Understanding Fascia – Flexibility, Power & Pain

Transcript

Imagine this is one of your muscles and then 
imagine this plastic wrap is fascia. Fascia   wraps around but also through your muscles and it 
gives them shape and form. It allows for sliding   surfaces between tissues it's also an amazing 
sensory organ. The first time I heard about fascia   was years ago. I had a hamstring injury and I went 
to a bodyworker who I was hoping could cure me,   help fix me, by rubbing his elbow into my 
hamstring. The first thing he told me was that   I didn't have a hamstring issue, I had a fascia 
injury. I didn't know what that was. The second   thing he told me is that he doesn't work on 
muscles, he only works on fascia. He said   this as he was rubbing his elbow and some weird 
massage tools into the back of my leg and it just   didn't really make any sense to me. If you too 
are confused about fascia and you're wondering   about its role in flexibility, in strength, and 
also in pain, this video is for you. Hey, my name   is Lucas, I'm a yoga teacher and a trainer, and 
in this video we'll talk about what fascia is,   how it's different from other connective tissues 
in the body, and why it's really important to   understand it. Number two, we'll talk about 
why a lot of the bodywork massage therapist   lingo and nomenclature around fascia, a lot of the 
mainstream fitness stuff talking about myofascial   release, a lot of it's overly complicated, and 
confusing, and not so helpful. Number three, we'll   take a look at exercises that can be helpful for 
working on different fascial lines in your body.   Lastly, we'll finish up talking about some foods 
that can be helpful for giving you the building   blocks for the collagen and the elastin that makes 
up fascia in your body. Before we get started,   remember to hit down below, it's a 
really quick and simple way you can support   my work, support the channel, and get updated 
with my weekly science-based yoga videos. OK,   so what is fascia? In our body we have all kinds 
of different soft tissues and when you think about   muscles we tend to think of something that looks 
like this. Blood red steaks or something and maybe   you think of a marbled steak that has fat. But 
any muscle in the body is also intertwined and   really inseparable from fascia, these sheets of 
connective tissues. And there are thick layers   of fascia that are visible from the outside. You 
could see this in a piece of chicken, you could   see this in a cross section of beef, if you were 
in a deli section in a grocery store. But there   is also tons of invisible fascia that's so thin 
that it's transparent and not even visible to the   naked eye. To give you a little bit of reference 
for how prevalent this tissue is in your body,   depending on your size, somewhere between 18 
and 23 kilograms of fascia are inside you. Just   to give you some reference, in my body there's 
probably about 20 kilograms of fascia, so that's a   lot of tissue. A helpful way to understand fascia 
is to look at a cross-section of an orange and you   see the little pith, white bits that separate 
and hold everything together, without that pith   this would just be sort of an orange smoothie. 
The same is true in your body. You'd essentially   have bloody muscle smoothies were it not for the 
fascia that holds everything together. A key thing   to understand about fascia is that it has five 
or even six times as many sensory nerves as your   muscles, which means if you have sore quadriceps 
after leg day, you're very likely feeling some or   even all of that signal coming from your fascia, 
simply because it has more sensory nerve endings.   Unlike your tendons and your ligaments in your 
body, which often have very poor circulation,   sometimes they're avascular, your fascia also 
has little capillaries, so it has a little blood   supply. But also because of its proximity to 
muscle it can heal up pretty quickly. Unlike a   tendon or ligament injury, which can be major, 
a fascial injury can be quite painful, but in   many cases, can heal up in half or even a quarter 
of the time of a ligament or a tendon injury. So,   even though maybe in a 2D or a 3D drawing in a 
book your fascia looks something like a tendon or   a ligament, the way it behaves, its innervation, 
is really quite different. Your fascia has a very   interesting wavy pattern to the fibers and I'll 
show you a piece of dough to hopefully articulate   that. The fibers run in parallel to your muscle 
fibers in a wavy pattern and that gives it some   elasticity. What that means is, like a spring, 
the fascia can lengthen and then bounce back. It   has a limited amount of elasticity with that wavy 
fiber spring motion, but it's mostly plastic and   a plastic tissue, like the name suggests, changes 
shape. So, it can get thicker, it can get thinner,   but essentially it remodels based on what's 
underneath it. In this case what's underneath   it is the muscle tissue itself. So, do we stretch 
fascia? Not really. Do we strengthen fascia? Kind   of. Really what we do is we remodel or shape it. 
So, if you're working on your quadriceps, if you   are lengthening your hamstrings, the fascia that 
goes through and around it will absolutely change.   In some places thicker, in some places thinner, 
but it will absolutely be different. Your fascia   is often layered into lots and lots of layers like 
phyllo dough and in between these layers we have   lots of hydration, and so when fascia is damaged, 
oftentimes it'll become dry and rigid. And one of   the unique things about this tissue is in certain 
areas of your body it's very, very soft and   pliable, and in other areas it's rigid and strong, 
almost like a ligament. For example, your IT band,   your iliotibial band or your plantar fascia on 
the bottom of your foot, these act very similar to   ligaments or tendons and yet they are fascia. It's 
an extremely adaptive tissue and this is why it is   important to train your fascia. However, leading 
into my next point, you cannot work on your fascia   outside of your muscle. The term that's used 
is myofascial training, myofascial release,   and really this is referring to musculofascial. 
Myo just means muscle and fascia is this tissue   we've been talking about and you cannot work on 
your fascia without affecting the muscle. You   cannot train your muscles or lengthen your muscles 
without working the fascia. So, any form of   strength training, any form of ballistic training, 
any form of plyometrics or stretching, all of   those things are going to affect your muscles and 
your fascia that underlies them. So, if you talk   to a fitness professional or a bodyworker or a 
massage therapist who says they're able to isolate   fascia, that's usually them using tricky language 
to overcomplicate something that is really pretty   simple. This acts as a single unit. However, this 
is my next point that's important to understand,   fascia is different in that there are these big 
lines in your body of fascia that crisscross the   front of your body, that's sort of wrap like a 
corset around your pelvis, there's a big line   along your arm here, and what that means is, 
similar to a wetsuit, you need to work on these   big fascial chains in order to create dynamic, 
pliable, strong, and also resilient fascia. And   what that really comes down to is working in a 
full plane of motion, which we'll take a look at   here in just a moment. When you think about your 
fascial fitness, taking care of this connective   tissue, it's really similar to any of the other 
soft tissues in your body. If you don't use it,   you'll lose it. When it comes to fascia, what we 
really mean is you will lose range of motion. This   is commonly seen in people who do hyper, hyper 
repetitive ranges of motion, like a cyclist who's   hunched over his bike for a decade, like a runner 
who spends 20 years in a very specific posture,   very quickly you can see that they've lost 
range of motion. A lot of that can be attributed   to fascial changes, where they've lost range. 
Whenever we talk about fascial fitness, of course,   we're talking about myofascial health because 
these two go together. However, fascia does work   in bands or sheaths or chains and we have, for 
example, our spiral chain of fascia, you have a   lateral chain that goes up the side of your body, 
you have your fascia lata that wraps around your   pelvis, and again, if you move in a limited range 
like almost all modern exercise, fitness classes,   movement modalities in sports do, very quickly 
you'll start to lose range of motion. This is   called the sagittal plane. Bicep curls, squats, 
and almost everything, whether we're running, or   cycling, or swimming, works in the sagittal plane. 
A key thing for fascial fitness, and to keep your   dynamic range, is to also work in what's called 
your coronal plane. That would be things like   lateral raises, that would be things like jumping 
jacks, or side lunges, moving side-to-side,   not just forward and back. And lastly, this 
one is probably most neglected, in fact, most   people over the age of 50 have almost entirely 
lost their ability to twist. This is called the   transverse plane. If you were to look at me from 
above and see a twisting motion, whether that was   a baseball pitcher winding up to throw, or a shot 
putter throwing, or a golfer for example works   in the transverse plane all the time, this is the 
third and probably most neglected plane of motion   that you need to utilize. Lastly, we do want to 
stress just enough your fascia, so that it keeps   that elasticity we talked about before. And that 
would be done through plyometric-style training,   which doesn't have to be extreme, it 
doesn't have to be risky on your knees,   but some form of hopping, skipping rope, bouncing, 
you could do this on a rebounder or a trampoline   to make it easier on your joints, but it's really, 
really crucial to keep the elasticity of your   fascia intact. When you think about the health of 
your fascia it's really important to think about   food and nutrition. We had an orange before. 
Oranges actually contain vitamin C which is   great for your connective tissue, collagen. Muscle 
tissue and fascia are made up of different things.   The collagen content, for example, and the elastin 
content in fascia, is much, much greater. Whenever   I mention collagen people automatically assume 
they should go take a collagen supplement and   collagen supplements may or may not be beneficial, 
you certainly could do that, it's certainly not   harmful. But in all cases, for sure, we want to 
provide your body with the full building blocks   of nutrients so that it can make its own collagen. 
Whether that comes from a collagen supplement,   maybe, maybe not, or whether it comes from whole 
foods that you might be getting at the grocery   store. Things that are really helpful - zinc, the 
trace mineral, copper, the trace mineral, vitamin   C, really, really crucial, sulfur-rich foods. I'll 
put a list down below, a grocery shopping list,   and these are also things that you you could 
potentially supplement. The last thing to   take a look at would be your protein intake. Now, 
most people eat adequate protein, but it's true,   when you start strengthening or stretching 
or changing your physical activity level,   you might need to up your protein. There's also 
some research to suggest that as you get older   you might need more protein as well. To give you 
a general reference range, maybe around 0.8 to 1   gram per pound of ideal body weight. For some of 
you that might feel just extraordinarily high, but   if you aim for that target and end up a little bit 
lower it should make a big difference. So, we've   got protein, we've got zinc, we've got copper, and 
we have vitamin C. Before bed it can be helpful to   have some magnesium, like 200 to 400 milligrams of 
magnesium glycinate can help you to relax in terms   of your muscles, which will help your fascia. And 
lastly, to think about an omega-3 supplement which   will help naturally soothe any inflammation that 
you might have from your exercise routine. The   most important thing to remember with your fascia 
is that we can't have a conversation about fascia   without having a conversation about muscles and 
vice versa. So, we're talking about myofascial   health and this happens through strength, it 
happens through flexibility, but as we looked at   today, it's really important that you move through 
dynamic ranges of motion, in your sagittal plane,   yes, but also in your coronal plane, your 
transverse plane, and add in a little bit   of plyometrics, a little bit of hopping, to keep 
your fascia strong, and long, and resilient. Think   about those foods we mentioned. Hope you found 
this video helpful. Click down below to   get updated with next week's video and, as usual, 
you can find my teaching calendar at yogabody.com.