All mysteries
Mystery #2Tier 2-3body / muscles

Why do your muscles only pull, never push?

You can bend your arm up and straighten it back down, but it turns out a muscle can only ever pull, never push. So how do you manage to move a bone in both directions?

A diagram of the arm's muscles bending the elbow to lift a glass.
Photo: OpenStax College · CC BY 4.0 · via Wikimedia Commons

Your guess

What's your hunch: if a muscle can only pull, how do you move a bone back and forth?

There's no single magic word to type, have a go in your own words, then reveal the answer to see how close you got.

Make a guess to unlock the hints and the answer.