, neck movements.

Muscle and fat

Muscle is much denser than fat and weighs more for the same volume. People of equal weight, but different muscle mass, can look very different from each other. Often, at the beginning of training, the weight can stand still, although visually the person becomes slimmer. This is due to the replacement of adipose tissue with muscle tissue.

Therefore, losing weight and going in for sports at the same time should not judge the results by weights and lost kilograms. You should always focus on your reflection in the mirror. If you like it, then you are heading in the right direction.

The best of the best

The strongest muscle available in terms of force is chewing muscle.

The most hardy muscle is the heart muscle, which can work continuously for 100 years or more.

The strongest muscle per unit weight is the uterus.

The fastest are the muscles responsible for blinking the eyes.

The largest is the gluteal, the smallest is the stirrup.

Age dependence

With age, the amount of muscle tissue becomes less and less. Already at the age of 30, a person without sports can lose a total of 15% of all muscles, after 40 - about 30%.

A particularly pronounced loss of up to 40% begins after 50-60 years. Then, the annual loss of muscle tissue can be up to 5% per year.

Muscle protection

Muscles have protective films or fascia that protect them from friction and displacement by separating them from each other. The muscles seem to be in a shell, which serves as the place of their origin and attachment. At the end of the workout, stretching is required on the muscles that you worked on. This will increase blood flow to the muscle and stretch the fascia. Only the muscles of the face do not have such protective films.

Recovery periods

After a load, the muscles need a recovery time of at least 48 hours. Less rest time is required for the triceps - two days. Three days are enough for hands. The back and legs should be at rest for the longest time - up to five days. Therefore, you should not burden yourself with daily workouts on the same muscle group.

The most vulnerable muscles of the back should be treated with particular care. Workouts for the upper and lower body must be alternated. Exercise can negatively affect both athletic performance and the general condition of the musculoskeletal system. After childbirth, the muscles on the woman's abdomen recover from two months to 2-3 years.

Growth and destruction

On the positive side, muscles grow much faster than they break down. They start to "burn" after the fat. Therefore, it is easier to maintain them if you don't forget about sports. But even long breaks in training are safe. Gradually, the muscles adapt to heavy loads, it becomes much easier for the body to endure them.

Genetics

It has been proven that the predisposition to muscle growth and development is determined by genetics. If the parents went in for sports, then the child will be given it much easier. The ability to build a beautiful body, quickly gain muscle mass directly depends on the level of testosterone, cortisol and tissue sensitivity to insulin and protein.

Atavisms

Some have preserved atavism muscles that we have left from our ancestors and do not carry any functionality. Long palms are not found in all people, and in some cases they can only be on one hand. Often it is this muscle that is used for the necessary replacement of the damaged one.

In animals, they are responsible for the release of claws. Ear muscles - helped our distant relatives move their ears, but now they are of no use. Everyone has a pyramidal muscle in the abdomen; it is responsible for carrying babies in marsupials.

Goose pimples

Few people know that muscles are also responsible for the occurrence of "goose bumps". In cold weather and strong emotions, the muscles of the hair follicles raise the hairs, forming pimples on the body.

It is interesting that “goose bumps” can cause not only positive emotions (sexual arousal, admiration, a sense of satisfaction). This is often caused by negative feelings (fear, fright, metal grinding on glass). This effect is also considered a rudiment and has no function.

Muscles are not only tissues supporting our skeleton, but also main sources of movement... They require careful attention and care. No one wants to remain motionless in old age, so physical education should enter your life as early as possible.

We've translated, revised, and revised Greg Knuckles' epic foundational article on how muscle volume and strength are related. The article explains in detail, for example, why the average powerlifter is 61% stronger than the average bodybuilder for the same muscle volume.

Surely you have seen this picture in the gym: a huge, muscular guy does squats with a 200 kg barbell, puffing and doing a few reps. Then a guy with much less massive legs works with the same barbell, but easily does more reps.

A similar pattern can be repeated in the bench press or deadlift. Yes, and from the course of school biology we were taught: muscle strength depends on cross-sectional area(roughly speaking - from the thickness), however, science shows that this is a strong simplification and this is not quite the case.

Cross-sectional area of ​​the muscle.

As an example, look at how an 85-kg guy presses 205 kg from his chest:

However, much more massive guys cannot come close to such indicators in the bench.

Or this is what 17-year-old athlete Jason Lopez looks like, who himself weighs about 77 kg, and squats with a barbell of 265 kg:

The answer is simple: strength is influenced by many other factors besides muscle volume.

The average male weighs about 80 kg. If a person is not trained, then about 40% of his body weight is skeletal muscles, or about 32 kg. Despite the fact that the growth of muscle mass is very dependent on genetics, on average, a man is able to increase his muscle mass by 50% over 10 years of training, that is, add 16 more to his 32 kg of muscles.

Most likely, 7-8 kg of muscle from this increase will be added in the first year of hard training, another 2-3 kg - over the next couple of years, and the remaining 5-6 kg - over 7-8 years of hard training. This is a typical pattern for muscle growth. With an increase in muscle mass by about 50%, muscle strength will increase 2-4 times.

Roughly speaking, if on the first day of training a person can lift a weight of 10-15 kg to biceps, then later this result can grow to 20-30 kg.

With a squat: If you squatted with a 50 kg barbell in your first workouts, this weight can grow to 200 kg. This is not scientific data, just for example - how strength indicators can grow. When lifting for biceps, strength can increase by about 2 times, and weight in squats - 4 times. But at the same time, the muscle volume increased by only 50%. That is it turns out that in comparison with the growth of the mass, the force grows 4-8 times more.

Of course, muscle mass is important for strength, but perhaps not decisive. Let's go through the main factors that affect strength and mass.

Muscle fibers

Studies show that the larger the muscle fiber, the greater its strength.

This graph shows a clear relationship between the size of muscle fibers and their strength:

How strength (vertical scale) depends on the size of muscle fibers (horizontal scale). Research: From Gilliver, 2009.

However, if absolute strength tends to grow with a larger volume of muscle fibers, relative strength (strength in relation to size), on the contrary, falls.

Let's see why this is happening.

There is an indicator for determining the strength of muscle fibers relative to their volume - “specific tension” (we will translate it as “specific force”). To do this, divide the maximum force by the cross-sectional area:

Muscle fibers: bodybuilders' specific fiber strength is 62% lower than lifters

So the point is that specific force is highly dependent on the type of muscle fibers.

Relationship Between Strength Growth and Muscle Volume

If you got to these lines, then you already know that muscle strength is influenced not only by their size (which are responsible for only about half of the increase in strength).

In this case, it would be interesting to look at studies where all these factors are summed up and which ultimately answer the question: how much muscle growth gives rise to strength? Surprisingly, there are very few such studies.

For starters, it's interesting to look at this recent study, where scientists found a very weak relationship between growth in quadriceps volume and strength in the leg press after 5-6 months of training (untrained men and women from 19 to 78 years old).

Here's what the results looked like:

Each point is the result of a specific person. Horizontal: growth in muscle strength, vertical - growth in muscle size. On average, both have grown, but mathematics shows a weak relationship between these parameters.

Another 9-week study found that the relationship between muscle growth and muscle strength depends on how you measure it. But nevertheless, with any measurement method, this study also showed a very weak relationship between the increase in strength and muscle volume: from 2% to 24% of the increase in muscle strength was explained by an increase in their volume.

Another study showed an association after 12 weeks of training, with muscle gains having a 23-27% correlation with strength gains.

This study involved people with at least 6 months of training experience and who were able to squeeze at least a barbell from their chest. After 12 weeks of training and research, there was a clearer relationship between gains in muscle size and strength.

The increase in lean muscle mass accounted for 35% of the gain in strength in the barbell squat and 46% in the gain in strength in the chest press.

In the second study with experienced athletes, a much longer observation period was taken - 2 years. And over such a long period, the correlation between the growth of muscle mass and strength was more pronounced: 48-77% of the increase in strength in different exercises was explained by the increase in muscle mass.

The vertical line in all graphs shows the% increase in lean muscle mass. Horizontal improvement in strength in various exercises.

If you combine the results of all these studies into one picture, then you can identify the following patterns:

• Among untrained people, the growth of mass and strength correlates weakly with each other.
• The more trained people become, the more stable the connection between the growth of volume and strength.
• In elite athletes with extensive experience, the correlation reaches 65-90%, that is, an increase in muscle volume gives 65-90% of an increase in strength. Data: Brechue and Abe.

There is a curious relationship between the weight of the powerlifting record holders (horizontal scale) and the record weight of the projectile (vertical scale):