Fascia is connective tissue, yet it’s water as well. This organ though is not in the same sense of western anatomical knowledge that can be dissected and quantified, there seems to be only one piece of fascia in our body. Yet fascia is divided into pockets that hold our organs, muscles and actually separate our muscle. According to Tom Myers author of anatomy trains, “While every anatomy lists around 600 separate muscles, it is more accurate to say that there is one muscle poured into six hundred pockets of the fascial webbing. The ‘illusion’ of separate muscles is created by the anatomist’s scalpel, dividing tissues along the planes of fascia. This reductive process should not blind us to the reality of the unifying whole.” Which is a fancy way of saying that where one muscle ends, another begins, so there has to be some sort of connection there. Right?
Yes! I’ve been seeing this a lot in my studies of how something as simple as a collapse in the arch of your foot will; pull your tibias anterior(shin muscle) pulls on your vastus laterals (outside leg muscle) which pulls on your biceps femurs (outside Hamstring) and pulls your hips into a posterior tilt which makes your back muscle compensate, which causes back pain. Not to mention the tendency for an arch collapse to predispose the knee to an ACL tear. It’s basic biomechanics, if one muscle pulls on this bone, the other muscle or tendon or ligament is going to be effected as well.
This is what fascial adhesions look like.
So what makes this phenomenon less likely to happen?
Deal with your fascia, keep it healthy and understand how to unglue fascial adhesions which inhibit or stop the musculature from doing their job properly.
Fascia is found to be water about 68% to be exact. The misconception of this fascia is that it’s normal water. Resent research by the Fascianados at Ulm University found that in fascia water presents itself in a “bound state.” Electrically charged water molecules that connect to other water molecules using hydrogen bonds. This bound water is what gives fascia it’s rebound qualities which would incorporate movements such as jumping, dance, running.
So staying hydrated is important but what else can we do to keep our fascia healthy? Variation. Fascia is like a sponge, and sitting or moving in the same way for an extended amount of time dehydrates or squeezes the water out of one portion of the fascia. The researcher I have been following Robert Schleip even recommended that if running for extended periods of time variation will help rehydrate the tissue, slow down, go faster, run backwards. Anything you can to vary your movement patterns to let the water return to the fascia.
http://www.fasciaresearch.de/Schleip2012_FasciaNomenclatures.pdf