Muscle contraction is the tightening, shortening, or lengthening of muscles when you do some activity. It can happen when you hold or pick up something, or when you stretch or exercise with weights.

We've all been there before. Running along the basketball court or swimming across the pool, when, all of a sudden, we experience a sharp pain in our foot or leg. Muscle cramps are common, affect ...

Proprioceptive neuromuscular facilitation (PNF) is a form of assisted stretching. It combines passive stretching with muscle contraction. First, your partner applies force to stretch your muscle ...

Many of us have had this dreaded experience: you’re asleep or lying in bed, minding your own business, when all of a sudden you feel an excruciating, twisting, tightening, pain in one of your calves.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, Vol. 95, No. 6 (Mar. 17, 1998), pp. 2944-2949 (6 pages) For more than 30 years, the fundamental goal in molecular ...

Share on Pinterest Research suggests that short bursts of daily exercise may be more beneficial for muscles. The Good Brigade/Getty Images A new study finds that exercising briefly five days a week ...

Skeletal muscle cells facilitate voluntary movements such as walking, running, and other forms of exercise. They are comprised of thin, tubular cells called muscle or myofibres due to their threadlike ...

For most people, swallowing is second nature, but how does it occur, and why do some people have difficulty with it? Researchers at Kyushu University in Japan have started to tackle these questions by ...