Fascia: Key to Functional Efficiency

Adherence to the Law of Least Effort dictated human development to obey another natural phenomenon: Tensegrity. 

Tensegrity, tensional integrity, is the balance of opposing forces. It refers to the stability or mobility of a structure maintained by the inward tension in the lines connecting the structural shafts. Contrary to popular belief, it is not our skeletal structure that holds us up. The bones create shape and act as levers to move things. They exert outward force against the constant, if variable, inward draw of the soft tissue. It is the regulation of this inward draw, more pull here, less pull there, that either holds the bones in place or leverages them to move.

Tensegrity is the secret to energy conservation in our functional dynamic body. It takes more effort, more force, more work, to hold a static structure still against all opposing forces, than it does to balance opposing forces precisely so neither is required to outwork the other. In other words, I could build a bridge from the ground up big enough and strong enough to span San Francisco Bay. But it would be really thick and really heavy. Potentially so thick and heavy that it becomes less bridge and more dam! 

Not to mention unable to cope with the dynamic environment. Shifting ground, wind, and water are constantly changing the directional demand for resistance. A static build would ultimately fail in a dynamic environment. 

Or, I could stake lighter posts at intervals and string tension lines in opposing directions to suspend a roadway and have a flexible, dynamic and light structure. Which, of course, is what they did. 

The degree of tension in opposition is important, though. If you’ve ever had to tie down a load; ship a car on a flatbed trailer. You tie down the wheels to the flatbed in four opposing directions. If you ratchet them equally, say 35lbs of force for each, that car will not move. If, however, you leave one tie at 30lbs, that car will shift and shimmy all the way to California. The frame itself might even be bent when you get there. 

In the first example we built a dynamic bridge to move within a shifting environment and in the second we held an object stable against a shifting environment. The human body must be able to accommodate both of these conditions. 

We must be mobile, light and flexible and we must be able to maintain stability against overwhelming force. We must meet the survival needs of mobility, stability, conservation of energy and breath, within the environmental facts of gravity and atmosphere.  A body built from the ground up, a static structure like a castle couldn't survive the dynamic environment. Instead, we developed the most efficient and powerful machine we could. We built a tensegrity structure.  

Simply standing on two feet, remaining upright, requires the balance of opposing forces. With muscular effort, we can perfectly balance the work of our opposing pairs and effectively find balanced stability. Neither side outworking the other. This delicate balance is known as isometric force. 

To execute work isometrically takes less effort than if you just grip everything really tight. So long as the effort is equal in opposite directions, 50/50, the amount of effort can be minimal. It can be 50% of a level 10 effort or 50% of an effort level of 1. So long as it's equal, it remains stable.  It takes less energy, but it still takes work. Takes energy not just in the firing of muscle fibers but in the firing of the synapses in the brain to keep the muscle working. We can do it, sure. But maybe not for very long. Muscle fibers have a finite work-span and when the fuel runs out they are finished.

Some daily demands are so common that we need to find an even more efficient way to get them done. Like standing up. We can’t be spending the fuel reserves of muscular effort and mental attention on an activity we need to be doing all day every day. 

This kind of constancy, and the need to expend the least amount of effort, demands the recruitment of another structure altogether: this is a job for Fascia. 

Just as muscles work in opposing pairs to balance effort, the connective tissue, the fascia, supporting those muscles and linking them along the kinetic chain also work in balanced opposition. Unlike muscles that use fuel to contract, to create and maintain their tension, Fascia does not. 

Fascia is inherently tensioned. It is a blend of rigid collagen fibers and stretchy elastin. These fibers coil together and in that coil store and release energy. In this simple leveraging of material and the physics of stretch and release, the physics of tensegrity, Fascia is our key to functional efficiency.