Muscle Responses to Exercise- Week 9 - Exercise & Muscles: Engage/Explore

 Muscle Responses to Exercise

Having used the context of neuromuscular toxins to clarify how our muscles are stimulated to contract, we will take a brief look at one other area of muscle activity this week - how muscles respond to exercise.

More specifically, we will seek to...

    Explain to a friend how her muscles respond in the short-term and long-term to exercise at the cellular and molecular levels.

Our Scenario...

DumbellsPretend you have a friend who has recently gotten very excited about fitness and exercise. Now all she wants to talk about is what’s happening in her body during workouts! She’s started a new weight lifting program for her arms where she cycles quickly through various dumbbell exercises for a few minutes before resting and repeating later. She asks you to help her understand what’s happening in her muscle cells during and after those workouts.

Before we explore some of the physiology underlying this scenario, think about how you would respond to your friend now.  Submit a couple sentences here to discuss what you think you already know about this scenario.  Feel free to discuss what you are uncertain about or what questions you think you need to answer yourself to respond to your friend.

Your response here will not be graded for correctness.