Meant to Move Episode 11 – Unlocking Fascia: The Key to Movement, Longevity, and Performance with Ian O’Dywer
Summary
In this episode, Vanessa Leone and Ian “OD” O’Dwyer discuss the importance of fascia in movement, health, and performance. OD explains how fascia, which encases every structure in the body, plays a key role in communication, fluid flow, and force mitigation. They explore the differences between “Viking warriors” (stiffer individuals) and “temple dancers” (more flexible individuals), emphasizing the need for personalized training approaches. The conversation covers common misconceptions about stretching, the impact of hydration on tissue health, and how certain exercises, like box jumps, can affect the body. They conclude with practical insights on optimizing movement for longevity.
Transcript
Vanessa Leone (00:00)
Hey OD, how are you?
OD (00:03)
Hi there, so I’m great, thank you for having me back. I’m excited today to be talking. I do not know what about, but hey, it’ll be great.
Vanessa Leone (00:13)
I’m loving these and we’re getting excellent feedback about our fun conversations here. So I’m going to dive straight into it today. Like let’s go in. Over the last two episodes that we’ve been talking about, you have mentioned this word fascia. I’ve also had Emily Splichal on talk about fascia. I talk about fascia. OD, sorry, of course your OD. G has talked about fascia.
It’s cause I’m calling you Yoda now. You’re like two, you’re like two people to me. so everyone’s like kind of talked a little bit about it, but I think that it’s time to like dedicate the full episode to it. But before we talk about what it is, I want you to have a think about if you are, if you want to PT, if you want to coach, if you want anybody, why is it important for just anybody to know about fascia?
OD (01:15)
Okay, why is it important? I think one really powerful reason is that there’s 250 million nerve endings in the body of which 50 million live in muscle and 200 million live in fascia. I think it’s important to know that fascia is made of collagen, you know, it’s made of water, 70 % water, elastin. There’s various types of other tissues or proteins that make it up, but it’s
If we understand that elastin and collagen, and you think about the beauty market, billions of dollars are spent on collagen, on trying to keep the tissue young. Ness have a look at people who look young, they generally play. And what does play do? It takes the tissue, takes the skin, takes the collagen, takes the fascia, and keeps it in various directions and heights and distances, and it’s free to move, and it’s not…
focused on being in one particular position and it’s a safety and there’s just there’s so many things to it. So, you know, why is it important to understand fascia? Because it covers everything in the body. You know, everything we talk about is has got some element of fascia in it. So, you know, if every nerve is encased in fascia, if every bone is encased in fascia, if every muscle is encased in fascia, and think about this, just to give you, just to blow your mind a little bit.
If we take the hamstring, for instance, this is where I get a bit geeky. just got to give me a couple. But you take the hamstring and if I cut the hamstring in half and I could see in the end of the hamstring and you say, wow, what a beautiful muscle. One of, you know, three muscles and can do amazing things. And, and it’s interesting because we start to then look at the. We start to then look at the texture of the tissue. start to look at.
Vanessa Leone (02:46)
Geek Geek away.
OD (03:11)
what it’s composed of. So every muscle is encased in fascia. And then we start to see that these muscles are actually made up of fibres, bunches of fibres. So these bunches of fibres are all encased in fascia. And then we sort of look deeper into that bunch of fibres and notice there’s a fibre that’s encased in fascia. And then if we could take a microscope and look deeper into that fibre, we would see that each fibre is actually made up of a of fibrils, which are encased in fascia.
And then if we took a hair out of my head, which is a hundred micron and realised that a fibral is one micron and is encased in fascia, you start to get the understanding of, wow, this intertwined nebulous everywhere material, which is 700 miles an hour to communicate to the brain. It’s three times faster than any other than the nervous system. It’s pretty important that we know about it.
You know, communication, force mitigation, elasticity and tissue sustainability. We’ve got to know about it.
Vanessa Leone (04:13)
Hmm. I like that, that phrase as well, tissue sustainability, because we talk about longevity and that’s, what longevity is. And I think that it’s really smart going down that kind of beauty product, land. And I, I, again, whatever you want to do to your face or your body is completely up to you. but collagen in itself is so manipulatable.
malleable, I suppose, in the body. And I, again, it comes back to what we’ve been saying is that you could do something that’s high risk, like surgical or, you know, implanty things or needles and stuff like that. Or you could drink water, reduce your sugar intake and move.
OD (04:54)
that’s a good one.
get some sleep, put some smiles on
Vanessa Leone (05:24)
get some sleep. And
there’s your beauty regime. You’re like, that’s your beauty regime. How come we’re not seeing that as a beauty regime on Instagram? Your beauty regime’s beautiful, by the way.
OD (05:36)
It’s interesting, yes.
Trust me, I’ve got a head for radio. There’s no doubt about that. It’s kind of interesting, right? I had a really good client, and I’m going to say slash mate who passed away 18 months ago of MND. he used to invite me to the prostate lunches, which I would love to go with him because he was just a, we would talk about everything. And it’s kind of interesting, right?
theory as a body worker, movement coach, performance coach, that when you start looking at the bony structures of the body and the bony structures of the body start to glue up, they don’t move as well as they should, whether that be the chest cavity, whether you call that, you know, from a Feel Soma perspective, we would say the shoulder ring, whether that’s the pelvis ring, whether that’s the knee ring, whether that’s the ankle ring. And we say ring because
the shoulder ring T1 to T12 is actually a ring which has nerve, muscle, bone, fascia, skin, blood and lymph that passes through it, as does the pelvis, the knee and the foot. And it’s interesting because in these luncheons, they used to talk about the medication and how to treat prostate cancer. No one spoke about how do we prevent it. Now, you know,
All I know is that when we get inflammation in tissues and fascia is a tissue and inflammation is the stagnancy of fluid flow. And we’ve already spoken about how there’s 20 liters of blood and lymph in the body and it’s got to pass through the foot, the knee, the pelvis and right up into the lymph ducts up into the collarbone. if that pelvis and the base of the pelvis, you know, the pubis area, the anal area,
We have a lot of people now from that 50 age bracket to an older 70, 80, riding bikes. And you take the pelvis, the base of the pelvis, you place it on a seat that’s not even two fingers wide, and you ride that bike for 60 minutes, two hours, three hours. And you wonder why when you get off the bike, you can hardly walk because the fascial tissue is now so glued up, it can’t slide and glide.
using my hands, I should have this beautiful slide and glide from my palm to my palm. But now I’ve pushed together those tissues because I’ve sat on this really narrow butted seat and that tissue can’t move. Now if tissue can’t move, it’s going to create stagnancy. Now that inner thigh region that, you know, we’ve got big lymph nodes in the creases of our groin and in the backs of our thighs, about a hand’s width up from the back of the knee. So, you know,
We’ve got to start to understand things like fascia because it plays such an important role in communication to the brain, in fluid flow, in communication from one section of the body to another section of the body. It plays such a big role in mitigating force, in laying down patterns. God, it’s, I don’t know how we don’t know about it.
Vanessa Leone (08:49)
Yes. Yeah. Okay. So this is, this is where we start to get into the meat of it. And I want you to explain things like, you know, sliding glide and, and, and phrases like this for someone who’s interested in their overall health, because I think the beautiful thing about fascia is that it does contribute to quite literally every system. And there’s no system that can be taken apart from it. You talked about this, it’s nebulous, it’s everywhere.
every cell structure has some kind of fascia around it. Now, what I, what I, one of your examples, funnily enough, and we can start here or we can come into this, was we were talking about the hamstring, funnily enough, and how people sit down all day. So you’ve just talked about the bike in the pelvis area, but let’s just talk about someone sitting on a chair for eight, 10, 12, 14 hours a day as we would.
And the other property of fascia that you would talk about is it’s sponge-like water transferring or absorbing quality. Yeah. And so people would often comment that their back is tight or their hamstrings are tight. And I say tight in inverted commas again here, because it’s just a feeling. It’s not a thing, potentially. It’s not a truth.
OD (09:53)
and see what we do. Yep.
Next,
can we just stop there just for a minute because, you know, this is one thing and thank you to, you know, the great team that I’ve worked over the years with Rodney Corn and Bobby Capuccio, and Michelle Dalcourt, Richard Boyd, and Scott Hobson is that language is a really, really important thing. It’s really important to understand words. Now, we’ve told people for years that their tissues have been tight.
It’s interesting because when we actually go and look at tissues…
They want to get confusing here for people. But when we go and look at tissue, nine times out of 10, the tissues aren’t tight. Because if I use my hands, and say my hands are 30 centimetres apart, say they’re a foot apart. Now, if that’s the optimal tension of tissue in between that 30, and let’s call it the hamstring. If I had a rubber band between my hands at 30 centimetres apart, and I got you to push that band, you would feel there’s a tension in it, there’s a pliability in it, it’s malleable, it’s adaptable.
it can take three-dimensional motion. Now, if my hands got closer together, to get tighter, you would have to say there’s more tension in something, so your hands should get closer together. But if I push that rubber band as my hands got closer together, that band would become slacker. Right? So it wouldn’t give you a feeling of hardness. It would give you a feeling of, it might be pudgy, it might be…
Vanessa Leone (11:45)
Yeah,
it’s off.
OD (11:46)
Softer yeah, plasticine maybe but if I took my hands and I went outside the 30 centimeters now that band if I got you to press on that band or push on that band You would notice there’s more tension We would say that the tissue is taut not tight, but we’re Like a bow string and we’ve been taught that when you have a sensation of this that it’s tightness so
Vanessa Leone (12:05)
like a bowstring.
OD (12:17)
You go to stretch that piece of tissue and it really has no effect. It actually makes it worse because something that taut means it doesn’t want to be stretched, it actually wants the opposite.
Vanessa Leone (12:30)
Yeah. Yeah. And that, that
works in, yeah, it works in with this example a hundred percent, right? Because like you said, that hamstring is now taut, but it’s also compressed. Like the tissues have been squashed all day. And if you, if you want to, if you push down on a sponge, the water goes out. It doesn’t stay in there. And so what you’re, what you’re saying now is that we have a hamstring that
OD (12:39)
Yes.
Yep. Correct.
Vanessa Leone (13:00)
is taut being pulled like a bowstring or a big elastic band. It feels tight, but let’s not use that word anymore. You have a sensation there. Yeah. And it’s completely dehydrated. So these are all properties of fascia that really start to change the way that you look at bodies. It completely changed the way that I looked at human bodies. And we’ll talk about
OD (13:09)
Absolutely.
Correct.
Vanessa Leone (13:30)
stretching a little bit later on. So if you are going to explain fascia and a few of its properties, what is it and what are these, what are these properties of it?
OD (13:32)
Fascia is an amazing, it’s an amazing tissue. When you look at it under camera, which there’s some amazing professors who have actually done live bodies and they put cameras inside the body, you see it, it’s like spider web and the web is continually changing. So the fascia is cylinders of fluid. And it’s interesting because what happens is these cylinders of fluid,
the more they move, the more they have the ability to pump fluid through them and the more adaptable they become with more variation. So it’s quite interesting because if you have these spider-like webs that are laid upon each other and in between each of the webs you have a lubricant, a glycaminoglycan, which is just like snot, but it’s the stuff that allows the tissue to slide, that the spider web to slide.
And just think of a spiderwebs, know, let’s say it’s 10 sided. And if I pulled on a side of the spiderweb, all of the spiderweb is challenged, not just the side that’s pulled, because it’s all interconnected, right? So if we talked about the fascia around the heart, we would see that it’s really thin, really sensitive. Remember, it’s full of nerve endings. But if we looked at the fascia,
at the end of a muscle, we would know it’s really tendoness quite strong, quite robust. Look at the Achilles. The Achilles is a fascial tendon. Funnily enough, the Achilles is 63 % water. So if someone snaps an Achilles, what are you really snapping? You look at the ITB from the knee up to the side of the hip. You could cut that ITB and put it between two cars and drive in opposite directions and it wouldn’t break. That’s how intensively strong it is.
It will shift sideways in a little bit of a movement. It certainly slides and glides. So it’s important for the ITB that the tissues underneath it slide and glide to create the true functionality that’s designed. Now, how’s this? You’re a smart girl, Ness. So… But it’s interesting, I’ve treated a lot of people over the years.
Vanessa Leone (15:57)
I’m just pulling faces for those of you listening.
OD (16:05)
with ITB issues, with, you know, whether they’re major bruising from cork thighs, whether it’s stagnant tissue that hasn’t been addressed. And it’s interesting because the more I’ve dug deeper, I now know that the fascial tissue, the ITB actually wraps around the femur directly.
So you wonder why you get a cork thigh and if you don’t address it, why it can affect hamstring, adductor, you know, it can affect pelvic floor, it can affect calf, you can get, you know, from a cork thigh, you can get L4-5 pain. So it’s interesting, you know, you look at the anterior aspect of the ITB, it runs into the ASIS. So…
Guys, think of it, if you were looking at side on at a thigh or, you know, of any thigh and you had the front of the hip on your left and the back of the hip on the right, from the bony structure of the hip down to the side of the knee, we would call that the anterior aspect. We would call that the front aspect of the ITB. If that area doesn’t slide and glide, it will pull your hip forward. Yet we blame the psoas every time because the hip has an anterior.
tilt to it.
kind of cool, right? yeah, like it’s just, that’s the thing I love, Ness, is that, you know, people don’t touch anymore. And yet if you don’t touch a tissue, you don’t feel the tension, you don’t feel the temperature, you don’t gather so much information that it really helps you solve the problem, right? And you and I both know there’s no answers, but there’s certainly solutions. So, you know, fascia is this nebulous material. runs from toes to nose.
It has various types of fascial types around the tissue, whether it’s inside tissue, outside tissue. It’s primarily elastin collagen, you know, water, there’s some proteins thrown in there. It will change and does love change of direction. It loves change of tension. It’s a force mitigator. It’s a great communicator. It’s just an amazing piece of tissue.
Vanessa Leone (18:26)
I love that. Yes. I, I remember one of our first mentorships and I still go to this video today to show clients, to show people what we’re talking about with fascia is this incredible anatomist called Gil Headley. And he’s just like, he’s wild and he’s not what you would expect from an anatomist or a scientist. He’s just, he’s, he’s just wild. I love it. I absolutely love it.
I’m going to put the link in the show notes to the video. It’s probably easily like my most watched YouTube video. and you know, I should probably just have him on one day. Have fun with that. He would be so cool to talk to. but that’s a really great video to show that what you’re talking about, that kind of slide and glide property. You mentioned it the other week, you know, you can pop your hand on your forearm and twist your.
forearm and that’s the tension component, but that’s also a sliding glide component because your skin has to slide and the muscles have to slide across the bony components to create that kind of torsion. And if we didn’t have that, then you wouldn’t be able to take the skin and do that. And people who have, I suppose, dysfunction or less of those sliding glide properties, that’s where we start to see.
issue. But the other cool thing is that on the other side of the spectrum, we’re to come to this spectrum now. If you have too much elastic, if you have too much sliding glide, that can also be a problem. we’ve got, we’ve got this amazing framework of people who we see and everybody in between. And I think one of the big problems initially with medicine is that they just cut it all away. So
It’s still not fully integrated into medicine, into allied health practice. You have to find those practitioners who are really talking about it or who acknowledge it. But then once you’ve gone past that barrier, you then have to, you have to figure out who you are and how your body is designed in terms of its fascial properties. And so you talked briefly about temple dancers and Viking warriors.
Could you explain the difference between those two and how I could self-test? Who am I at home? We’re going to play along.
OD (20:53)
Who am I, right? So the very first thing we’ve got to understand is that, you know, we’re told that before we do the exercise that we should stretch. But the problem we’ve got now is as we’re talking, the industry has to change because we know that some people stretch and it’s the worst thing for them. Other people don’t stretch and it’s the worst thing for them. So Robert Schlepp, who was a
amazing fascial science person, way back in 2003, identified some archetypes. And all that means is he identified types of fascial tissue in the body that seemed to do things more on bendy people and did less on people who were less bendy. So he determined there was two types of people. There was warriors and then there was…
temple dancers. So you’ve got your Viking warriors who are strong, very muscular bound. Their flexibility is very average. They have flexibility obviously, but they’re not the typical bendy range of motion. And then you’ve got your other people who are bendy, like you and I, Ness. You’re more bendy than I am, but I’m still bendy, right? Can you touch your nose with your tongue? Can you bend down and touch the floor with your hands? Can you…
Are you hypermobile in your elbows? Now I’ve got, he’s got about seven different things that he talks about, which I reckon you’ve got all seven. I’ve got about three, but it’s interesting because playing Aussie rules for all those years that I did, and as I said to you, I was that person who did everything I was supposed to do. And I’d stretch every session, every day I’d stretch and found stretching easy, right? Well, there’s a reason why I found stretching easy because I was bendy.
You know, it’s like people who, you know, I say it all the time. If you’re bendy, you generally like doing yoga or Pilates or stuff that you can move in particular directions easily. And if you’re a Viking warrior, you generally like doing heavy, strong, muscle building sort of stuff, you know, where really we should be changing and doing a bit of everything.
for us, especially if I’m bendy. If I’m bendy, can I change that? Well, what does bendy mean first? Bendy means that we have cells in the fascial tissue called fibroblasts. And those fibroblasts are the cells that clean up dead fascia and lay down new fascia. They’re like the gardeners of the cell. So if we’ve got these gardeners in our body that are cleaning up the fascia and laying down new fascia, you and I would have less fibroblasts
than someone who was a Viking warrior. They would have far more. So if they got injured, they would heal far more quickly than we would. So it’s interesting because the next question is, okay, so if I’m bendy, can I create less bendy in the body
Vanessa Leone (24:07)
Here’s the million dollar question for all my hypermobile slash bendy temple dancer humans out here.
OD (24:16)
The answer is yes, you can. had a client who was a representative of Australia in gymnastics and her knees would go backwards. As in when she stood up, her knees would go backwards. They wouldn’t typically have a bend in the knee at the front. The front of the knee would be straight and the back of the knee would have the bend. And of course she wanted to become a police officer, didn’t she? So she had to run five kilometres. Now people who were really bendy you struggle with running.
Vanessa Leone (24:40)
Yeah, I was gonna say there’s a lot of running.
OD (24:45)
Big time.
Vanessa Leone (24:46)
hate it. Running is
honestly one of the hardest things for me to do and I never ever understood why. It was always so painful. Like so painful and just…
OD (24:59)
So here’s something
that I’ve done with my clients and I’ve done with her. So we started to do, you we’ve got various tools. We’ve got vipers, which are these rubber-based loaded movement training tools that have been around since 2009. But we can use cables, we can use bands. We’ve got to create rapid movement in the fascial tissue to create stiffness. Now guys, don’t get confused. Stiffness is different to rigidity.
Rigidity is the enemy of movement. Stiffness is the ability for the tissue to turn on, turn off, turn on, turn off, turn on, turn off. Because when it turns on and it’s stiff, it passes the forces through the tissue and then it relaxes again. So, you you could use a cable and you could move the reasonably lightweight. You could move in various types of directions to help now get various areas of the body to stiffen.
so that when you put force through them, they don’t go all sloppy, gloppy. Yeah, so, you know, whole body vibration. I love it because it stiffens, it stiffens the tissues, toes to nose. You know, I might get a, for someone who’s got a really sloppy shoulder, I might put a baseball, a rubber baseball in a sock, and I might just get them to take their arm out at shoulder height,
and I’m gonna get them to spin the ball in an anti-clockwise direction. So it’s the ball spinning towards the back of the shoulder and they’ve got to do this. And what it does, it puts a vibration through the shoulder and it stiffens the shoulder so that it hasn’t got too much slack and I’m gonna throw something or catch something. You might get a wobble blade. There are things that came out 25 years ago. I’ve still got two of them here and they work really, really well.
Challenging the fascial tissue with rapid movement, but in a rhythmical manner, means that we can build more stiffness, we can build more fibroblasts into the fascial tissue.
Vanessa Leone (27:11)
For me, that’s skipping. I absolutely love skipping for my cardio for that.
OD (27:17)
Now,
so Ness, when you say skipping, because I was going to say the other exercise I would suggest is skipping. Are you meaning skipping with a rope or skipping?
Vanessa Leone (27:29)
skipping with a rope, but both, you can do both. and, and I think the thing for me, you know, I call it jump rope or, you know, skipping with a skipping rope. you talked about that, that fast, stiff, repetitive movement. So it’s, it’s not that kind of like school girl skip where you have that little kind of hop in between. And it’s, very kind of flouncy. It’s very rigid.
It’s like a lot of high knees. It’s like quite, it’s just the impact of like my feet hitting the ground again and again and again, quite fast. And so I’m using the rebound and the elasticity and I have to hold tension and stiffness in my legs so that the force from the floor can transfer up and down. and I find that better for me personally, you know, someone who, like you said, I’m on the, I’m on the more extreme.
spectrum end of bendy. And I’ve had eight dislocations in one knee. And while I’m strong, like I’m really strong, there’s just not a lot of fascial tension to hold that together. And the amount of force that happens when I run or when anyone runs, it’s just what running is. That’s a lot of load for all of your tissues to go under and your muscles get tired.
And so if you don’t have strong fascia that can rebound well, and that can accept that force and mitigate it through your body again and again and again, stuff breaks down. And that is the harder part and the more challenging part of training people, because this was another one of my questions is that we don’t train it because we don’t know about fascia. And I’m really interested to hear what you.
you’re going to say to those people who want to go for a run on the weekend who might be a little bit more bendy versus the people who want to go for a run on the weekend who are as stiff as a board. That’s two completely different kinds of practices that we need to give these people. And the first step is, as we said, is identifying ourselves as bendy or stiff.
So let’s, let’s start with the identification. You said these archetypes, had some questions. What were some of the questions? I’m really curious.
OD (29:53)
Yes.
So you would be, as I say, can you touch your nose with your tongue? That’s a distinct bendy person. Can you touch your toes? Can you touch the floor with, know, relative ease? You know, I can do it. At 62, I can do it. That’s bendy, right? Are you hypermobile in your knees or your elbows?
Vanessa Leone (30:19)
to anyone watching the video right now, that’s a hypermobile elbow. Yeah.
OD (30:22)
That would be it, that’s it.
Yeah, and that’s what we
don’t want to see, right? And it’s interesting because, Ness, you can do all sorts of calisthenics, you can do handstands and all sorts of things. You’ve got an amazing strength. So it’s really important, especially going forward as we age, that we don’t lose that strength and we don’t lose that capability for you to be able to do that, So it’s interesting because then we’ve got the other side,
as we both know, where you can actually have a combination of, know, of Viking warrior and of also temple dancer. You know, my eldest son, can dislocate his shoulders and has done a couple of times quite simply, which is bendy, right? And he’s bendy in his legs. My youngest son can dislocate his shoulder but can’t touch his toes. And he’s shorter than. So…
Vanessa Leone (31:14)
Yeah, interesting.
OD (31:25)
And it’s my next observation would be, wow, why have we now got so many bendy people in this society? What have we taken out? So skipping, and I was gonna say to before, when I was conditioned, well, when I conditioned any of my athletes, they need to be able to skip, they’ll skip the length of my studio. And they’ll do that a number of times. And then they’ll do various types of running drills, knee lifts, whatever it may be to put.
tension through that forefoot to drive tension through the body to create stiffness, to create lift, to create space. If we can create the space, now we can pass on the force without creating compression. And if we can create space, we actually create this beautiful tensile tensegrity model that allows efficiency to pass through. So, you know,
It’s interesting, isn’t it? Understanding because fascia is an amazing thing. But I reckon there’s an area that we could probably go to another episode and that’s fluid. Because without fluid, these tissues are really struggling to be anything. You take fascia, you take the sponge and you wring it out and you don’t bring water back into that sponge. Well, now I’ve got brittleness. Now I’m going to break.
Now I’m not gonna be able to support the organ. There’s more fascia in the brain than what there is gray matter and fat. There’s more fascia in the gut than what there is organs and intestines. So if I’ve got someone who is dehydrated, if I’ve got someone who can’t breathe, if I’ve got someone who is repetitive in their movements, if I’ve got someone who is emotionally stressed, those tissues, that fascial tissue in particular is really gonna struggle.
Vanessa Leone (33:18)
Hmm. Yeah. It’s just, paints such a nice picture, think of internally when we can start to visualize these elements and understand them in our bodies. because, you know, I have clients who are definitely on both sides of the spectrum. I’ve got my Vikings. I have a lot more temple dancers. I will say that, but I think that I’m a magnet for them considering that through my lived experience, I just, I know.
a little bit more about how to work with them in a field where it’s probably still a little bit more emerging. The same would be said for yourself. But someone who was bendy, and I say but was because women going through menopause can change the bend or the elasticity within your tissues.
If you’ve had trauma, if you’ve had an injury, you’re stressed, like you said, if you’ve had a poor diet and you’re very dehydrated, you’ve created a brittleness in that sponge, in that tissue. And brittle is often also associated with dry and it’s not flexible. Like we’ve got a hard sponge and it’s not going anywhere, is it? It feels like a rock. But that doesn’t mean that that tissue underneath isn’t bendy.
And I think this is where a lot of people fall through the cracks because it’s almost like you have to go through your entire life history and remember what you were doing as a kid. And, you know, I think my generation is probably one of the last generations that didn’t have a smartphone in their childhood. So like I got a Nokia phone when I was, I don’t know, in the middle of high school or something like that, and used to play snake on it.
I could not imagine a childhood now. And we’re talking about this development that they’re potentially not getting because they’re not moving. like my childhood was movement. My childhood was bikes and swimming and running through sprinklers and rollerblades and all of that kind of fun stuff. And so as a kid, you kind of know like, as a kid I was really bendy. I could just do the splits or I could just, you know, yeah.
my arm out and back or my hip or whatever it was and you hear those stories and they’re like, but I can’t do that anymore. It’s like, okay. Historical bendiness is still bendiness, but something’s happened to you. But we still have to change the way that we work with you because working with you as like you’re a stiff person, like you’re a Viking is actually not that great for you as well.
OD (35:57)
And it’s interesting, isn’t it, because…
Being able to create motion for anyone, forget the archetypes. And if we create motion for someone before we actually load their tissues and we create a motion, but the motion is done with low speed, low force. And that motion mimics what the pattern is going to be of the person’s challenge, exercise, sport, whatever.
Now it’s funny because if we did that motion, I don’t let’s say with a balloon, all of a sudden we have a situation where we’re moving the body in a pattern that the body recognises. We’re moving the body with no judgement. We’re moving the body with enjoyment. We’re moving the body with safety.
And we’re actually now creating a low speed, low force, enjoyable motion that now I can actually start to increase the speed and the force into that’s going to be ready for the next level of expectation.
It’s interesting, isn’t it?
Vanessa Leone (37:20)
And they’re fun, by the way, humans. have experienced said balloon games and things like that. They’re very entertaining. I think there’s nothing quite like a room of hesitant adults. And then you get a balloon out and they’re looking at you like, do you think that I’m five? Like, what’s wrong with you? And then the next minute they’re all like, my God. And there’s like limbs going everywhere and they’re having a great time.
OD (37:25)
And it’s funny, because it brings back that whole thing. As soon as you bring it out and you start to just hit it around the room and you don’t say a word, you just hit it around the room, everyone gets involved. Yet if I said, okay, I need you to do 15 single leg squats and I need, oh no, I can’t do them, I can’t do them, I can’t. Just bring the balloon out and give them a challenge.
Vanessa Leone (37:54)
Yeah.
Yeah. Yes. So I think part of this bendy, stiff archetype or just creating motion in general, think what’s really important to also perhaps discuss is when we looked at general movements in gyms or in classes or things like that, there’s an example that comes to mind, which
The reason why it fills me with trepidation is because if you’re on either end of the spectrum, it’s just not good for you. It’s a really high risk, low yield exercise in my opinion, which is a box jump.
can you maybe explain to someone why I have such trepidation on? Like, and honestly, like they’re almost in every fitness class and I don’t think it’s a bad exercise per se, cause I don’t think any exercise is bad, but I talk about risk to reward here. Like what’s, what’s going on?
OD (39:07)
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
Yes, I like it, great question. All right, so from my perspective and from your perspective, we are looking at the human being and we are looking at, okay, I’m going to do a box jump. Does the box jump look like it’s a fascial motion or does it look like it’s a muscular motion? So if it’s a muscular motion, which box jumps are?
then it’s going to be something that’s going to use a lot of energy. So in movement, we don’t want to condition the body to use large amounts of energy. Because if we do, we run out of fuel. So box jumps, let’s break it down a little bit. All right, so we look at that.
Vanessa Leone (39:55)
I’m so excited. Sorry. Just to see your face. You’re like,
fuck. Here we go. All right, go, go,
OD (40:03)
I’m just gonna do
this in really gentle way because there’s nothing wrong with any movement. You can do a straight leg sit up if you want, if your job calls for that or your sport calls for that. But if it doesn’t call for that, probably not the best exercise you can do for your lower lumbar or for your neck, right? Which where most people have lot of their problems. So back to the box jump. So.
In the box jump, my question is, what are we doing the box jump for, Ness? What are we trying to do? We’re trying to create what, explosiveness? Perhaps. Probably not the best way to create explosiveness because explosiveness to create explosiveness would be to stimulate the fascial tissue, which is stiffness training. So you would probably find little short hurdles, single leg hops over little short hurdles, might be a better way.
But if you’re doing it for a strength component, is there a strength component, power component to it? Yes, there is. But what I have a problem with with box jumps is that most people who do box jumps finish up with pelvic dysfunctions. And what I’m maybe gonna change the word dysfunction to pelvic sequencing.
So if we talk about, you know, the pelvic floor, which is a major part of the pelvis, and we would say that the pelvis is the crossroads of the body, it joins the toes to nose. Now, if you talk to Thomas Myers, he would tell you that we have three pelvic floors. We have two fascial and we have one muscular. So we see people doing box jumps and then we see people skipping. And then we see ladies doing it. It’s not okay to leak It’s not okay to leak.
So what that’s basically telling me is that box jump is absolutely, whether it’s one, two, five, whatever it may be, is absolutely fatiguing the fascial tissue because the fascial tissue hasn’t been conditioned to be able to take the amount of skipping that it’s gonna do. So we need to understand why we’re doing the box jumps, not just do them because they’re a sexy exercise or, you know, I saw one person doing a 14 inch or a 40 inch. We’ve got to understand what the purpose or the act.
of the exercise is. It’s a bit like hip thrusts. You know, we see people, they’ve got their feet on the floor, they’ve got the bar across their pelvis, they’ve got their head on a bench, and they’re thrusting their hips up to the ceiling. Generally, they’re using their lower back, not using, I guess, their hip flexors that they’re to make stronger. Secondly, when do your hips thrust upwards or forwards together? They don’t.
So therefore.
Vanessa Leone (42:54)
unless you’re doing
a box jump
OD (42:58)
I’ll you do a box jump, right? So my question is, once again, you’re doing something that is an exercise. Is it applicable to you? Is it creating and building mobility, stability, strength, power, balance, all of the components we need for you to be successful in your exercise, your challenge, or your sport? So, you know, once again, we have to question.
why we do everything because if we don’t, we don’t question why we do anything. And, you know, there’s so many ways of getting explosive power into our tissues without doing box jumps. And in fact, most people, you know, I would say once again, most people, and I’m not dissing it, if you enjoy doing it, knock yourself out. But for me,
If I’m talking about tissue sustainability, so if we talk about tissue health, so can I change the tissue instantly? If I’m talking about performance and if I’m talking about tissue sustainability, in other words, can I make you perform under pressure, blow your fuses, bring you back, recondition you, take you back to the start and do the same again next session, next week in the game, whatever, because that’s sustainability. I’ll guarantee you people who are doing a lot of box jumpers.
or a lot of hip thrusts will have problems in their lower backs, in their knees, and potentially they’ll have a lot of problems in their necks because when you have a look at a lot of these box jumpers with that lovely frill neck lizard neck that you have there Vanessa that you just identified to us, that’s where they get their knee lift from because they can’t connect big toe pelvic floor diaphragm, periocardium of the heart and lung and their tongue.
as our deep core line.
Vanessa Leone (44:55)
which is our fascial line, which brings us nice full circle here. I didn’t think I was going to get into box jumps, funnily enough, but it just kind of happened.
OD (45:00)
It’s funny. It’s just little things, I guess, you know, the things we see, right? It’s the things we see that we think, why? Because, yes, you and I have had to deal with the problems that these things have caused. And that’s the problem of us having an opinion on it, because, you know, if…
the person was conditioned well, they wouldn’t be coming to see us to find out why they’re leaking or find out why they’ve got back pain or find out why they’ve got neck and shoulder pain or find out why their knees kill. And then you find out that their program incorporates some of this stuff and how do you warm up for your box jumps and how high are you doing? Can you descend a box jump and land? Yeah, can you jump down? Wow.
Vanessa Leone (45:51)
Yeah, can he jump down? Yeah.
OD (45:56)
Now you’ve got 9.81 meters per second plus your body weight plus ground force stopping you. Can you jump down from a height and land without breaking?
Vanessa Leone (46:08)
Yeah. I think that is the most underrated training on a box that no one does. That’s actually in my opinion, way more beneficial for most people, like you said, sustainability because of that fascial element is that ability to land decelerate, find the rebound even. like plyometric training, a lot of people think that.
I mean, this is a definite rabbit hole that we’re not going to go down today, but a lot of people think that box jumps is plyometrics. It’s not plyometrics. Plyometrics is about rebound. It’s about landing and being able to utilize that force to be able to go again. And so if your trainer is saying that you’re working plyometrics today and you’re doing a box jump, we have to start to like question that and be like, that’s not, that’s not a plyometric unless I’m learning how to rebound off that box.
Unless I’m doing another jump straight away, can jump on the box, but then I have to jump again straight away. That’s a plyometric jump. And now we’re working two different things. Like you said, now we’re working the muscular system to try to get us the strength to jump up to that box. But then we’re also working that fascial system in that rebound, which is going to condition that pelvic floor, the layers of those pelvic floor and that deep front line, that deep front fascial line.
OD (47:18)
It’s interesting, isn’t it? Because if we have a look at what fascia is, as the very first question you said, think of it, if I’m doing a box jump, I’m really loading the muscular system, the calves, the hammies, the glutes, the quads, everything’s involved when you do a box jump. But the problem you’ve got is that the muscles are the engine of the motor. Now, if you’ve got a big V8 motor, a big powerful motor that you know,
jump. The question I’ve got is what’s your chassis like? Because the chassis is the fascial system and if that chassis can’t sustain the force that that motor creates you’re going to break and that’s where injuries occur because we haven’t conditioned the fascial system to be able to be strong in omnidirectional motion.
in all sorts of directions, not just one or two directions, in all sorts of directions, at different heights, at different distances, at different directions. So it’s interesting. It’s really interesting. It’s, yeah, there’s, you know, as I say, I don’t care what exercise you do, as long as you have a reason for doing it, and as long as you’re conditioned to be able to do it safely and effectively.
Vanessa Leone (48:45)
I always end up with more questions once we finish.
No, it’s great. It’s so good. So I think the take home from today is understanding if you’re a temple dancer, understanding if you’re a Viking warrior. If you’re confused, reach out to us. We can definitely help you identify where you are. We’re going to have a little fun thing, hopefully, to come with this episode, helping you to identify which archetype you might best fit in with.
But I think from here, we’re going to talk a little bit about the exercises. I think this is going to be really important, the types of exercises that we see, and let’s talk about how we can modify them to either be like nice and slow and fascial or like actually explosive and fascia.
OD (49:35
And Ness, it’s really interesting is that, you know, because of my experience in being a person who’s stretched and being bendy, and then creating these movements that I call fascial mobilizers, right? The thing I love about it now is this, is that everyone needs to be able to move. Everyone needs to be able to breathe. So all I’ve done is said, okay, what sort of movement does fascia like?
How can I remodel fascia? How can I reset fascia? Well, that’s easy. If I’m gonna remodel or reset it, it doesn’t want speed or force. It wants this beautiful low speed, low force motion in a pattern that enables it now to recognise, the brain to recognise, the body to recognise, and then it says, okay, I’m ready for this next challenge. So for me, I don’t even have to now come in and say,
Okay, what sort of body type are you? Because I just I use fascial mobilizers for people who are warriors or people who are temple dancers because I can tell you right now if you’re a person who is stiff one you won’t like holding a stretch for 30 seconds or longer, let alone 60 seconds because I haven’t got time because I want to go out and lift. Two, I can do something that’s going to mimic my movement when I go to move. So if I’m a strong bloke or a strong girl, I’m going to go out and probably do some
heavy type of stuff. So I’ve got five patterns that I can give them. I’ve got 20,000 mobilizers that I can give them specifically. And I can tell you right now that the majority of people, elite athletes or not, will struggle with a lot of these mobilizers because they can’t perform the pattern.
Vanessa Leone (51:25)
Yeah, it’s a strange one. We have seen this phenomenon. But that again, I think there’s too many rabbit holes with this conversation. Yes.
OD (51:38)
There are, there are, but that’s the cool thing. We can dive down a couple, sprinkle some stuff, dig a bit of dirt out and then come back out. There’s no problems there. The great thing about this, Ness, as I’ve said right from the very get-go is these are the discussions that have got to be had because we’re not dissing on anyone. We’re disrespecting anything. We’re just saying, be aware if you do this, this is potential outcome if you aren’t conditioned.
Otherwise it’s going to cost thousands of dollars to try and get yourself well and you still may not get yourself well because as I’m seeing at the present time, we’re having lots and lots of people get dissections, sorry, get fusions, get laminectomies and disectomies and you think, wow, wow.
Vanessa Leone (52:26)
Yep. Yep. There’s a, there’s a lot of that kind of injury side of it, which I think is where we come from. Cause people come to us once they get to that stage where they’re stuck, they can’t move. don’t, they don’t have, no one can give them any answers. Um, and that’s the power. And I love, I love what we do. Like this, there’s something so incredible about watching someone who’s in pain, leave you not in pain or
even just moving better. didn’t think you have to be in pain to want to feel better in your body. There’s so many levels to that as well. So I think we’ll leave that there. If you’re thinking about wanting to level up, if you’re thinking about decreasing those levels of pain, start to think about fascia.
OD (53:14)
Yes, I think that would be a very good idea. And it’s interesting. You can decrease so much pain in your body purely by being able to drink, move and be gentle to yourself. And just understand that everything we do hasn’t got to be hard. It hasn’t got to be torturous. hasn’t got to be, I haven’t got to lift heavy, run fast, stretch hard. It hasn’t got to be that way.
The body just wants to move and feel free. And we can give it some simple things that allow the feet to move, the knees to move, the pelvis to move, and the shoulder ring to move. Nine times out of 10 it says, thank you. With a big happy face.
Vanessa Leone (53:48)
Mm.
Just as I’m about to say thank you with a big happy face from me. Thanks again, OD for your time and we will be back. We will definitely be back.
OD (54:06)
look forward to this. Thank you as always for everything you’re doing. Take care.
Vanessa Leone (54:18)
Thanks.
Vanessa Leone Movement Therapist 