In the 80’s and 90’s the fitness industry in its infinite wisdom thought the best way to train the body was to work in a very isolated muscle centric manner. We were quite often seated on a machine that controlled our range of motion and had very little freedom to adjust any movements.

The theory being that if we can get the isolated muscles stronger, then as a whole we will function better. As our understanding of the body increased most would agree that this wasn’t wrong but maybe incomplete when considering optimal human capacity.

Looking at how we move in the real world, There is a constant flow of loading and unloading where the body uses gravity, ground reaction and momentum to complete the task as efficiently as possible.

The body looks to mitigate the stress throughout the whole system and this minimises risk of injury due to the same tissue not being continually stressed. It also helps keep the metabolic cost to a minimum helping with performance.

This constant symphony of muscles turning on and off is controlled by the nervous system. Increasing neural sensitivity results in the increase of quality of movement. So now the question needs to be asked – If movement quality is controlled by muscles that are reliant on neural sensitivity, how do we increase neural sensitivity?

Enter the Fascial System. Thomas Myers describes this process beautifully. “Muscles perform the movement while fascia organises it”.

Muscles rely on neural sensitivity while nerves rely on fascial sensitivity. Increase fascial sensitivity and you increase neural sensitivity.

Bingo! You take a big step towards achieving rhythmical efficient pain- free flowing motion.

Fascia is the three dimensional matrix that separates the body into its various parts. With out this extraordinary structure we would be a bag of jelly like substance with no form. It is densely populated with proprioceptors and fortified through mechanical loading. So to build a sensitive resilient fascial matrix you need to move.