Muscles & the Heart

Profile: The Strongman

Phil Pfister, 36 (Charleston, WV)
Phil currently holds the title of "world's strongest man", and has proudly done it without the use of steroids. We’ll meet his trainer, Nick Osborn, who will explain the range of exercises necessary to build overall strength and endurance. It will show the critical role of the body’s most important muscle, the heart, in distributing nutrients throughout the body. Graphics will show just how muscle tissue is built up, and what can cause it to weaken or tear.

Facts:

• The more than 650 muscles in the body make up about half of its weight.
  
  
• The heart is a muscle that pumps about 1 million barrels of blood during an average lifetime — that's enough to fill more than 3 super tankers.
  
  
• A smile uses 17 muscles; a frown uses 43.
  
  
• Your heart beats about 100,000 times in one day and about 35 million times in a year. During an average lifetime, the human heart will beat more than 2.5 billion times.
  
  
• The biggest of the skeletal muscles is the Gluteus maximus i.e. the buttock. The body's smallest muscle is the stapedius, inside the ear