The fascia secret: how does it affect your health – and should you loosen it up with a foam roller? | Life and style

FAscia, the connective tissue that maintains the body’s internal structure, hasn’t really spent that long in the spotlight. Anatomists knew of its existence long before the Hippocratic Oath existed, but until the 1980s it was routinely thrown into the trash during human dissections, considered nothing more than packaging that gets in the way of studying everything else. However, over the past few decades our understanding of the sport has evolved and (arguably) gone beyond limits. Today, many personal trainers insist that you should loosen it up with a foam roller, or even harness its magical elastic powers to jump higher and do more push-ups. But what is it Really do – and is there a way to actually benefit from it?

“The simplest way to describe fascia is to think of the structure of a tangerine,” says Natasha Kilian, specialist in musculoskeletal physiotherapy at Pure Sports Medicine. “You have the outer skin, and underneath, the white marrow that separates the segments and holds them together. Fascia works the same way: it’s a continuous, all-encompassing network that surrounds and connects everything in the body, from muscles and nerves to blood vessels and organs. It’s essentially the body’s internal suit, keeping everything supported and integrated.” If you’ve ever cut a piece of meat, it’s the thin silver layer that surrounds the muscle, like cling film.

Physically, it’s made of collagen, although 70% is actually water – and it hydrates through a squeezing motion, which pumps fluid through the fascial layers, keeping them supple and smoothly slippery. It also contains nerve endings that allow it to sense movement, pressure and temperature – and can influence posture, movement and proprioception.

“It’s constantly about communicating to the brain what the body is feeling,” Kilian explains. “It’s not a thin layer, it’s a massive, functioning sensory organ system that holds us together.”

Healthy fascia acts as a biological source, recycling energy during movement and contributing to the efficiency of running, jumping and athletic power. This has led some movement coaches to suggest that you can exploit its elasticity to be more explosive – by “driving” into the ground to do more push-ups, for example – but that’s not entirely true. “It won’t do miracles for you or suddenly make you magically stronger,” says functional movement specialist and anatomist Julian Baker. “But if we keep it fluid and keep it moving, it will improve our quality of movement.

That’s really the key. The nature of fascia means that it reacts to what we do repeatedly, locking us into that set of movements and making everything else a little trickier. “Our bodies are intelligent,” explains Kilian. “When we repeat the same activity, the body adapts to make it easier. For most of us, that means hours spent at a desk, hunched over a keyboard. Over time, we stiffen in this posture. So if you work long days and play cricket or tennis on the weekends, you might feel it when you play or serve: your fascia has tightened from keeping your arms forward all week.”

The easiest way to start solving this problem is to spend more time doing the kinds of movements you would otherwise only do occasionally. “I talk about it in terms of a circle of potential,” says Baker. “If I tell a group of people to raise their arms as far as possible, then breathe and raise them higher, they will always go up a few extra inches – the reason being that we have an extended range of potential that we very rarely enter into. This is our circle, and as we get older we stop moving, that circle gets smaller. As the circle gets smaller, our connective tissue starts to get smaller, and that starts to limit us in what we can do. If I’m 85 and want to reach higher and grab a cup off a shelf, it’s not necessary to have strong back muscles – I really want a full range, I don’t think there is any particular range or movement – the ultimate message is to keep moving in as many different ways and ranges as possible.

But fascia is not immune to problems, and dealing with them can be a frustrating process. Many problems that can arise with fascia will not be obvious, for example, with an MRI – which is part of the reason why deep structural problems in the body can be difficult to diagnose.

So how do you start to fix it? Until recently, many answers to this question revolved around the idea of ​​rolling the sole of your foot on a golf ball, or lying on your side to roll your iliotibial band (a tough band of connective tissue that runs along the outside of your thigh, from knee to hip) over a large knobby cylinder, in a process sometimes called self-myofascial release. But that may not really be beneficial.

“The current understanding is that you can’t really ‘break’ the fascia like many people think,” Kilian explains. “While rolling the foot can help by increasing blood flow and releasing tension, it’s important to view the body as an integrated system. You need to consider the tension in your glutes, hamstrings, calves and back – not just the area where you’re feeling pain. It’s the way all of these muscles and fascial lines interact – or fail – that leads to discomfort. In other words, don’t confuse the victim with the aggressor. “

Baker has a slightly different take on why turnover can still produce results. “If you put your foam roller on the ground and you go down and roll your thighs every day for 30 days, nothing is going to happen to your fascia. But the fact is that you went down to the ground and got back up. And that movement, where you’re likely to move your body in ways that you otherwise wouldn’t have done for weeks or months, is what’s going to make the difference.”

What does this mean to most people? It might be worth trying rock climbing – Baker has led his own group for more than 50 years – or swimming, dancing or Pilates, all of which move the body in unusual ranges and types of rotation.

But if all of that is a little tiring, maybe it just means taking the time to move more naturally. “Think about the way a cat or dog stretches – or even the way we naturally yawn and move when we’re relaxed on vacation, stretching our arms out,” says Kilian. “The body instinctively knows which directions it needs to move to release tension and release restricted fascia. Even something as simple as a long, slow diaphragmatic inhale during a stretch can help elongate fascia and encourage the entire system to move more freely.”

There is still a lot of research to be done: as noted, we have only just stopped discarding fascia. But for now, move as much, as often, and in different ways as possible.