Skeletal Muscle Fibers and Muscle Strength
One thing that characterizes animals is movement. Every type of motion in animals is facilitated by specialized cells in the body, referred to as the muscle fibers. Among the types of muscles in the anatomy of human beings, there are fast-twitch fibers that generate a lot of power. Although the fibers create massive power and force, they do this for a short time and therefore get exhausted or fatigued quickly.
It is clear that; the fast-twitch fibers produce more power than other tissues such as fast-twitch fiber. This is the case because the fibers can synthesize a higher amount of energy through anaerobic reaction. This is a process that does not require oxygen and, therefore, highly guarantees massive energy production since the process utilizes glucose to produce energy. On the contrary, the other fibers, for instance, the low-twitch tissues, contain more mitochondrion that carries oxygen used in the aerobic process to generate energy. As such, the low-twitch and other similar fibers do not produce more power. The fast-twitch fibers give quicker contraction than the other threads (Eberstein et al., 2011). This is because the fast-twitch fibers have thicker myelin sheaths compared to slow-twitch tissues. This characteristic helps the fast-twitch fibers to send their nerve impulses to the brain faster.
Human beings have got the mix of all fibers in the body, but the activity level of an individual is what determines what muscles are many in the body than the others. Non-athletic people, for instance, have a neutral level of fiber types. According to Thorstensson, et al., (2017), when someone begins to increase activity level, the ratio of fiber type similarly changes proportionally. For the case of power athletes, for instance, due to their vigorous and continuous activities, their level of fast-twitch fiber is incredibly more than the low-twitch fibers, and the reverse is true to the endurance athletes. As such, it is clear that the fibers’ ratio is one of the major contributing factors for better and successful performance.
The muscle fiber, as indicated, has a significant impact on the muscular strength of any animal. As for the case of the difference in power between the animals and the chimpanzees, it is research proven that chimpanzees have more advantages than human beings. This sharp difference is brought out by the ratio difference of the fiber type. The chimpanzee poses a considerable amount of fast-twitch fiber content than human beings making the chimpanzees have more dynamic strength and power than human beings (Thorstensson et al., 2017). This factor has made chimpanzee approximately 1.35 times stronger than the average human being. The ratio of the distribution of different muscle in the body is also a contributing factor to the variation of strength.
In conclusion, human beings need to understand which types of fiber are used in different activities to configure their training session to aim at the specific tissue. This knowledge will help to realize what kind of texture to focus on. As such, they will decide to develop the low-twitch or the high-twitch fibers, thus increasing efficiency.
References
Eberstein, A. R. T. H. U. R., & Goodgold, J. O. S. E. P. H. (2011). Slow and fast-twitch fibers in human skeletal muscle. American Journal of Physiology-Legacy Content, 215(3), 535-541.
https://jissn.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1550-2783-5-15
Thorstensson, A., Larsson, L. A. R. S., Tesch, P., & Karlsson, J. (2017). Muscle strength and fiber composition in athletes and sedentary men. Medicine and science in sports, 9(1), 26-30.