Week Two

Today's session was all about muscles. We asked everybody how many muscles there are in the human body and, although the answers ranged from 102 to 70,000, the majority had found out that there's somewhere between 640 and 800.

Some of the participants are obviously very internet savvy and had discovered some fantastic facts such as the stapedius is the smallest muscle in the body (it's in the ear, by the way). Quite a few of them had come across the fact that the tongue is the strongest muscle.

Happily, one boy had found out that there are three main muscle types (skeletal, smooth and cardiac) so we ran through those as well as teaching them the basic muscles in the body. We did this by writing the names of muscles on stickers and then using our resident "naughty" pupil as "Sticker Man" (which apparently became his nickname) and asking other pupils to place each sticker on the appropriate muscle. Our little "Sticker Man" was very amused by the "Gluteus Maximus" and it's now his standard answer for every question: What's the arm bone called? Gluteus Maximus! Whereabouts is the heart? Gluteus Maximus!....etc.

We're keen to encourage them all to think more about running and the athletes that they know and see on television. We explained in basic terms how there are different types of muscle fibres in the human body, some of which are geared towards endurance type training and others that are more important for strength/power. We noted the long, lean appearance of Paula Radcliffe,for example, compared with the power-packed muscles of Usain Bolt.

We were pleased that most of the students (both adults and children together) had been practising the mobility sequence and we ran through this again. We had also planned to teach some other exercises, some of which were floor-based, so we asked the group to lay out some mats. Afterwards, David's words were, "we should have thought that through more. I forgot that mats make kids go ballistic". Strange, but true. The next five minutes or so were chaos as the kids dragged mats around the sports hall, shouting and screaming and mauling each other about. Eventually, we found some kind of order and channeled their energy into constructive exercises, asking them to call out the muscle names as they used them (needless to say, Sticker Man used his Gluteus Maximus every time).

As per last session, we felt exhausted but happy at the end. It's funny how you never grow out of that excitement of knowing the answer in class and one mum was almost bursting to answer a question about about tendons and ligaments. We were apprehensive about teaching adults and children together as we thought maybe the adults would be bored, but they genuinely seem interested and positive about improving their family's health.

Next week is ORGANS. We're bracing ourselves for lots of "poo" and "wee" comments.