Muscles | Physiology | Biology | FuseSchool

Muscles are a very important type of tissue that allow us to perform many functions - from simpler actions such as blinking our eyes and chewing our food, to more complex ones such as swimming and playing football.

Muscles are essentially bundles of fibres that expand and contract to help make movement possible.

These fibres are mostly repeating units of actin and myosin protein chains.

If you have larger muscles, it does not mean that you have more fibres - it means that the fibres are just much larger.

There are three types of muscles in our body - skeletal, smooth, and cardiac.

Skeletal muscles, are suggested in their name, are attached to our skeleton, or bones via tendons.

As we control their movement, they are also known as voluntary muscles.

Their striped appearance gives them yet another name - striated muscles.

These muscles enable us to walk, stop, and lift things up in our arms.

There are two types of skeletal muscles - fast twitch and slow twitch.

Although fast twitch muscles expand and contract quickly, and are thus responsible for powerful movements, they become tired very quickly.

If you jump very quickly into the air, you probably can only do it a few times before feeling exhausted!

On the other hand, slow twitch muscles move much slower, but tire a lot less easily.

For instance, you can write with a pen for quite some time before your hand actually gets really tired.

Smooth muscles, which make up your blood vessels, stomach lining, and other organ linings, are involuntary muscles as their movement is not under our control.

As an example, it is impossible for us to tell our stomach to churn and digest our food faster!

Cardiac muscles that make up our heart are able to work continuously without tiring.

Like smooth muscles, cardiac muscles are also involuntary - we cannot make our heart work faster or slower!

In conclusion, there are three types of muscles found in our body, all of which have specific structures and functions.

SUBSCRIBE to the FuseSchool YouTube channel for many more educational videos. Our teachers and animators come together to make fun & easy-to-understand videos in Chemistry, Biology, Physics, Maths & ICT.

VISIT us at www.fuseschool.org, where all of our videos are carefully organised into topics and specific orders, and to see what else we have on offer. Comment, like and share with other learners. You can both ask and answer questions, and teachers will get back to you.

These videos can be used in a flipped classroom model or as a revision aid.

Find all of our Chemistry videos here:
   • Complete & Incomplete Combustion | En...  

Find all of our Biology videos here:
   • The Lymphatic System | Physiology | B...  

Find all of our Maths videos here:
   • Видео  

Twitter:   / fuseschool  

Access a deeper Learning Experience in the FuseSchool platform and app: www.fuseschool.org
Follow us:    / fuseschool  
Friend us:   / fuseschool  

This Open Educational Resource is free of charge, under a Creative Commons License: Attribution-NonCommercial CC BY-NC ( View License Deed: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b... ). You are allowed to download the video for nonprofit, educational use. If you would like to modify the video, please contact us: [email protected]