The muscles get all the glory. Sometimes, the tendons start screaming. But no one ever talks about fascia – the connective tissue that touches virtually every component of your internal body. In fact, if you work out or play sports, fascia is the real MVP — and taking care of it deserves a page in every athlete’s playbook. “If you’re training with high loads and repetitive patterns and intensities, the fascia transmits force across the muscle chains. It also supports, protects and stabilizes our joints. So it needs to be hydrated and elastic so that power production is more efficient,” says Sue Heitzman, MS, CST, NMTAn exercise physiologist, founder of melting methodand founding member of the Fascia Research Society.
But pro athletes and HiRox candidates aren’t the only ones who benefit from healthy fascia. If you suffer from back pain – or really almost any type of pain – chances are it’s actually a fascia issue in disguise. “Fascia can mimic many other symptoms, such as nerve pain, bone pain, and muscle pain,” says physical therapist and founder Sarah Cash Crawford, PT, DPT, COMT, CMTPT. Anchor Wellness Center in cincinnati, oh.
Here’s everything you need to know about fascia, according to experts.
What is Fascia?
You might think of your skin as what holds all your insides together, but that’s actually the job of fascia. “The way I usually explain it to patients is, fascia is this fibrous tissue that’s underneath the skin and over the muscles,” says Dr. Crawford. “Fascia’s primary purpose is to maintain structure,” she says—and not just at the surface level, but throughout the body. “It envelops every muscle, every nerve, every vessel, every bone and every organ.”
It’s hard to overstate the ubiquity of fascia throughout your body. Unlike muscles or tendons, which have clear start and end points, all of the fascia in your body is one continuous piece of tissue. “There’s a theory that if we were able to dissect out all the other tissues, muscles, skin, bone, nerves, tendons, ligaments and organs, your fascia would remain intact, and it would look just like you,” says Dr. Crawford. (Just in case you’ve run out of nightmare fuel.)
But fascia is more than just scaffolding for your interiors. “For years, we’ve called fascia a connective tissue, because it seems to connect everything, like a covering. But now we’re understanding that it’s actually a mechanical, sensory, and metabolic network,” says Heitzman. “It affects not only how we move, but also how we feel, how we age and how we heal.”
Could Fascia Be Responsible for Your Back Pain?
When the fascia becomes restricted – whether from dehydration, a sedentary lifestyle, or a combination of factors, which we’ll explore below – it can mimic symptoms of poor mobility, muscle stiffness, or even pain. Unhealthy fascia can also cause fascial adhesions – basically, when the fascia sticks to neighboring tissue – and, because all your fascia is connected, this can show up as pain in a completely different area of the body.
“Imagine you’re wearing a wetsuit and I’ve held a lighter to your lower back,” says Dr. Crawford. “The wetsuit will kind of melt and stick to the skin underneath it. Now, if you try to lean forward, what’s going to happen? You’ll feel it hitting the tissue in your glutes or your hamstrings or the muscles on the sides of your spine. That’s when we get these adhesions.”
