The absorption of work by a muscle stretched during a single twitch or a short tetanus

Abstract

When a stimulated muscle is stretched fairly quickly during the active phase of contraction, it resists strongly and mechanical work must be done in stretching it. What happens to this work? If the length to which the muscle is stretched is not too great no significant part of the work remains as mechanical (elastic) energy after the muscle has relaxed. The total heat produced up to the end of relaxation is greater than it would have been had no work been performed on the muscle, but the excess is too small to account for all the work done. It is concluded that the missing work, about half of the whole, is absorbed, presumably as chemical energy. If a stretch is applied entirely during the relaxation phase, when activity is over but tension is still present, the whole of the work performed reappears as heat. If the view is accepted that the missing work is absorbed in chemical synthesis, it appears that the physical system responsible for mechanical work is reversibly coupled, during the active state, with a chemical system providing the necessary energy; and that this coupling is broken when activity passes off. Other possible hypotheses, however, are discussed. The application to ordinary muscular movement is referred to.