A Real Tongue Lashing

Trivia time: What’s the strongest muscle in the human body per ounce of tissue? If you guessed the tongue, then you’ve just won the right to smile. Enjoy the moment!


Any statement espoused as fact really should be given a reference source for credibility, but I confess, this tongue thing came to me embedded within a forwarded email. You know internet tripe that you probably spend more time erasing than reading.

How could you not believe it, though? Gee whiz, between eating and talking, it has to be the most exercised muscle of them all. We may be stumbling onto the fitness craze of the near future, purposely weakening a muscle so the rest of our body has a chance to become lean and strong.

Think about it.

Since we are attempting to provoke beneficial thoughts, and we’ve already mentioned a muscle pretty well taken for granted, let me remind you that, as you pump up those major muscle groups, to make all you women appear and feel svelte and all you guys to have major guns and barrel-chests, don’t overlook all the smaller muscles in your body. It takes magnificent harmonizing of related muscles, big and small, to do things like rotate the arms forwards or backwards three-hundred-sixty degrees, rotate the neck, the wrists and the legs.

If you think it’s unnecessary to concern yourself with the minor muscles, then consider this; you work out in the weight room, cardio room or aerobics room hard for months and you’re feeling pretty darned cocky about your level of fitness.

Sounding familiar yet?

Then someone invites you to, let’s say, go water skiing for the first time in a year.

Yep, you know where this is going. Don’t you?

The morning after the day at the lake and you’re so sore that sitting up on the edge of the bed may just be wishful thinking for a time.

I would urge everyone to dedicate a day to the smaller muscles of the body and work on range of motion in all the appendages. Your body will love you for it.

One word of caution, though; any resistance used in full range-of-motion routines should be very light—if any at all.

 Daniel (Danny) Lance Wright
Author of
"Paradise Flawed"/Dream Books LLC/2009
"Six Years' Worth"/Father's Press/2007
"The Last Radiant Heart"/Virtual Tales/Spring 2010
"Anne Bonny, Where Are You?"/Rogue Phoenix Press/May 2010