There are more than 23,000 fibers in just one of the muscles in your arm
Contents Introduction Holding You Together Your Muscly Body Pulling Together Inside a Muscle How to Get Strong Your Framework of Bones Strong Bones Moving Parts Binders Bonehead The History of Muscle and Bone More Muscly and Bony Facts Index 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24 26 28 30 32
Introduction Although your body seems very complicated it all begins to make sense if you think of it in terms of systems each with its own task to do Some systems such as the nervous system the body’s communication system extend throughout the body It is the task of the skeleton the body’s framework of bones to protect you and keep you upright The skeleton also works with muscles which give your body the ability to move Skeleton The skeleton is the part of the body that may last the longest after a person dies That’s because the bones are made from tough minerals that don’t quickly rot away Altogether over 100 billion people have lived on Earth so far That means there could be 100 billion skeletons lying around Fortunately most do crumble into dust eventually Lucy The world’s most famous skeleton is about 3 2 million years old It’s called Lucy and is the skeleton of a small ancestor of humans called an australopithecine It was found in Ethiopia in 1974 Its shape shows that even this long ago our ancestors walked upright on two feet 6
Muscles You have over 600 muscles on the outside of your skeleton If they could all pull together they could lift a bus Of course that could never happen because they all pull in different directions The average adult man can just about lift another adult off the ground The Strongest Man The world’s strongest man ever was Canadian Louis Cyr who lived between 1863 and 1912 He could push a railroad truck uphill beat two horses in a tug of war and lift the weight of five adults with his little finger His most famous feat was the backlift in which he lifted a bench with eighteen men on it on his back Meaty Muscle If you want to know what your muscles look like on the inside go to the butcher When you eat meat you’re eating mostly the muscle of animals Only fat gristle and bone are not muscle If you ever eat steak chances are you’ll be eating the big rump or bottom muscles of a cow Your own bottom muscles look similar 7
