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50-Year-Old Assumptions About Muscle Strength Tossed Aside
vinces99 writes "The basics of how a muscle generates power remain the same: Filaments of myosin tugging on filaments of actin shorten, or contract, the muscle – but the power doesn't just come from what's happening straight up and down the length of the muscle, as has been assumed for 50 years. Instead, new research shows that as muscles bulge, the filaments are drawn apart from each other, the myosin tugs at sharper angles over greater distances, and it's that action that deserves credit for half the change in muscle force scientists have been measuring."
Rock anchors expand into the drill hole and thus secure the rod in place. So with muscles, part of the "strength" is from just not letting go. Also brings to mind that wood fibers are made of two quite different ingredients -- long strong fibers, and good "matrixy" glue.
I come here for the love
Don't be too harsh on him. Some of us appreciate the fact that he took the time to read the first line or two and craft a troll comment that demonstrates his awareness of the topic at hand, rather than copy/pasting some cookie-cutter comment that doesn't have an ounce of creativity to it. Handcrafted trolling, particularly the sort that makes use of pre-Internet memes such as "your mother", is a dying art that should be valued in all of its forms.
The headline (and the puny little "abstract") ignores all other variables than the one with the headline. Then a little slashdotter happily starts to jump up and down, clapping its hands and feet: "Oh new science made, so little did we know".
I read the article, I can't figure out if the writer was quoting him indirectly or if she is stupid. The model was based on moth flight muscle which is similar to human cardiac muscle, which was properly explained. He did say it can lead to new research in cardio and skeletal disease. I feel pedantic and want to know if the reasercher said that or if it is a case of bad editorializing. Don't shoot the messenger, but I guess in a sense that's what I am doing. So feel free to shoot this post if you think I'm stupid.
Koalas. They're telepathic. Plus, they control the weather. -Margaret
Science articulates what millennia of body builders could only say "duh" to.
I was bored by what was happening straight up and down the length of the muscle but then your mom started tugging at sharper angles over greater distances...
Wow! A post on the art of trolling got a +4 Insightful!
So having been extremely bored one day I decided to read http://www.amazon.co.uk/Prime-Mover-Natural-History-Muscle/dp/0393021262/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1373528233&sr=8-1&keywords=prime+mover+history+of+muscle> this book it covers some interesting bits about how muscle structure was research, dissected and how the muscles work.
Oh yeah, Steven Vogel wrote in the book that muscles do not actually contract, they expand. The muscle does not condense/contract. Space between filaments increased via expansion. It's one of the main reasons that running downhill will cause you far more muscle pain than running uphill...but don;t take my word for it, read his book he explains it all so much better.
I assume the quoted bit uses "contract" as a way to skip delving into muscle mechanics...
A 'singular oddity' is an event that cannot be explained and only happens when you are alone.
I just finished that semester in my Anatomy/Pysiology class. Now I can't be a smartass and tell the professor it's all so terribly wrong.
In the future, when we'll have advanced command line NLP tools, it will be possible to replace a creative troll with a shell script. A very short one.
Ezekiel 23:20
Cocaine's a hell of a drug.
Handcrafted trolling, particularly the sort that makes use of pre-Internet memes such as "your mother", is a dying art that should be valued in all of its forms.
Well then; your mother's sharp angle tugs are the dying art around here.
Muscle power is purely a function of size or volume. Some people's muscle is inherently stronger than others, whether by nature or nurture.
I grew up working in the field, building houses with my dad, and otherwise getting the crap worked out of me from an early age. Went to grad school, and would regularly see the jocks working out at the gym who had much more muscle mass than me, but I could take their max weight, add 20%, and do more reps. I enjoyed watching them boggle at that.
On the flip side, there was a fellow grad student from Eritrea. Scrawny, wiry guy, maybe 140 lbs soaking wet. His bicep/tricep cross-section wasn't much bigger than my wrist. He challenged me to an arm-wrestling contest one day, and instantly and with little exertion pounded my knuckles into the table multiple times until I learned my lesson.
He reminded me somewhat of those stories you hear about Abraham Lincoln and how surprisingly strong he was.
http://www.lincolnportrait.com/physical_man.html
What I took from TFA was that it's not the "sharper angles" that add to the power, but the way the fibres stack up as muscles get thicker - greater length of the area where the fibres touch means greater force, as a myosin fibril has lots of 'heads' that provide the force for moving, and where there's too little overlap between actin (the 'inert' structural fibre) and myosin (the active, moving) fibres, only a few heads from one myosin fibre will be able to grip the actin. As they slide towards each other to make the muscle contract, more myosin heads are able to interact with each actin filament at one time and so deliver more power. I'd draw an ASCII diagram, but the junk filters won't let me post it
I'm shocked no one has worked this out until now, but that's the great thing about a lot of discoveries - they look obvious when someone's already made them.
Want to know the biggest mistake and myth: That you need to stretch before exercising..
for me, there will only be one true troll ever, and he is HOSTS
Then you'll be glad to hear they're back on track to making Twinkies again.
Trust me, you're just as surprised as I am. I just meant it as a quick one-off joke and was expecting to get downmodded for Off-topic if anything.
My mother is dead, you insensitive clod.
Rule 365: If you wait long enough, *everything* will become SERIOUS BUSINESS.
-- TheseToesAreMadeForSuckin @ 2003
I walked into the library restroom, and as I walked in a young man exited one of the stalls. I could see from his physique that his myelin tended to tug at really sharp angles. I entered the freshly-vacated stall, and there it was: a statue of a naked and petrified Natalie Portman.
I have poured grits down the pants of my greased Yoda doll. Thank you.
Mr Connery is that you? -Alex Trebek
Even as SERIOUS as Internet Spaceships, which is as SERIOUS as it can ever get.
That things like physical movement can't be reduced to a simple 'this is the sole mechanism' model. The body is much more complicated in its dynamics than the average medical textbook makes out, and this is a fact that is well known to anybody with a serious interest in martial arts, dance, or even musical performance (if you took the movements of a typical concert pianist and did the maths to show how the muscle-contraction model explains it, you'd come up against apparent physical impossibilities: and it is not that concert piano playing is impossible, simply that the overly simplistic 'western science' model of musculature and movement is precisely that: overly simplistic, and to a certain extent wrong).
John_Chalisque