Muscle Types

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Description

Your muscles do four important tasks: they maintain your body posture so you can walk upright; they stabilize your joints, so you don't flop around; they allow you to move where and when you want; and they generate heat. The three main muscle types are skeletal muscle, cardiac muscle, and smooth muscle. Skeletal muscle is the only muscle type under your voluntary control. It attaches to and covers your bony skeleton. Cardiac muscle, an involuntary muscle type, is only in your heart, where it makes up the heart wall and forms a specialized electrical conduction system. Separate heart muscle fibers act together so that your heart contracts and relaxes as if the fibers were one huge muscle. Smooth muscle is in the stomach and other body organ walls. Smooth muscle, like cardiac muscle, is called involuntary because it functions without your conscious directions.