Main+Muscles

Smooth muscle

You don’t just have cardiac muscles and skeletal muscles. There are smooth muscles.

Smooth muscles are hollow muscles, for example your bladder wall, it is one of the biggest hollow organs ‘ Also the walls of the stomach, oesophagus, intestines, arteries and veins are made of smooth muscle. One of their functions is to help force food, urine, and faeces through from the body.

Cardiac muscle

Your heart beats non-stop about 100,000 times each day and it will not stop until you die!

There is only one cardiac muscle and it is the most important of all, it is your heart. Cardiac muscle fibres (cells) contract automatically to squeeze the walls of the heart inwards, an action that pumps blood around the body.

Skeletal muscle

The bulk of the bodys muscles are skeletal muscles. These pull on bones to move us around. They are muscles that “bulge” when a body builder poses. There are about 640 skeletal muscles in your body. For example biceps and muscles in your arms.

Tendons

Tendons are tough tissue found at each end of a muscle. There job is to link muscle to bones. When a muscle contracts it pulls a bone by its tendon.