Muscles

Muscle

Everyone even children know that we have muscles. Human motion made use of muscles. Each and everything that we do from the housework to the simplest form of breathing, muscles take part in all of them. Before we realise what are the muscles involve in particular action we should know that there had been 639 skeletal muscles found in human body.

When people talk about abs, big arms and chest, these are no different than what we have in our body and the only different is, their muscles are bigger, better developed or in simple words, they are worked out more and heavier. Before we go into each muscle, let's learn how muscles work.

The origin and insertion locations of muscles are attached to the skeleton and they move the body by contracting in response to signals from the central nervous system, the contraction is achieved by the sliding of thin filaments. When skeletal muscle contract they either move parts of the body via their attachments to bones, or produce tension to oppose stretch or even to allow controlled lengthening. A motion or action of muscle is then produced. Several muscles involve in a single motion. Agonist – antagonist relationship explain this at best. The agonist is the muscle which (shortens) performs the primary action and the antagonist is the muscle which (lengthens) opposes it.

Muscles that involve a lot in daily and sport activities are the large muscle groups, the upper body like pectoral (chest), trapezius muscle and latissimus dorsi (back muscles), biceps and triceps (hand muscles), abdominal and lower body like quadriceps, gluteal muscles (buttock) and hamstrings (muscle between butt and leg).

The anatomy of human muscles:

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Quadriceps

Quadruple stands for 4 and quadriceps has 4 different muscle. The quadriceps or "quads" is one of the largest muscles in the body. Many of the best leg exercises focus on the quads. The primary function of the quadriceps is leg extension. Leg extension is the motion of extending your knee like kicking a ball. The quadriceps muscle group is made up of four muscles. The vastus intermedius is found on the front of the thigh, deep to the rectus femoris. The vastus medialis is found toward the inside of the leg, while the vastus lateralis is found toward the outside of the leg. The tendons of these four muscles merge together and attach onto the kneecap and surrounding ligaments.

Vastus intermedius (beneath rectus femoris)

Rectus femoris (peak of quad)

Vastus medialis (teardrop)

Vastus lateralis (sweep)

Recommended Exercise

Squat

Leg Extension

Leg press

Tips

• Keep feet close together during squatting and leg press will help to target more vastus lateralis area.

• Squatting, leg extension and leg press with a wide Stace and toe pointing outwards will target more vastus medialis.

• Highper leg extension will target more vastus intermedius & rectus femoris

Chest

In my younger age I always want to have a bullet proof chest, a wide and thick pecs would describe it best. Many method I have learn and try but not all are correct or best suits my self/ many individual. Chest or Pectorals muscle divided into two area.

Anatomy

Pectoralis major - thick muscle situated at the front of chest of the body. It makes up the bulk of the chest muscles

Pectoralis minor - thin muscle situated at the upper part of the chest beneath the pectoralis major

Pec major located on the front of the rib cage, its insertion/ attach to the humerus proximal and originate near the shoulder joint (clavicle) and on the breastbone in the center of the chest (sternum). A fan like structure of the pecs allow the humerus to move in a variety of planes across the body.

Pec minor located underneath pec major attaching to corocoid process and originate on ribs 3 to 5.

Recommended exercise

Dumbbell