We have always heard of various games, but ever wondered how does our body decide from where and how to execute the muscles. So in this article let’s go through the journey of how our body amazingly uses the right way through the right muscle.
First let us know how the games are classified, they are classified as competitive and non competitive, competitive is where we have an opponent and non competitive where we don’t have one, the second classification is interactive and non interactive, interactive is where the participants have obstacles to overcome and non interactive is where there are no obstacles present.
Now let’s find out how our body reacts to all the games, to initiate a skeletal muscle; for example, if a person wants to kick, his leg muscles need to contract voluntarily for the action. To produce this action the action potential starts arising in the motor cortex of the brain, further the signals travel down the spinal cord through the nerve cells (axons of lower motor neurons) and reach the skeletal muscles. This junction where the signals travel from the spinal cord and reach the muscles is called neuromuscular junction. Now as the person kicks the ball, the sensory receptors which are present in the muscles send signals to the brain about the joint position, how far is the ball, how much force was put etc. and accordingly the brain acts to the body. If the muscle is over worked and the force of the kick has overstretched the muscles, the brain will immediately send signals to protect the part, either by producing pain or guarding the muscle. This is about the nerve signals.
Now let’s take a look at what actually happens within the muscle. Muscles are made of muscle cells; each muscle cell is called as a muscle fiber. When we take a close look at each of these fibers they are covered by membrane called the plasmalemma or sarcolemma. The role of the membrane is as the muscle fiber comes to an end the membrane fuses with the tendon and the tendon in turn connects to the bone. The tendon is made up of thick cords of connective tissue which transmits the force generated by the muscle to the bones and motion at various parts of the body takes place. Inside the muscle membrane there is a gelatin like substance called the sarcoplasm which fills in between the myofibrils (sub units of the muscles fiber). This sarcoplasm contains lot of proteins, minerals, fats and what makes it unique from the other solutions is that it contains large amount of glycogen and large amount of oxygen binding compounds.
The muscle membrane also contains transverse tubules which connect the sub units of the muscle fibers to each other and help in transition of the impulses from the nerves to individual myofibrils, allow substances to enter the myofibrils and throw the waste outside. Last but not the least, the sarcoplasmic reticulum present within the myofibrils is the storage site for calcium, which is an important component for the contraction of the muscle.
Million cells work together to make a complete movement in the right way at the right time.
Dr. Aarzu Bhavangri (Noorani) MPT, MIAP, MIAFT
Very helpful for the starters and learning physios , and for the common people also,
when are you going to release the game?