How Do Your Muscles Work?
A cyclist’s legs provide the power for cycling. Muscle attached to the thighbone (femur) and the shinbone (tibia) do the majority of the work. Bones are levers, joints are the pivot or fulcrum, muscles provide the effort, and the resistance is what is being moved (in the case of cycling it would be the force on the pedal).
Thousands of thin spaghetti-like fibers make up muscle tissue. To activate the muscle, the brain sends an electrical signal down the spinal cord which is converted into a chemical trigger causing filaments next to each other to bind together, intermeshing. As they slide past each other the whole muscle fiber gets shorter. The main muscles at work in cycling are the quadriceps and hamstrings in the upper leg, and the gastrocnemius and soleus in the calf. These muscles contract in a sequence that creates the pedaling action.
Contour Sport Does what your brain can’t
Contour Sport EMS can accomplish three things that are outside of the brain’s capabilities:
- Recruits and synchronizes more of the muscle fibers in any muscle group than traditional exercise.The brain typically recruits only about 40% of the muscle fibers.
- Creates more muscle activity in muscles being worked. The brain has a “limiting switch” that alwayskeeps some of the muscle in reserve for emergency purposes.
- Targets specific muscle fibers, depending on the frequency: slow twitch, fast twitch, very fast twitch fiber the brain cannot discern between these fiber types.