Chicken Analogy Essay

“chicken analogy.” A chicken has two different types of meat, white and dark. The white meat is from the breast and the dark meat is from the legs. The only time a chicken uses its breast, or pectoral, muscles is in flight, and it never flies far. It is only used when the fox enters the hen house and the chicken has to get out of there quickly. This is the fast-twitch muscle fiber.
The slow-twitch endurance type of muscle is in the legs, because a chicken spends all its time walking. What makes the muscle darker? Because slow-twitch muscle has to function over longer periods of time, it must have the ability to con- tinually reproduce energy. The millions of extra mitochondria and the higher con- centration of enzymes used in this
So, the next time someone passes you the chicken, you can say, “I’ll take the dark meat. I could use the extra mito- chondria.” PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER
Fast-twitch, slow-twitch, anaerobic, aerobic—what does all this mean to you? How do you apply this information in a meaningful and useful way to your exercise pro- gram? As we have mentioned, everyone has different proportions of fast-twitch and slow-twitch muscle fiber. Because of this, it is more efficient for you to exercise in particular ways to target your own unique muscle makeup.
For example, you and a friend decide to start jogging to get into shape. Unbe- knownst to you, your friend is 70 percent slow-twitch muscle and 30 percent fast- twitch muscle, while you are the exact opposite, 70 percent fast-twitch fiber and 30 percent slow-twitch fiber. After two weeks of running, your friend is having much greater success than you, finding more enjoyment in this activity and running faster and with less difficulty. Meanwhile, you are struggling along, huffing and puffing and discouraged. You have noticed improvement, but your friend is clearly doing better and having fun. How disconcerting! Frustrated, you think, “This