Why Measure Mid Thigh Girth
The more a muscle is used, the stronger it becomes. There are a number of factors that influence muscle strength, but one of the more important factors is the cross sectional area of the muscle. This has shown to be directly related to the amount of force a muscle can produce. Lower limbs are used daily and are therefore used to performing weight bearing activities, such as walking. It is these and resistance training weight-bearing activities that increase the size of the muscle (hypertrophy). With the removal of gravity, however, there will be no loading force onto the muscle and thus it will have no stimulus to maintain the area of each muscle fiber. We can therefore determine how long it will take for significant decreases in muscle size (atrophy) to occur after the removal of gravity. This has important consequences to people who have been unable to move or have been bed-ridden for extended periods as the same adaptations to the muscle have been shown to occur in these individuals on earth as occurs in cosmonauts returning from space.
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