Born to Walk: Myofascial Efficiency and the Body in Movement

Cells have their own inner supports, which allow the transfer of mechanical forces. These forces can communicate cell shape to the nucleus and thereby influence cellular expressions (Ingber

It is through the combination of gravity and our tissue’s response to our momentum that we can gain practically free energy. By using the body’s movement to stretch elastic tissues, we recruit the captured energy and then recoil the kinetic energy (the energy of motion) to help create a return movement. It is to this mechanism that much of this boo

after heel strike, when the system is working to absorb the force of gravity and the ground reaction force—the viscous ground substance will stiffen the tissue and thereby allow the fascial fibers to load more, taking further advantage of the elastic recoil.

The shapes and contours of the bones and their joints create pathways, like dry riverbeds, which, come the flood, will direct the water along preferred paths. The bones and joints assist the body through a controlled pattern of shock absorption, with the folding of joints taking place along predictable lines that send the force of impact into the s

The fascial tissue is transforming kinetic energy into potential energy by absorbing energy and then releasing it back into the system as kinetic energy again. It is impossible to give exact figures for the amount of stretch and recoil that is produced in each fascial tissue, because it varies widely in different parts of the body, but it can be as

The jump in B added the strong thigh muscles but didn’t allow the additional energy of elastic loading, because too much time was spent in the transition phase. This is also one of the effects of “museum walking”: the stop-and-start nature of it takes away the free energy of the elastic tissue. Rhythm is therefore important, and this can be felt in

The myofascial tissues are not always consciously directed (as most anatomy books say they are) but are often reactive in behavior. For example,

The main benefit of this arrangement is that the recoil of the fascial tissue is providing essentially free energy. The fascia is stretched by the interaction of the body’s momentum and its interaction with the ground. If the actin and myosin filaments (the sliding elements within the muscle fibers that control contraction) do not allow the muscle

Anatomy Trains in 1997 and showed how, when the fascial tissue is stretched over joints, it can transfer force across the joint from one myofascial unit to another. When the joints are in midrange, the tissue is relaxed and communication is limited to the single units on one side of the joint (see exercise 1.1), but in certain stretched positions,