We hear very often that regular physical exercise is a must requirement for a healthy lifestyle. It helps in maintaining the lipid, glucose, and insulin level of our body which helps in keeping the body functions normal and reduces the risk of dangerous diseases.

Physical exercises like gymming, weight lifting, swimming, jogging, skipping, running and Yoga are extremely beneficial for making our muscles stronger. But, how these different kinds of exercise have so much impact on our body muscles? The following points will show you how different muscles respond and gets benefited when you do physical exercise.

Muscular System of the Human Body

Human body muscles are divided into three categories:-

a) Skeletal muscles- that regulates the movements and postures of the human body receiving signals from the peripheral nervous system. There are more than 600 skeletal muscles.

b) Cardiac muscles- that refer to the heart muscles responsible for various cardiac activities and is controlled by the autonomic nervous system.

c) Smooth muscles- that refers to the muscles of different human body organs as well as blood vessels responsible for regulating the functionalities of different organs. It is also controlled by the autonomic nervous system.

How muscles respond to physical exercise

When you do physical workouts, your body muscles respond in burning the ATP by oxygen supply from your body and eliminating the heat. Continuous physical workouts help in supplying oxygen to the body muscles which they utilize to from chemical reactions to create ATP. The burning of ATP needs oxygen, reduction of metabolic wastes and heat elimination to produce energy.

a) Skeletal Muscles

Skeletal muscles always benefit from exercises like jogging, running, weight lifting and any physical workout involving strength.

• Aerobics are great for increasing the oxygen intake capacity of skeletal muscles. During aerobics, skeletal muscles increase the blood follow capacity, proteins, energy amount stored in the form of fats and glycogen, and mitochondria muscular development thereby increasing the energy capacity of your body.
• Resistance exercises are responsible for increasing skeletal muscle strength. During resistance exercises like weight lifting and bodybuilding, the muscle diameters increase in size due to which the strength capacity of the muscles increases making a person stronger.
• Kettlebell exercise can combat muscle loss. An interesting case study shows that the women over 65 years suffering from sarcopenia, gained a noticeable increase of sarcopenia index after 4 weeks of kettlebell exercise.

b) Cardiac Muscles

Regular physical workout for at least 30 minutes improves the functioning of your heart by sufficient supply of oxygen to the cardiac muscles. This oxygen is further required to produce ATP. When you exercise vigorously, the cardiac muscles gain efficiency and with each heartbeat, it transfers more blood keeping the blood pressure and cholesterol level under control. More you exercise, more the oxygen intake capacity of cardiac muscles increases reducing blot clots in arteries and results in smooth blood flow to all the cardiac muscles. As a result, it reduces the risks of stroke and heart attack. Some of the best forms of cardiovascular exercise are- Playing sports, walking, jogging, swimming, Treadmill exercise and Dancing.

c) Smooth muscles

Smooth muscles are mainly the organ muscles like walls of blood vessels, aorta layer, Iris of the eye, Ureters, Gastrointestinal tract, etc. There are no direct exercises for these muscles but their tissues can always improve and stay fresh when your skeletal and cardiac muscles get benefited from regular physical workouts. For-ex- During cardiovascular exercise along with the increasing efficiency of cardiac muscles, the lining of your blood vessels, aorta layer and other smooth muscles of the heart also responds and improves in the process.

Final Words

The above-mentioned points clearly demonstrate how each muscle responds to physical exercise and gets benefited from it. Physical exercise plays a pivotal role in body muscle flexibility and maintaining the regulation of blood flow.