# The Human body

Move your mouse over a button to view a body system

skeleton

muscular system

nervous system

respiratory system

cardiovascular system

This figure shows a human skeleton, the set of bones inside the body. On later sections, we will look at some parts of this, particularly the bones in the leg. For now we just have to know that it exists.

This is a set of muscles that cover most of the body. Muscles are connected to the bones, and are the way that the body moves the bones. So when we want to lift a leg, our brain activates a muscle in that leg, and the leg moves.

As the muscles and the bones are connected so strongly, the combination of the two is often called the muscular-skeletal system. We will discuss the muscular-skeletal system much more later in this block.

This is a set of nerves that run over nearly all parts of the body. Each nerve is connected to the brain. The nerves allow us to feel - when something touches our skin, we know that it does so because the nerves in that part of the body sense that touch and send a signal to the brain.

The brain and the nerves work by sending electrical signals back and forth.This is a really interesting topic, but we will not discuss it in great detail because other topics are more closely related to sport.

This is the combination of lungs, mouth, nose and throat that enables us to breathe. It is very important in sport, and we will examine this in much more detail later in this section.

This comprises the heart, the blood and the arteries and veins that run all around the body. The way the heart works and the health of the blood of very important in sport and we will examine this more closely in this section.

As will become clear later in the course, the cardiovascular system and the respiratory system are closely connected. They are often referred to as just one system, called the cardio-respiratory system.