The Elastic Athlete Part I
For those I have trained directly over the years, you may recall numerous conversations about the concept of Body Energy in swimming. In short, it is an awareness, sensation and image of the body being constructed as one unit of elastic energy that is resilient and stores and releases energy, rather than a collection of pieces and segments. No doubt you remember these conversations leading to the discussion of fascia.
My curiosity and pre-occupation with fascia began very early in my coaching career. However, I didn’t know there was a word that describes a substance, and science, that validates the integrated connectivity inside the body that I was seeing in the quality of movement in great athletes, in particular swimmers, from the outside.
My colleague and friend, world-renowned swimming coach and movement specialist, Milt Nelms, gave a demonstration to a group of swimmers I was coaching that made an enormous impact on me early on. Milt took a large piece of a stretchy, black fabric (he called it “the black stuff”) that was densely woven and had several of us grab the outer edges with our hands and stretch it outwards to create a taunt surface. He then would push, pull, or press at very places on the outstretched fabric so we could all feel and sense the response his pressures had on the whole of the fabric. He was illustrating the integration of the web-like network that connects the whole body as one unit and the response to external forces (aka, the energy of the water). Without getting all hung up on terminology, he was introducing us to the concept and possibilities of Fascia Aware Training and how to become an Elastic Athlete.
I have always been in support of strength and conditioning training for swimmers. I mean who doesn’t want to be bigger, stronger, and faster? Traditional strength training has long been based around getting muscles stronger in the hopes that those strength gains will transfer to the sport. All good and necessary! However, most of the movements that I saw, and still see today in strength and conditioning programs are movements that look nothing like the movements I see athletes do in their sport. So, I started wondering if we could create a more effective training program that supports an athlete’s fascia system by loading the multidirectional movement patterns they do in their sport. In this case, swimming. I’m talking about developing strategies that will help athletes develop more robust fascia systems that absorb and transfer force (power) better, more efficiently, and give them a competitive advantage.
During the Covid period, when many swimming programs had to pause , I, like many coaches, began to question assumptions about traditional training methodologies and took deep dives down many training rabbit holes. One such hole that I dove into was omni-directional training and sub-maximal loaded movement training which led me to the Institute of Motion’s Applied Health and Human Performance Specialist program where I became certified. I was introduced to the exciting and fast-growing field of fascia research, which further validated my observations from many years ago. I forged a professional relationship and friendship with Jan Hutnan, founder of the Healthy Before Fit Network. Today, working closely with Jan and many cutting-edge sports and movement specialists, I am working to develop ELASTIC ATHLETES!
Here's a condensed version of the science and application of Fascia Aware Training that comes from the Healthy Before Fit Network:
Fascia responds to stress and lack of it.
It needs to be trained with sub-maximal load and multi-directionally.
It’s calorie non-dependent, which makes it energy efficient.
It’s a pressured hydraulic system that only functions when we are alive.
According to Davis’ Law, collagen, the most important protein of the fascia network, remodels along the lines of stress and it reacts on impact, pressure, vibration, and stress.
Fascia has 10x more proprioceptors than muscle.
A robust fascia net takes a longer time to develop, but lasts longer too.
Fascia helps to facilitate layers of muscles to create stiffness for optimal force production, this is called mechanical composites. Which helps fascia to be stiff to prevent energy leaks.
Rate of force production is the essence of performance.
To be truly resilient we must understand and program for load paths which are stretched body wide.
Fascia is rate low specific. If we train it slow it gives us shape stabilizing response, if we train it fast it gives us dynamic properties.
We need to train it in vectors, known as vector variability training.
We must eat food rich in collagen to support the mechanical effort, so we create the right environment for a collagen web body.
The longer the collagen, the healthier it is, the stronger it is. All health pillars must contribute to the outcome, makes fitness obsolete.
To enhance team strength training programs, I offer land training to coaches and team trainers to complement your programs and help you teach your athletes how to become elastic athletes. To learn more, contact me for a consultation.
