More muscle = more strength?

One thing that affects a kick are the muscles behind it. But it doesn’t help to only have strong muscles if these muscles are not even used in the kick itself. The most significant muscles which determine the type of athlete a person is are the Slow and Fast twitch muscle fibers.

Slow and fast twitch fibers have different characteristics when it comes to exercise. In a kick, as you need a rapid contraction of the muscles in order to strongly hit the football, the musclefibers which are used are the fast twitch ones. This is due to the fact that the fast twitch fibers use anaerobic metabolism to create energy, which enables them to have powerful, short bursts of speed. Although these fibers are more easily ‘fired up’ they build up fatigue at a faster rate than the slow twitch fibers.

Human muscles contain a genetically determined mixture of both slow and fast fiber types. On average, we have about 50 percent slow twitch and 50 percent fast twitch fibers in most of the muscles used for movement. But this can vary from person to person, depending on their genetic makeup. Elite athletes, for instance a sprinter, tend to have more or less 80% of the fast twitch fiber which is the muscle they use on their particular sport and just 20% of the slow twitch fiber.