What Are the Functions of the Skeletal System Muscles?
Function Skeletal muscles have three major functions. First, skeletal muscle works with the bones of the skeletal system to produce movement. Second, it muscle provides stabilization. Finally, it generates heat; providing critical support to the regulation of body temperature. Skeletal muscle has four important characteristics that allow for its function. These characteristics are excitability, contractility, elasticity and extensibility. Movement The excitability and contractility of skeletal muscle refer to its reaction to a nervous electrical impulse. Excitability means the muscle can respond to a stimulus. Contractility means the muscle is able to shorten powerfully. An electrical impulse, or action potential, is carried by a nerve cell to a muscle cell. When the action potential reaches the end of the nerve cell, it is translated into a chemical signal and travels to a specified muscle cell. The muscle cell contracts, or shortens, in response to the signal it receives from the ner
