Wonder Wednesday: Twitching

Sometimes I feel like I'm the most curious person on earth.  I'm the one who will never run out of questions.  I'll ask you a question and then have a dozen more where that came from.  I'll never know enough, I'll never be satisfied with what answers I have.  I try not to say never but really this has been going on most all of my life.  While I feel like I'm always learning something new, sometimes I wonder how much I really retain.  When I was in college dating my husband (we met my the last part of my freshman year) while I was knee deep in my first biology class.  I'm not sure what he saw in me other than the nerdy biology girl that regurgitated every possible detail I could remember from that morning's lecture (and with a ton of enthusiasm, might I add). 

That introduction leads nicely into my next segment: the nuggets of information I'm going to enthusiastically relay via blog entries titled, "Wonder Wednesday."  Because I can't stand it, I have to tell someone what I've learned.  Thus the first of many Wonder Wednesdays...

Did you ever wonder why sometimes we are sore from exercises and sometimes we are not?  For example, let's take a side-lying leg raise series.  Your gluteus medius BURNS with pain and the thought is surely I'll be extremely sore tomorrow.  But you wake up the following morning with no evidence; there's no tiny ache or pain.  Then sometimes you do exercises where you hardly feel anything or maybe you feel it but nothing like the cramp in your outer thigh from the side lying leg raises. 

Very curious situations, right? Well, I have the answer as to why this is typically the case.  The reason is because the gluteus medius (along with the gluteus minimus) is a stabilizer for the hip.  It's a deep muscle that is mostly made up of slow twitch fibers.  This means that because it's a stabilizer muscle and made up of slow twitch fibers it doesn't get tired as easy because stabilizer muscles work all the time to helps us stabilize.  But perhaps when you do those squats, the next couple of days your gluteus maximus is talking to you all 48 hours.  The reason is opposite.  The gluteus maximus is made up of fast twitch muscle fibers.  It's a big mover and thus doesn't work as long or as often so it gets sore because of fiber type and exercise performed.

Whew!  Glad we got that covered.
Happy Wonder Wednesday!  Do a little wondering today.