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Bench
Feb 22, 2006 2:09:49 GMT -5
Post by Mr. Espey on Feb 22, 2006 2:09:49 GMT -5
I don't know why you had to inform everyone about the thing on Grip Board... but OK. I told you to come here because I don't post there anymore. I made one post and got called anti-American because I said "y'all"... far too much drama over there.
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Bench
Feb 22, 2006 14:22:31 GMT -5
Post by markmacphail on Feb 22, 2006 14:22:31 GMT -5
Tendons are a funny thing.....and you always hear about "tendon strength" I have used the term myself. However, tendons are connective tissue they are not a muscle .....with this in mind they can have strength, but not in the traditional manner. They attach muscle to bone as ligaments attach bone to bone. Kinetics "body movement", regarding say .....a bicep curl has several variables two of these being the biceps (muscles) ability to move the arm from a 180 degree plane to a 90 degree plane and the connective tissue .....the rope ....if you will to pull the lower arm up as the biceps contracts and shortens. After many year of repetitive stress the connective tissue will grow (much the same as muscle)but at a slow rate, as there is poor blood supply to the tendons hence their characteristics of long healing time. Tendinitis would not be the arm wrestlers nightmare that it is if we all had blood supply to the tendons that we do to muscle and the reason why icing your arm works. So I think tendon strength is really just the ability for your tendons to "hold up" under the stress your muscles place on them during contraction. Think about this .......if you tried to pull a car with a string it would break, but if you pulled it with a 1" rope it would not break and the car "in neutral" would move. However, if the car was in park.....the rope would not break but the car would not move. Meaning the amount of weight you can move is dependent on one another and their individual "strength". That is my little analogy for muscles and tendons
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Bench
Feb 22, 2006 16:57:29 GMT -5
Post by Brian Kehler on Feb 22, 2006 16:57:29 GMT -5
To a degree, yes... Tendons are connective tissue and as such have no contractile ability.
But there is some truth to the term "tendon strength".
Through force training the muscle gets stronger, and the tendons adapt and grow to compensate for the increased tensile strength being placed on them. By training like this, through the CNS you achieve increased neural drive to the muscle, increased synchronization of motor units, and increased activation of the contractile apparatus.
BUT at the musculotendinous junction (where muscles turns into tendon) there's, a receptor called the GTO (golgi tendon organ), which automatically senses load capacity on tendons and will stop the muscle from contracting before it has a chance to hurt itself. So with heavy and repetitive training you actually get an increase in maximal force due to a decreased inhibition by the protective mechanisms of the muscle (golgi tendon organ).
So, it's directly related to the strength you can produce through maximal contraction. Most people will just turn all of the tissue physiology into the general term "tendon strength" not knowing what's actually happening there... but lay terms make it a lot easier for most to understand.
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Bench
Feb 23, 2006 10:35:32 GMT -5
Post by markmacphail on Feb 23, 2006 10:35:32 GMT -5
Well put. So this is the background info. for all those guys out there with the big arms wondering why smaller guys are stronger.
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