Skeletal muscle
These muscles are a major part of our body weight, they are generally voluntary muscles and help create the structure of our body shape.
Major part of our body weight.
In a typical adult human, skeletal muscle makes up around 40% of the total body weight. Skeletal muscle is under our voluntary control, although they also make many automatic contractions, which allow us to move without having to think of every muscle thats involved.
Skeletal muscles main function.
Skeletal muscles perform a variety of functions, however, not just movement. They are attached to your bones with strong, flexible tendons, or else are directly connected to rough patches of bone. They can thus:
- Give your body shape
- Determine your posture you make continuous tiny adjustments to maintain your posture
- Hold your bones in the correct position
- Prevent your joints from over extending
- Generate body heat to maintain your temperature
Our movement is the key.
But ultimately its movement that defines our use of these muscles. Everything we do, every action we take, involves their use from smiling to swimming, chewing our food to chatting with friends.
Their appearance.
When looked at under a microscope, these muscles reveal themselves as having long muscle fibres with stripe-like striations. Each of these fibres is cell that contains several nuclei. Our nervous system sends messages to control the contraction and relaxation of the muscle, and thus we move.
