Fascia Crashcourse: Demystify Your Pain in 10 minutes

What is fascia?

Fascia is an elaborate connective tissue system in our body. If you've ever pulled apart a raw chicken breast, you've likely seen that thin, shiny material that looks a bit like plastic wrap. That’s fascia! Now visualize this "plastic wrap" wrapping around every single thing in your body: around all your bones, muscle fibers, tendons, ligaments, blood vessels, organs, and even nerves. 

Fascia connects, separates, and organizes all water and material that makes up your body.  Think of it like a 3-D plastic wrap suit you wear on the inside. Those plastic wrap layers prevent organs from touching, attaches muscles to bones, and keeps your entire structure upright and mobile. 

One of my favorite analogies is that if everything in your body were to magically disappear except for your fascial system, you would still largely look like you. That's how imperative it is for creating your shape, structure and texture! On the flip side, if only your fascial system were to magically disappear out of your body, you would go tumbling to the ground in a pile of bones and goo. 

This critical network is one uninterrupted, interconnected system that functions as a unit.. 

What does fascia do?

Besides connecting everything and maintaining your structure, the fascial system plays many key roles in your body. Let's talk about a few highlights:

There’s a gel-like substance within your fascial fibers called extracellular fluid. This "water" deeply hydrates all the tissues of your body. It carries nutrients to your cells, carries out waste, and allows your muscles and joints to glide easily. It’s like oil between all those layers of plastic wrap, allowing you to move without resistance. 

This water also is what allows us to absorb shock. Every time your foot strikes the ground or you bang your elbow against the wall, that impact is distributed through this water of the fascial system. Healthy fascia is rich with this fluid and is responsible for effortless movement and feeling light and spring-y.

Fascia also has a crazy amount of proprioceptors, the highest count by far over all other types of tissue in your body. Proprioceptors are receptors that are constantly collecting data about both your internal and external environment. They’re making sense of where your body is in space and helping make sense of the world around you. 

This constant flow of data from both the outside world and how you feel on the inside means every thought, emotion, injury, trauma, and experience you’ve ever had is passing through your fascia via these proprioceptors like essentially a second nervous system. 

In fact, your fascia can communicate within itself 10 times faster than the nervous system!

Why does fascia become restricted--like crinkled up areas of plastic wrap?

In light of what I just mentioned about proprioceptors, the top reasons fascia become tight, dense, and dehydrated is stress and trauma, whether that be a physical trauma like an injury or emotional trauma. When the receptors in your fascia are receiving information from either your internal or external environment is unsafe”, fascia tightens to “protect you” from this threat.  Whether that threat is real or perceived is irrelevant. Your fascia simply thinks it’s helping protect you by “bracing” for this real or imaginary impact.

Your fascia also gets restricted from overuse and underuse patterns. The most common underuse pattern is spending a lot of time sitting. You sit at your desk all day and then you come home and binge a whole season of Ozark sitting on your couch. 

Your fascia is going to start to shrink and stick together into the most efficient position for you to be sitting. One of my favorite quotes by Tom Myers, who in my opinion is the father of understanding the fascial system, says “your body is a result of demand.” So if that demand is sitting, your fascia is likely to mold into the most efficient place for that sitting position. Case and point: ever see an older person all hunched over looking like they are still sitting even when they are standing? That’s an underuse fascial tightness issue.  

On the flip side, if you are working out six days a week, and you're doing the same kinds of movements: squatting, running, swinging a golf club over and over, the constant repetition of these movements will also tighten specific areas in the fascia.

What happens when fascia shrinks, contracts, and becomes stuck from any of those above reasons?

1. Most commonly, PAIN.

Your body is still wanting to continue to do all the normal movements it’s used to, but the space and hydration to glide is no longer there. Restriction in a specific area or line of fascia can create acute, localized pain. Systematic contraction of your fascia due to stress, anxiety, or trauma can also create chronic, even "mystery" pain.

2. You might also feel stiffness, achiness, heaviness, and suffer from mobility issues.  

3. Your chance of injury increases. You might experience pulled muscles, cramps, or those seemingly sudden pains such as “throwing your back out”. 

4. As previously mentioned, fascia wraps around nerves and blood vessels, so the "shrinking" effect of tightened fascia can also cause pinched nerves, that tingly/numb feeling in your hands or feet, and reduced blood flow. It's imperative we have optimal blood flow for our tissues to heal and repair themselves! 

5. Restricted fascia around muscle tissue can even decrease muscle strength or get you stuck in a workout plateau because your muscles are unable to fully expand and contract.

Ready for the good news?

Fascia can be released, and this critical space and hydration can be restored. 

The most effective way to release fascial restriction and “pull the wrinkles out of the plastic wrap” is with the right combination of compression, cross fibering, and active release. 

This combination stimulates the necessary cells in the fascia telling it to let go, unstick, and quickly interrupt any neurological loops it's been stuck in. This is the combo where change happens quickly and this is the combo that made all the difference for me and my clients.

If the lightbulb is clicking on for you now how fascia can be the likely culprit of your pain and mobility issues, it’s time to get on the fascia release train! There are simple ways you can effectively release this tissue on your own, at home with a foam roller.

Check out Pain Liberation Academy! This virtual academy gives you simple, follow along programs for plantar fasciitis, low back pain, shoulder pain, neck pain, sciatica, and more that guarantees you'll feel a significant difference in your pain in as little 30 days.