Arm muscles and leg muscles are arranged in antagonistic pairs. H...

Question

Arm muscles and leg muscles are arranged in antagonistic pairs. How does this affect their functioning?
a. It provides a backup if one of the muscles is injured.
b. One muscle of the pair pushes while the other pulls.
c. A single motor neuron can control both of them.
d. It allows the muscles to produce opposing movements.

Accepted Answer

hi everyone. Let's look at our next problem. It says in an antagonistic muscle pair the contracting muscle is referred to as the blink and the relaxing muscle is referred to as the blank. So let's recall what an antagonistic muscle pair is. An antagonistic muscle pair is. A pair of muscles that always acts in tandem at the same time. And it means as one of them contracts the other relaxes. And if you think about moving your arms and legs you can probably bring to mind two examples of antagonistic muscle pairs in your arm, your biceps and your triceps as your bicep contracts, your triceps relaxes and vice versa and your upper leg and your thighs, your quadriceps and your hamstrings as one contracts the other relaxes. And you can kind of help to remember this. It's called an antagonistic muscle pair. You might think of how the antagonist is the opposite of the protagonist. So they're working for different aims one contracting one relaxing. So let's look at our answer choices and we can see that we have two groups of names choices A. And B. Have the names primary and secondary in two different orders. Choices C. And D. R. Agonist and antagonist. Well we do have a clue from our name antagonistic muscle pair that's going to point us to choices C. And D. As our possibilities because they go with the name agonist and antagonist. And so we can eliminate with his am be primary and secondary. Um And again if you didn't remember that if you think of the words primary and secondary, they often mean more important and less important or 1st and 2nd. Well these muscles act at the same time and neither is more important than the other. So that can help you rule those two out. So now you just have to recall which is which. And our correct answer is that the contracting muscle is a virtue is the agonist and the relaxing as the antagonist. So the choice C. Has those words in the correct order, Choice D. Has them reversed. So we'll eliminate that. Um If you're trying to remember which is which maybe you can imagine like as you pick something that you think of something contracting like squeezing it would cause agony. So the contracting muscles and agonist and the relaxing muscles the antagonist. So that might be just a little trick to help you remember which is which. So again in an antagonistic muscle pair the contracting muscles referred to as the choice C agonist and the relaxing muscles referred to as the antagonist. See you in the next video

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