This study explores how muscle force, pressure, and strain interact during active skeletal muscle contractions using in silico modeling. While pressure has often been used as a proxy for muscle force, the authors demonstrate its limitations due to boundary pressure relaxation. Instead, they identify strong correlations between force and principal, shear, and volumetric strains. The work proposes strain metrics derived from non-invasive MRI as more reliable surrogates for estimating muscle force, offering new insights into musculoskeletal performance and advancing biomechanical modeling for rehabilitation and bioengineering applications.