The Types of Muscle and Fascia that Hold your Body Together

Without muscle and connective tissue, you wouldn’t have a heartbeat, be able to move, or keep your skin in place. They’re quite important to life as we know it!

There are 600-700 muscles in the average human body and it accounts for about 40% of total body weight. While your heart, intestines, vessels and biceps are all made of muscle, they are made up of distinctly different types of muscle tissue.

There are three types of muscle in the human body.

Cardiac muscle is found only in the heart. Unique to cardiac muscle is it’s ability to generate an electrical impulse, also known as a pacemaker. Your heart muscle cells are the ones that control when your heart beats! It usually is governed by just a small group of cells, but if other cells start to fire, the heart suffers an arrhythmia called ventricular fibrillation. You thankfully, have no voluntary control over cardiac muscle.

Smooth muscle also does not have voluntary control and is found in internal organs, digestive and intestinal walls and lining veins and arteries. Both your enteric and autonomic nervous system rule smooth muscle.

Skeletal muscle is the only type of muscle we have voluntary control over in the body. You control when your eyes blink and picking up your hand to scratch your nose (if you’re interested in how muscles work, check out this article).

Here’s where fascia comes in – muscles as you know it, are completely encased, surrounded and enveloped by fascia. Tendons, ligaments and even the covering of bone are all fascia!

And of course, there are a few types of fascia in the body as well, all specialized for the purpose they serve.

Watch my latest episode of Anatomy with Alex (below) to learn:

• The three different types of muscle in the human body
• The three different types of fascia in the human body
• Why fat is critical for your health
• The difference between superficial, deep and loose fascia
• What the heck fuzz (that stuff Gil Hedley talks about) really is

Tune in every Wednesday at 3:15 pm PST on the AE Wellness Facebook Page for Anatomy with Alex, my weekly show where I teach you anatomy and physiology in ways that are relevant to you in your life so you can maximize your mobility and live pain-free in your body.