Now, any movement is better than none, but there are a lot of cultural assumptions about stretching that we (exercisers, yoga adepts, bodyworkers, rehab specialists) have embraced without much of a foundation. The presumptions persist even as the research tells a different story. Everybody stretches, all the time. Sit down, and you are stretching the… Read more
To roll or not to roll? That is the question. What is happening inside when you do foam rolling or use any types of balls or tools for self-myofascial release (SMR)? For starters, you cannot foam roll fascia exclusively; all the other cells – nerve, muscle, and epithelia – are getting ‘rolled’ too. In epithelial… Read more
A reader asks: Do you or your team have any experience with linea alba / deep abdominal fascia separation? Can it heal? Can separations be strengthened? Tom replies: A bit hard to answer generalities – depends on how large and open the diastasis (abdominal hernia of the linea alba) is. Also different responses happen to… Read more
Q: The question that the student has is: “If the fascia is more ‘stretchable in a horizontal means, why are we working with the grain (AT – up the SFL)? A: Let’s first distinguish between connective tissue structure and myofascia. Even though this image is brownish in Eric’s microscope, it is pure tendon – the… Read more
Perhaps you’ve seen this story about CNN correspondent Miles O’Brien needing an amputation: http://www.cnn.com/2014/02/25/health/miles-obrien-amputation Nowadays it’s getting better, but a lot of docs – if they had heard of fascia at all – knew about it in the context of the procedure called a ‘fasciotomy’. Just as a tracheotomy is cutting open the trachea, a… Read more
Question: I am a little confused by your description of the muscle spindle gamma system (the muscle fibers at the ends of a spindle) in which he describes the gamma system as fooling the spindle afferent nerves into sensing an increased muscle fiber stretch. He had previously described the spindle afferent nerves as causing an… Read more
