MUSCLES...they help you get all the ladies

Muscles are cool, and by extension people who have nice muscles are cool...and hottt. Why else would I have wasted my time going to see Thor? Did you see Thor's abs? I'd worship a god with a six pack like that...

...What was I talking about?

Oh yeah, muscles. I figured since I am currently thinking about the muscles and skeletons of worms, I'd give all ten of my loyal readers a little background into what muscle is, how it works, how it changes, and why you need to go to the gym more often.

So basically muscle is tissue that can contract and make force. And the more force you can make, the more manly you are. It's a simple proportion.

All muscle in made up of muscle fibers aka muscle cells which are arranged in bundles. In these muscles cells are pairs of contractile proteins that grip and can ratchet past each other to make force and contract your muscle. Yes, like when you flex your massive biceps.

Muscle cells look cool. Scientific fact.

The amount of force you can make with your muscles depends on how large your muscle cross sectional area is and in turn how many force producing proteins are in parallel to each other... more muscles acting in parallel means more force being applied directly to the load. Basically, if the cross-sectional area of your muscle is big, you have larger muscle cells in parallel and you can generate more force and validate grunting like a gorilla in heat when you do barbell chest presses using a ton of weight:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRVQS9Tk5Cs&feature=fvsr

There are also different kinds of muscle cells, depending on whether or not you do aerobic exercise or short intense bursts of exercise like weight lifting. Type I muscle fibers are 'slow twitch' fibers which just means they contract slowly. Basically it takes a while to get this muscle going, but once it does it can use oxygen and food to make energy and keep going for a long time. If you do a lot of cardio, this is what you have. This is 'red' muscle like what you see in cows because this muscle has hemoglobin inside of it to get max oxygen delivery to power the cells. So you have cow-like muscle. Moo.

Red meat= Type I Muscle

Type II fibers are the opposite case. This muscle can contract quickly because it has tons of nerve fibers firing on it, but the tradeoff is it can't use oxygen and food to make energy. Instead it has to rely on the energy reserves it has and what little energy you make without oxygen just before you cramp up, so it fatigues quickly. Since it can't use oxygen, it doesn't have hemoglobin in it to get oxygen from the blood and is white in color like white chicken meat (the dark meat is type 1 muscle fibers). Yep, I just called you a chicken, Mr. Weight lifter.

White meat= Type II Muscle

The punchline: MUSCLES ARE GOOD, SO GO TO THE GYM ALREADY. And no, shaking a shake weight does NOT count:
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXHUdvvHTkw&feature=relmfu.

Yes, I know working out is hard...BUT... muscle is sexy... You know you are totally jealous of my chiseled arms...



You don't have to pay to watch this gun show!


Plus, muscle cells just look cooler than fat cells. Just sayin'

The most picked on cells in the body.

Your gym buddy,

The 'Dirty' Scientist