As is suggested by its name, the musculoskeletal system is made up of both the muscular system and the skeletal system and is primarily responsible for the structure, support and movement of the body. Without this system, the body would not have any form and would not even be able to hold itself up, let alone move. The skeletal system holds all of the organs, blood vessels, muscles and everything else in the body together. The muscular system makes sure that the body can actually move. Every muscle is attached to a bone and the contractions of the muscles cause the bones to move …show more content…
Obviously these include the many bones in the body, from well-known ones such as the humorous to lesser known ones like the mandible or clavicle. However, the joints in the skeleton are also part of the musculoskeletal system. These joints are made up of a lot of parts. All joints in the body contain cartilage which acts as a shock absorber to stop the bones hitting one other and being worn down which could cause very bad skeleton disorders in later life. Other key parts of joints are ligaments (which join bone to bone to keep the structure of the joint) and tendons (which join muscle to bone which is how the muscles are able to move the bones). Ligaments are very tough and inflexible because they are needed for structure. They can tear which can be very serious. On the other hand, tendons are flexible because they are always moving. However, this means that they can snap which can be very dangerous and take a long time to heal.
The muscle part of the musculoskeletal system is made up of pairs of muscles because a muscle cannot work by itself. For example, the biceps work with the triceps (technically known as the biceps brachia and the triceps brachia, respectively), where the biceps are responsible for curling the arm and the triceps for straightening it again. In these pairs of muscles, when movement takes place, one of the muscles will contract and the other will relax and then when the movement is reversed, the