Fascial Fitness, Second Edition

Practical Exercises to Stay Flexible, Active, and Pain Free in Just 20 Minutes a Week

Robert Schleip

• Publisher: Lotus Publishing
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781623176754
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Sport & Exercise Science
• Index: Biological Sciences

Fully illustrated, easy-to-learn fascial exercises for improving mobility and flexibility, treating pain and enhancing sports performance—a newly updated bestseller. In this second edition, fascia researcher and Rolfing therapist Dr. Robert Schleip offers readers a series of practical exercises for energetic, pain-free living—and shows how to train your fascia in just 10 minutes twice a week. You can do these exercises at home, squeeze them in between meetings and fit them into the existing fitness regimens.Schleip shares up-to-date, scientifically backed findings from the world of fascia research, explaining which exercises and techniques are most effective and why—and which popular fascia workouts can actually do more harm than good. With special sections for athletes, seniors, injury recovery and more, Schleip reveals why fascial fitness is critical to our lifelong flexibility and health.Physical therapists, sports therapists and doctors agree that if we want to stay fit, flexible, and pain free, we need to look after our connective tissue—our fascia. This book shows you how, explaining: • How fascia transfers energy to our muscles and communicates with the nervous system• The principles of fascia training, and how to identify your tissue type• The foundational role of fascia in our overall health and wellness• How to target soreness in problem areas like the back, neck, arms, hips and feet• Exercises for everyone from the office-bound computer user to athletes• Fascia training for improving gait; correcting poor posture; and speed, power and injury resilience

Before you start the exercises, it’s time to learn more about fascia and the importance of the connective tissue in your body. The connective tissue is amazingly diverse and has features that affect the entire body. That’s why I have dedicated this chapter to providing an overview of the different types of fascial tissue and their properties. As you will see, certain basic functions of the connective tissue are the same for almost all types. In addition, fascia is part of a network spanning long stretches of the body and is linked up with various organs. All this has implications for the type of training that my colleagues and I have developed, which will be introduced in Chapter 3. The attributes or features of connective tissue are even more important when you consider that they are related to pain, as well as to certain diseases or functional limitations, and that they change as we age and can even affect our mental health. For this reason, this chapter will also look more closely at the science of fascia.

If you want to get the most out of your workout, the following paragraphs are really important. Those of you who are in a hurry may wish to skip this chapter and head straight to the exercises in Chapter 3. In a quiet moment, however, you should come back and read this information, as you will benefit even more when doing the exercises and perhaps gain some insights into ways of adapting your daily routine, too.

Fresh fascia

At some time or another, most people will probably have had a piece of fascial tissue in their hand, usually in the kitchen while cutting meat. When we prepare meat, it is usually taken from the muscle of the animal, and that is usually where we find fascia. It runs through the pieces of meat, creating a delicate marbling effect, and also appears as a white layer on top of the meat. Butchers, chefs and home cooks tend to cut off the tendons and almost all of the white layers. Depending on the type of meat and the dish being prepared, they are sometimes kept in to add flavour and richness. If, for example, you like nice crispy crackling on your roast pork, then you would leave a thick piece of abdominal fascia, including fat, on the joint. In a typical roast beef joint that is cut from the loin, you can see part of the large fascia found in the animal’s back, as shown in the picture. It has been scored, ready for roasting. The fascia that you can see here is muscular fascia, but there are also other types of fascial tissue, such as that found in the intestines. However, the focus of this book is the musculoskeletal system, so we will be looking mainly at the muscle fascia.

Fascia up close: typical roast beef joint, with a fine marbling of fat and connective tissue. The white layer on top is a section of the large fascia found in the back.

The basic building block with many functions

Fascia is essentially made up of the two core building blocks of any living organism: protein and water. The exact structure of the tissue depends on the function it serves and its location in the body. There is so much variation in the different types of fascia and their many functions that it can all be very confusing to understand. Until recently, even the experts were divided in their understanding of fascia. However, doctors, physiologists and anatomists have long been aware that the large sheets of fascia, as well as the tendons and ligaments, the firm sheaths of tissue encasing our organs – such as the heart and kidneys – and the ultra-thin layers around the bundles of muscle and joint capsules are all made of the same material. They are also in agreement that all the subcutaneous fat, the loose, reticulate abdominal tissue, and even the cartilage and fatty tissue all share the same essential principles when it comes to structure and function. In fact, all the connective tissue acts as a kind of universal building material within the body. It is all part of a mesh of fibres that are tightly bound in some places and looser in others, and contain varying amounts of fluid. This mesh can be stretchy or dense, resistant to tension and tearing or very soft and loose, but it always consists of the same core building blocks – just in different proportions: collagen, elastin and a watery to gel-like ground substance.

At the first International Fascia Research Congress in 2007, the founders, including myself, decided to redefine the term. The fibrous connective tissue in the musculoskeletal system and the solid sheaths of tissue around the organs was henceforth known as ‘fascia’. We wanted a term that also accounted for the fact that the connective tissue has various functions in common. In coming up with the term, our event team drew upon the findings that had been made by doctors, physiologists, biologists, orthopaedic surgeons and anatomists, as well as physiotherapists and massage therapists, movement therapists and alternative therapists from all disciplines since the 1960s.

When this book was first published in 2014, there was still some criticism from the medical world about our use of the word ‘fascia’ as a comprehensive term for this tissue. However, that has all changed since then, with the concept of an interdependent network of fascia in the human body having now been widely accepted by orthopaedic surgeons and sports scientists. Fascia training has also received a certain amount of criticism, with some claiming that “you cannot exercise the fascia specifically because it is inseparable from the muscles.”

This statement, which does seem plausible at first glance, has been put forward time and again, including by some highly regarded experts in the field. However, this is also something that my colleagues have since come to understand differently. It is becoming increasingly recognised that the collagen tissue we call fascia has different sensitivity thresholds and adjustment times than the muscle fibres, and that it therefore makes perfect sense to practice targeted exercises that hone in on the fascia. In some instances, those very same critics who were vehemently opposed to the notion of being able to exercise the fascia independently when we published the first edition of the book have – to our sheer delight – made a complete U-turn and are now passionate advocates of fascia training.

The components of fascia

Collagens

Collagens play a very important role as a component of fascia. They consist of fairly densely-packed fibres that literally give the human body – and that of all vertebrates – its shape. They are therefore referred to as scaffold proteins or structural proteins. Making up a proportion of 30 percent, collagens are the most common proteins in the body, so they really are one of our core building blocks. Even bones are originally made from collagen fibres. In the womb, the embryo initially produces collagen. Then minerals, such as calcium, are incorporated between the collagen layers. This is how hard bones develop from soft fibres.

These images of collagen fibres were taken using a scanning electron microscope with extreme magnification.

There are 28 different types of collagen, four of which are very common. They have some interesting mechanical characteristics: they stretch easily while also being very resistant to tearing, and their tensile strength is greater than that of steel!

Elastin

Elastin is the second most-common structural protein found in fascial tissue. Elastin fibres are particularly stretchy: when pulled, they can expand by up to 150 percent of their original length and then return to their previous shape, like an elastic band. The name ‘elastin’ refers to this important property, because elastin can expand to more than double its length before tearing due to too much strain.

A significantly enlarged image of elastin fibres from the main artery.

This stretchiness is important for organs that are subjected to mechanical stress or that have to change their shape – such as the bladder, which perpetually fills and empties. Thanks to their high proportion of elastin, these organs can extend and contract again like a balloon. Our skin, which stretches naturally when we move, also contains elastin.

However, it is not the elastin fibres that are responsible for the elasticity of fascia. Elastin is indeed very stretchy, like chewing gum, but it is the collagen fibres that store kinetic energy and release it again, allowing it to spring back like a catapult. We will explain this phenomenon in more detail in the next chapter. For now, the important thing to grasp is the difference between elastin and collagen fibres. The confusion lies in our everyday language: when we talk about ‘elasticity’, it is often unclear whether we are referring to the property of being very stretchy, like chewing gum, or having a high storage capacity for kinetic energy, like a steel spring. Elastin fibres are characterised by the former property, while collagen fibres possess the latter.

Connective tissue cells

Both of the fibrous proteins collagen and elastin are produced by cells in fascia – the actual connective tissue. These cells are called fibroblasts and are spread throughout the mesh of fibres that make up the fascial tissue. Only the fibroblasts produce the connective tissue fibres in the amount needed by the corresponding organ. They also respond to external requirements. For example, if you work out a lot and develop strength, the fibroblasts make more fibres that help your muscles to grow. These connective tissue cells also regularly regenerate the tissue, but this is a very slow process. It takes you more than six months to renew most of your collagen fibres. In fact, it usually takes 7 to 14 months for the old material to be broken down and replaced with new fibres.

As well as producing the structural proteins your body needs, the connective tissue cells also produce enzymes and neurotransmitters, which enable the fibroblasts to communicate with one another and with other cells. With these neurotransmitters, they are also involved in the functioning of the immune system. These biochemical elements, together with the watery to gel-like fluid in which they float, are referred to by specialists as ‘ground substance’.

The matrix

The connective tissue cells and fibres are surrounded by fluid in which other substances float. This mixture of fibres and ground substance is called the ‘matrix’. The fluid element of the ground substance consists of water and sugar molecules, whose job it is to bind various materials and cells together.

The matrix plays a crucial role in supplying nutrients to the connective tissue cells, and to the organ to which the connective tissue belongs. We will revisit this subject later on, when the deeper secrets of fascia will be discussed from a scientific perspective. It is important to note that the matrix in these different connective tissue types hosts large quantities of immune cells, lymphocytes or fat cells, nerve endings and blood vessels, and that the water content of the matrix varies.

The structure of fascia: the ratio of the components, the exact composition and the type of fibres depend on what function the fascia has within the body and on the organ to which the tissue belongs.

Water is crucial as a medium for cellular metabolism. As a consequence, the various techniques used to treat fascia focus on the water content and on the exchange of fluid – which we will come to later. There is another very important component of the matrix that is also responsible for its water content: a substance known as hyaluronan, previously called ‘hyaluronic acid’, within the beauty industry, for example. Experts rece...