Fascia Fundamentals

Beeee the orange

We have arrived at Chapter 5: Fascia Fundamentals. This chapter takes on the massive job of looking at fascia and establishing what it is, why it’s relevant to us, and how rolling can help keep it healthy. I appreciate how straightforward and concise this chapter is.

There are many different ways that Jill defines fascia and offers metaphors to help us understand what it is. Two of my favorites:

• At the beginning of the chapter, she refers to fascia as “the ubiquitous living seam system that threads your tissues to one another.”

• In the middle of the chapter, on p. 128 in the yellow Jargon Alert box: She likens the epimysium, perimysium, and endomysium to an orange — the pith, the individual pieces, and then the tiny individual juice units within the individual pieces. I’ve learned this visual from Jill previously and it remains the most helpful one for me!

Early on in the chapter, she also explains where fascia exists within the categories of connective tissue:

• Hard (bone, cartilage, periosteum)

• Soft (fascia, tendons, ligaments)

• Fluid (including blood and lymph)

Then she smartly tells us functions of connective tissue:

• Connection (which includes binding and separating structures, supporting organs, and providing a scaffolding framework for the whole body’s structure)

• Protection (which includes storing fat, making blood, fighting infections, repairing tissue damage, insulating, lubricating)

• Sensing (which she covers in Chapter 6)

With that big picture in place, she spends much of the rest of the chapter defining and helping us to locate some of the various categories of fascia in the body.

But there are a few other big conceptual takeaways:

1. Gimme all the hydration

   Most of us need more motivation to stay hydrated. Reading the end of this chapter had me filling up my Hydroflask.

   On pp. 122-123, she talks about the importance of hydration: “…fascia relies on water for proper cellular function and replication. Its living elements, the fibroblast cells, need a balanced nutrient bath to produce the…fibers that knit together all your body’s parts.”