Your Muscles

They are in everywhere. In your arm, legs, bum and even in your face. The diaphragm is responsible for your to breathe and it is also a muscle, but it's inside of your body. They are also responsible for our simpler moviments, like to blink, and others more complex, as triple rotation jump with pirouettes. They are very arrested in your bones through the tendons and, because this they are called of skeletal voluntary muscles. (See more about this in Anatomy).

	Your muscle is formed of a great amount of very small and fine threads called Muscular Fiber (image side). it seems spaghetti caught (like miojo) joined in a big bunch. This way each little spaghetti would be a muscular fiber. But it is very solid and it doesn't stretch out as one of our fibers. The "stretching", in true is not a real stretching/ It is a Sliding.

Each muscular fibers has big amounts of other two types of filaments, called Actina and Miosina. In spite of they to be very joined, they can slide themselves as if someone would had slippery grease them. While Actina slides for a side, Miosina slides to the other direction and that create fiber increase or decrease, giving you impression that it's "stretching out". Then, if our muscle is composed of fibers, and if all of them works similarly at the similar time, you will have a Contraction or Relaxation muscular .

You can do a little test. Extend one of your arms ahead with the hand palm upward and pay attention in the muscle of your arm (biceps). Slowly, brings the forearm close to your shoulder, and, meanwhile, look the biceps behaving. Return to initial position. Did you notice how it's smaller and chubbier in the first movement? That is called contraction (image 1).

Image 1: Richard Sandrak. A little boby builder showing his contracted biceps.

A good characteristic of your muscle is the adaptation. If you to carry much weight in the arm and if you do this many times, you will notice weight was lighter. It's not like this. Your muscles acquired more strength and resistance. There was an increment in the diameter of each muscular fiber and your arm got a larger size. It's this the body builders do. They go to academy and they lift weight to get very muscular and shapely body. At the Gymnastics there is also work of strenght development. Because this every gymnast, even child, has an athletic body. We have strong, resistant and beautiful body. Girls love it, he, he!

Image 2: Ula, one of the greatest contortionists of theworld, can get amazing poses with her own body. Result of trained and adapted muscles.

But, what about flexibility? It's the same. Instead the muscular fiber to get size in diameter, it grows in extension. It is longer and with larger elasticity power. We can see easily that, when the trainer is stretching you, day after day, more and more strongly, in fact he is adapting your muscles. Then they will be longer (image 2). Trhought time you will be veeery flexible!

Obviously the muscular mechanics is more complex than my mere explanation. But if you want to get knowledge about this subject, research in your sciences book or ask your teachers. They will be happy in helping you.