IOL Strength and Conditioning

You ever notice when you add an overhead arm reach to a kneeling stretch, the stretch deepens? Why is that do you think? Adding a left arm extension to a right glute stretch puts the left lat into play, sending stretching fire into the glute. What might have happened here?

Those of us newer to the corrective exercise side of training are beginning to understand a left hip problem might show up as right shoulder pain. How can that be?

Behold our beginner’s introduction to the muscle and fascia pathways known by some as myofascial slings, by others as myofascial meridians or flexibility highways.

Fascia is the connective tissue that holds us together. The slings are stretches of fascia connecting muscles in a length of which a tug on one end reflects up the length of the line to the other end. If there’s any obstacle in the length, be it a tight muscle, a triggerpoint, tight fascia or a faulty neural connection, the entire sling will lose its ability to function optimally. If the originating problem is serious, the muscles along the sling are pulled out of whack, and this is how a faulty muscle on one side might display itself as pain on the other.

A couple of the lines run as we might expect: the superficial back line running from underfoot, up the legs and spine, behind the neck and over the skull; the superficial front line at the top of the foot to the front of the legs, up the rectus abdominis, along the sternum and to the sides of the neck.

Still pretty logical is the lateral line, which runs up the sides of the body from the outside of the ankle, up the sides of the lower legs to the iliotibial (IT) bands, through the tensor fasciae latae (TFL) and glutes to the sides of the obliques, the intercostals and the strong muscles of the neck.

After that, things get a little screwy. The spiral line, parts of which are also called the oblique slings, runs along the outside of the leg, then crosses over the body at the hip, where it moves over to the opposite shoulder. Along this line, it also moves from the back of the body to the front. Problems arise throughout the myofasical sling network, but crossing from side to side and posterior to anterior is where the most baffling problems crop up.

Let’s say we have a length of fascia wrapping the TFL at the outside of the right glute of our favorite bench presser. Its lower connection passes through the IT band to connect to the outside of the calf, where in this particular guy there’s a nasty triggerpoint that’s been in place for, oh, maybe a year. (That’s not at all uncommon, lest you think otherwise.) Things are getting worse, and the outside of the calf hurts. The IT band is going to be tight, but unless our guy rolls the outside of his leg over a foam roller, he might not even know it. Moving up the chain, this tightness is pulling on the TFL, which in turn is pulling on the remainder of the sling above, only in this case, it’s a cross-body line, so our guy’s got himself an aching left shoulder. Who’s going to connect the right calf with the left shoulder? Not this powerlifter; he’s going to whine to whomever will listen (and some who won’t), quit his bench pressing, start icing the shoulder and chewing on Aleve.

The experienced corrective exercise specialist isn’t going to discount the possibility of a shoulder injury in a bench presser, of course, but in the process of sorting out the potential causes, cross-body stretching and strengthening running from head to toe is going to be one of the clear options of treatment.

It’s complicated, but in a funny way, it’s kind of simple. We’re sure to be talking about this in the forum and reading about it more and more on the ‘net in the next few years until eventually we all know it as well as we know our hamstrings from our quads.

The most accessible work in this field today is Thomas Myers’ book, Anatomy Trains, however the concept of myofascial slings dates back to the 1920s. Unfortunately, medical science at the time didn’t pick up on it, setting us back in our understanding of how the muscles work in concert. Had this research progressed forward since its original discovery, many of us – and certainly all athletes – would have passed over decades of bodypart training in favor of training how the body actually moves.

A lot of dull pain could have been alleviated along the way, no kidding about that. We’re late to the party, but getting up to speed is relatively easy. Let’s talk some slings, shall we?