4 Fun Facts About Human Muscles

The human body is composed of some fascinating bits and pieces. Your muscles are responsible for all your body movements — large and small — and for so much more. Following are four fun facts about the human muscles:

• Besides your heart, the strongest muscle in the body (compared to its size) is your tongue. Hey, something has to counterbalance those 200 pounds of force the jaw muscles can deliver when you’re chewing.

  

  Credit: Illustration by Kathryn Born, MA

• And which muscles move more each day than even your heart? The ones surrounding your eyes, called the extraocular muscles. At three moves per second, they clock in more than 100,000 motions per day.

• Every time you take a step, you employ around 200 of the roughly 600 muscles in your body. Researchers estimate that every minute you spend walking extends your life by anywhere from 90 seconds to two minutes. No wonder doctors advise that people shoot for 10,000 steps each day!

• Thinking you’ll just lift weights to build muscle? Choose free weights over using a weight machine. The action of balancing the weights yourself rather than letting a machine do it for you builds muscle mass faster.