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Superman (Mark Russell, MD, Assistant Professor, Pediatric Cardiology) Skeletal muscles are designed to permit strong, quick and usually voluntary contractions to allow a wide range of movement of many body parts. Skeletal muscle consists of bundles of muscle fibers composed of thousands of individual muscle cells. This example is from a zebrafish, but human skeletal muscle would be nearly indistinguishable from this. The contraction force is provided by the unique structure of muscle cells, seen here as bands. When athletes train, there is an increase in the number of individual muscle cells, as well as an increase in the size of muscle fibers such as this one.
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