Contractile Characteristics of Skeletal Muscle
... After we received our frog, we cut around the leg allowing us to pull the skin away from the hind leg; this gave us easy access to the gastrocnemius muscle as well as the sciatic nerve. We then separated the calf muscle with a toothpick and tied a string around the end of muscle and cut away the tibia bone, leaving only the calf muscle. After isolating the calf muscle, the next job we had to do was to isolate the sciatic nerve. The sciatic nerve was deep within the gastrocnemius muscle tissue, and required the use of a toothpick to expose the nerve entirely.