Fast Versus Slow Twitch Muscle Fibers
Skeletal muscle is composed of long cylindrical cells called muscle fibers. There are two types of muscle fibers, slow twitch or muscle contraction (type I) and fast twitch (type II). Slow twitch fibers are more efficient in using oxygen to generate energy whilst fast twitch fibers are less efficient. However, fast twitch fibers fire more rapidly and generate more force.These are also called the white muscle fibers and red muscles fibers respectively.
Read more about this topic: ACTN3
Famous quotes containing the words fast, slow and/or twitch:
“When I am here, I do not fast on the Sabbath; when I am in Rome, I fast on the Sabbath.”
—Ambrose (c. 333–397)
“He bends to the order of the seasons, the weather, the soils and crops, as the sails of a ship bend to the wind. He represents continuous hard labor, year in, year out, and small gains. He is a slow person, timed to Nature, and not to city watches. He takes the pace of seasons, plants and chemistry. Nature never hurries: atom by atom, little by little, she achieves her work.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“our nerve filaments twitch with its presence
day and night,
nothing we say has not the husky phlegm of it in the saying,
nothing we do has the quickness, the sureness,
the deep intelligence living at peace would have.”
—Denise Levertov (b. 1923)