Can exercise make you younger?
Many of you will know that I am part of a
collaboration to bring the principles of Fascial Fitness to the attention of
all exercise professionals in the United Kingdom. This is quite an undertaking.
The principles are outlined in a paper by
Robert Schleip and Divo Muller called the Training Principles of connective
tissues scientific foundation and suggested practical
applications published in the JBMT.
I thought it would be useful to look at the
paper’s research in small bite sized pieces to use as a resource for the
workshops.
Fascia has been described as ‘the body wide
tensional network, which consists of all fibrous collagenous soft connective tissue’
(Schleip).
Research done by Staubessand et al, 1997
showed that the fascia of young people expresses, more often, a clear
two-directional (lattice) orientation of their collagen fibre network. In
addition the individual collagen fibres show a stronger crimp formation.
As evidenced by animal studies, application
of proper exercise can induce an altered architecture with increased
crimp-formation. Lack of exercise on the other hand has been shown to induce a
multidirectional fibre network and a decreased crimp formation.
What does this mean?
Put simply young people have more bounce,
more elasticity in their fascia (connective tissue). The crimp in their
youthful fascia is reminiscent of elastic springs.
We all know that children bounce; their
body’s are full of spring and energy. As we age however we lose this
springiness to our movement.
My lovely Friday class of older people (average
age 70) summed it up beautifully- we are getting stiffer.
Research by Jarvinen et al., 2002.showed
that as we age the fascial architecture takes on a more haphazard and
multidirectional fibre arrangement. This arrangement resembles a darn in a
stocking, it is indeed stiffer. The fibres of this older fascia cannot glide
past one another as easily as the younger fascia fibres. The fascia becomes
matted.
Think the net you find around oranges as
the youthful lattice, and a piece of Felt as the older matted fascia. The
orange net easily changes shape, molding around its contents, reacting to
changing positions. A felt bag is less flexible and stiffer.
The most interesting part is that research
shows that when applied to animals, exercise can stimulate fascial fibroblasts
to lay down a more youthful fibre architecture (Fukashiro et al., 2006). Perhaps in
time someone will be able to prove that exercise can do the same in humans.
But which exercise is the best one to stimulate
fascia fibroblasts to lay down a youthful lattice of fascia and dissolve the
older matted stiffness caused by years of living a sedentary lifestyle? What
form of exercise or movement pattern can delay the aging of our fascial
network? At what age do we have to start worrying that our fascial network
losing it’s crimp and springiness?
Fascia is constantly remodeling itself reacting
to dominant loading patterns (Schleip). It stands to reason that an exercise or
movement practice, which offers variation, will produce a body wide exercise
answer to this question. Concentrating on one area or muscle will cause the
network to become unbalanced. Exercise systems, which work the whole body such
as Pilates or Yoga, should perhaps be encouraged over repetitive muscle
specific exercise.
Repetitive movements create repetitive
loading on our fascial network and we know that repetitive loading changes the
composition and arrangement of the fascia. From an earlier and earlier age we
allow our children to train repetitively in the belief that they will excel. We
also see young people adopting a more sedentary lifestyle, playing computer
games, repetitive actions shaping their body’s literally.
Luckily a change in loading and adopting
exercises and lifestyle choices that bring variation and bounce back into their
movements can reverse this trend, and exercise professionals are perfectly
placed to bring about this change.
Watch out for our ElasticBody series of
workshops for more information on Fascial Fitness.
Tracey Mellor
© 2013
