Chapter 6

The Biomechanics of
Human Skeletal
Muscle

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 Behavioral Properties of the
Musculotendinous Unit

The characteristic behavioral properties of muscle are

extensibility, elasticity, irritability, and the ability to

develop tension.
1) extensibility: ability to be stretched or
to increase in length
2) elasticity: ability to return to normal
resting length following a stretch
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© 2007 McGraw-Hill Higher Education. All rights reserved.
 Behavioral Properties of the
Musculotendinous Unit

3) irritability: ability to respond to a

stimulus
4) ability to develop tension: the
contractile component of muscle
function

© 2007 McGraw-Hill Higher Education. All rights reserved.

 Behavioral Properties of the
Musculotendinous Unit

Components of elasticity:
• parallel elastic component (PEC) – supplies
resistance when a muscle is stretched :
provided by muscle membranes
• series elastic component (SEC) – acts as a
spring to store elastic energy when a tense
muscle is stretched : residing in tendons

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 Behavioral Properties of the
Musculotendinous Unit
From a mechanical
perspective, the
musculotendinous unit
behaves as a
contractile component
(muscle fibers) in
parallel with one
elastic component
(muscle membranes)
and in series with
another elastic
component (tendons).
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 Behavioral Properties of the
Musculotendinous Unit

What is the stretch-shortening cycle?

• eccentric contraction (in which the
muscle is actively stretched) followed
immediately by concentric contraction
• examples?

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© 2007 McGraw-Hill Higher Education. All rights reserved.
 Structural Organization of
Skeletal Muscle

What is a muscle fiber?

(single muscle cell surrounded by a
membrane called the sarcolemma and
containing specialized cytoplasm called
sarcoplasm)

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 Structural Organization of
Skeletal Muscle

What do we know about muscle fibers?

• some fibers run the entire length of a
muscle; others are shorter
• skeletal muscle fibers grow in both
length and diameter from birth through
adulthood
• fiber diameter can be increased through
resistance training
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 Structural Organization of
Skeletal Muscle

Motor unit
• consists of a single motor neuron and all
fibers it innervates by that neuron

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 Categories of fibers:

Fast twitch (FT) FT ST

fibers both reach
peak tension and

Twitch Tension
relax more quickly
than slow twitch
(ST) fibers. (Peak
tension is typically
greater for FT than
for ST fibers.) Time
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 Skeletal Muscle Fiber Characteristics

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 Fiber Architecture

How are muscle fibers organized?

• parallel fiber arrangement:
fibers are roughly parallel to the longitudinal
axis of the muscle (e.g rectus abdominus,
biceps brachii
• pennate fiber arrangement:
lie at an angle to the muscle’s longitudinal axis
(e.g rectus femoris)
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 Structural Organization of
Skeletal Muscle

Parallel fiber arrangements Pennate fiber arrangements

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 EXTRA

How much force is exerted by the

tendon of a pennate muscle when the
tension in the fibers is 100 N, given
the following angles of pennation?

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© 2007 McGraw-Hill Higher Education. All rights reserved.
 Skeletal Muscle Function

Terms used to describe muscle

contractions based on change in muscle
length.
• concentric: involving shortening
• eccentric: involving lengthening
• isometric: involving no change
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 Skeletal Muscle Function

What roles are assumed by muscles?

• agonist: acts to cause a movement
• antagonist: acts to slow or stop a
movement
• stabilizer: acts to stabilize a body part
against some other force
• neutralizer: acts to eliminate an
unwanted action produced by an agonist
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 Skeletal Muscle Function

What are disadvantages associated with

muscles that cross more than one joint?
• active insufficiency:
failure to produce force when slack
• passive insufficiency:
restriction of joint range of motion when
fully stretched

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 Skeletal Muscle Function

active insufficiency: failure to produce

force when muscles are slack (decreased
ability to form a fist with the wrist in
flexion)
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 Skeletal Muscle Function

passive insufficiency: restriction of joint

range of motion when muscles are fully
stretched (decreased ROM for wrist
extension with the fingers extended)
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 Factors Affecting Muscular
Force Generation

The force-velocity
relationship for
muscle tissue:
When resistance (Low resistance,
(force) is negligible,
Force high contraction
velocity)
muscle contracts
with maximal
velocity.
Velocity
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 Factors Affecting Muscular
Force Generation

The force-velocity isometric

relationship for maximum
muscle tissue: As
the load increases,
concentric Force
contraction velocity
slows to zero at
isometric
maximum.
Velocity
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© 2007 McGraw-Hill Higher Education. All rights reserved.
 Factors Affecting Muscular
Force Generation

The length-tension Total

relationship: Tension Tension
present in a stretched
Active
muscle is the sum of the Tension

Tension
active tension provided
by the muscle fibers and Passive
the passive tension Tension
provided by the tendons
and membranes. 50 100 150
Length (% of resting length)
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 Factors Affecting Muscular
Force Generation

What is electromechanical delay?

(time between
arrival of a
neural stimulus
and tension
development by
the muscle)

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 Muscular Strength, Power and
Endurance

How do we measure muscular strength?

(measured as the amount of torque a

muscle group can generate at a joint)

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 Muscular Strength, Power and
Endurance

How do we measure muscular strength?

Ft Ft

The component of muscle force that

produces torque (Ft) at the joint is directed
perpendicular to the attached bone.
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 Muscular Strength, Power and
Endurance

What factors affect muscular strength?

• tension-generating capability of the
muscle tissue, which is in turn
affected by:
• muscle cross-sectional area
• training state of muscle
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 Muscular Strength, Power and
Endurance

What factors affect muscular strength?

• moment arms of the muscles crossing
the joint (mechanical advantage), in turn
affected by:
• distance between muscle attachment
to bone and joint center
• angle of the muscle’s attachment
to bone
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 Muscular Strength, Power and
Endurance

A B C
The mechanical advantage of the biceps bracchi is maximum when
the elbow is at approximately 90 degrees (A), because 100% of muscle
force is acting to rotate the radius. As the joint angle increases (B)
or decreases (C) from 90 degrees, the mechanical advantage of
the muscle is lessened because more and more of the force is pulling
the radius toward or away from the elbow rather than contributing
to forearm rotation.
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 Muscular Strength, Power and
Endurance

What is muscular power? (Ch 12)

• the product of muscular force and the
velocity of muscle shortening
• the rate of torque production at a joint
• the product of net torque and angular
velocity at a joint

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 Muscular Strength, Power and
Endurance

What is muscular endurance?

• the ability of muscle to exert tension
over a period of time
• the opposite of muscle fatigability

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 Muscular Strength, Power and
Endurance

What is the effect of muscle temperature

(warm up) ?

(the speeds of nerve and muscle functions

increase)

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 Muscular Strength, Power and
Endurance

With warm-up, there Normal body temperature

is a shift to the right in Elevated body temperature

the force-velocity
curve, with higher
maximum isometric Force
tension and higher
maximum velocity of
shortening possible at
a given load.
Velocity
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 EXTRA

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© 2007 McGraw-Hill Higher Education. All rights reserved.