I would like to begin by expressing my gratitude for the road I have chosen to professionally pursue. Having a chance to learn a little bit more about the human movement in each new challenge is undoubtedly one of the strongest fuels in my life. I think that as coaches we walk in a unique and individual way our different paths in the search for knowledge.
Within my search, belonging to the StrongFirst family was definitely a milestone in my personal and professional path. For me, StrongFirst has never been only about kettlebells. It is also about the importance of searching for knowledge.
Finding different information sheltered within the same perspective is amazing and raises our capacity of comprehension and autonomy, empowering us as professionals, for through knowledge, we can help in the best possible way, in the reduction of the gap formed between people and the movement itself.
Every change that we are experiencing in the training scenario came from the change in the way that the anatomy is conceived, from the reductionist perspective to the integrated one. I think Tom Myers’s book, “Anatomy Trains,” should at some point, be a part of the path to search for knowledge as an opening of horizons. This amazing book opens up a wonderful perspective, bringing the concepts of fascia and movement into the mainstream strength and conditioning world. A perspective in which all information is coming together.
Everything in the body is interconnected by way of connective tissue called fascia. Fascial tissue envelops and connects every structure in the body, including muscles, organs, nerves, and blood vessels. For Myers, the fascia is interrelated with the functionality of the musculoskeletal system placing the fibrous skeleton as a single network, with a fundamental role in the process of transmission of forces. The “tensegrity” model clearly illustrates this concept.
What is Tensegrity?
The word tensegrityis the combination of the words “tension” and “integrity,” which means integrity of tensions, was created and used by R. Buckminster Fuller who described it as “a property present in objects whose components use traction and compression in a combined manner, which provides stability and endurance, ensuring its overall integrity.”
Our bone and ligament structure is not firm enough to stand on its own. It is dependent on other structures that traverse the entire body from side to side, from top to bottom and inside out—a myofascial structure—that promotes a set of adjustment tensions throughout the body as a function of its tensile elastic capacity. It stabilizes but does not immobilize. The focus is not on local force production but on overall force distribution.
This is the connective tissue’s role. From the point of view of the motor structural organization, the fascia generates within the structures a kind of coherence, a functional mechanical balance between the structures.
“The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.”—Aristotle
When we think about fascia, we must think about something alive. Fascia is in constant motion, changing its shape and interacting itself with its collagen myofibrils. The fascia is the biggest sensitive organ in our body and is innervated by the autonomic nervous system, being rich in receptors, which generate different types of responses in our system.
To understand the transmission of forces, we need to understand a little bit about the anatomy of the fascia, about its rich vascularization and innervation.
The fascia is composed of cells named fibroblasts, which depending on the stimulus, become myofibroblasts and acquire a contractile capacity. When we are in movement, these are the myofibroblasts that come into activity, modulating the facial elastic tension.
Fascia contains four types of sensory nerve endings, which are responsive to mechanical stimulation: Golgi organs, Ruffini receptors, Pacini corpuscles, and interstitial receptors.
Golgi organs are located in muscle tendons, aponeuroses, ligaments, and joint capsules, they are stimulated with slow sustained stretching close to muscular attachment. Active movements may be more effective in stimulating these receptors.
Ruffini receptors respond to lateral shearing. They inhibit the sympathetic activity in the entire body located in ligaments in peripheral joints, dura mater, outer capsular layers. A slow steady shearing pressure is needed to activate these receptors.
Pacini corpuscles react to rapid pressure changes. They are located in deep vascular layers, spinal ligaments, and muscles and play a major role in proprioceptive feedback. They are stimulated by high velocity adjustments, rocking and shaking vibratory tools and rhythmic joint compression.
Interstitial receptors are smaller multimodal receptors that function as thermal, chemo, pain, and mechanoreceptors and are highly concentrated in the periosteum. They stimulate periosteum structures, interosseous membranes, and other fascia associated with bones.
Together, these sensory nerve endings can be called fascial mechanoreceptors, meaning that they respond to mechanical tension and/or pressure. Such mechanoreceptors have been found in intramuscular, as well as extra muscular, fascial tissues. The transmission of forces takes place at deeper levels, from the inside out, from the outside in, and through the myofascial meridians.
Specifically, from the perspective of “Anatomy Trains,” Thomas Myers presents us with a fascial line called the deep front line (DFL), which essentially connects the thigh to the neck.
With this he brings a new understanding of the “core” that is markedly different from the traditional focus often limited to the abdominal region. The deep front line includes the body’s myofascial “core”. If we start from the bottom, the line has deep roots under the foot, passing up the skeleton of the back leg, behind the knee and inner thigh. From here, a larger track runs through the hip, pelvis, and lumbar vertebrae in the front, while an alternative pathway runs along the back of the thigh to the pelvic floor after which it returns with the first part at the lumbar vertebrae.
Further upward through the diaphragm the deep front line passes up through the chest with many branches through the thoracic viscera and ends on the bottom of both the neutral and the visceral cranium. The function of the DFL is to provide deep spinal stability that will then allow the extremities and the large prime movers to do their job: move.
This means that out of all the myofascial meridians, it is the deepest and has the function of maintaining our core alignment and core stability. Not to say that other muscles and structures are not also important in maintaining our core, but the DFL is a key component of all things core.
How this Relates to StrongFirst
It was inside StrongFirst that I really understood the benefits that the force transmission provides us.
The swing is the foundational movement for everything standing with the kettlebell and definitely one of the most challenging exercises in terms of motor control and force transmission that I’ve had the opportunity to perform. It’s a rhythmically repetitive power movement and the kettlebell clean and snatch both root directly to that of the swing.
When performing complex ballistic movements such as the swing, if the muscular chains are not activated correctly and at the correct time, the constant change of direction of the force vector generates a stress that is immediately transferred to the joints, tendons, ligaments, making the exercise potentially dangerous.
“The more we train our needs in real mode, the more we adapt the whole system to interact as it really should.”—Evan Osar
It makes a lot of sense, when we think of building and consolidating some specific technique, to give good results to constant practices. The myofascial system is an adaptive system to the effort. The different types of effort demand will develop a certain adaptability to the stimulus. It is as if we had the opportunity to shape our body through our practices.
“When you train, you are training the fascia.”—Thomas Myers
To begin to understand and perform a ballistic movement such as the swing, we learned through StrongFirst’s hard style concepts that the swing is an exercise that can be divided into four moments:
- The Setup/Hip Hinge
- The Hip Power
- The Kettlebell Float
- Back to Hinge/Start Position
Let’s talk about the kettlebell float. It is undoubtedly the most expected moment of the exercise. Experienced people know that it is “the time to take full advantage of the power that was generated by the hip and all the connections while enjoying the kettlebell float“, or “galleggio” as I heard from the StrongFirst Certified Master Instructor, Fabio Zonin in my SFG I in Vicenza, Italy.
When we start from the “hip power for the kettlebell float,” we can consider this transition as the most critical in terms of physics, since these are times when the kettlebell’s center of mass is further from our center of gravity and therefore requires more activations working in an integrated way with correct timing. The deep front line becomes extremely important because dissipates load evenly across your entire body.
Swing From Your Toes to Your Tongue
If we think about “power breathing,” it makes perfect sense the fact that the tongue fully assists in the closing of this line of force resting vigorously in the palate when we exhale in the extension of the hip. The tongue is the most forward muscle of the deep front line. When you are really feeling your core working for you, using your breath, and letting this experience travel up and down the line freely, to your tongue and feet, you are swinging with your whole body—swinging from your toes to your tongue.
For a perfect, controlled and safe execution of the movement, a total natural alignment of the body is necessary, thus enabling better activation of the deep front line, the deepest line that participates directly in the stability of the whole “deep shield,” making the swing a congruent and much more effective movement.
The Foot on the Hard Style Swing
Learning to use the feet was a watershed for the execution of a good technique. Many things changed when I really understood the importance and the beauty of feeling and knowing how to transmit the forces that enter through the single point that we have between our body and the ground. The feet are the only door of entry and the only point of contact with the ground that human beings have. That is why the feet, ankles, and toes should be trained like any other part of the body.
When we put load into the arches, and our foot is on the ground, that load can be send straight up into the adductors, straight through to the hip flexors, straight through the center of our body, through the thoracic cage, through the head, and back down again. Our core and our feet should be connected. The more stable our foot is, the stronger it is. The more stable that our core is, the stronger it is.
In the end, we realize that the best shock absorbers cannot be bought or found in our shoes. Muscle chains don’t only produce and transfer strength, but also act as a means of absorbing force by acting as real shock absorbers.
In order to improve the technique and to increase these co-activations, Dr. Emily Splichal teaches us, in her book Barefoot Strong, how to activate the whole deep front line through the perfect support of the tripod of our foot, using a technique that she calls Short Foot. This technique aims to access the deep front line by reestablishing the function of the feet. The foot, having been neglected for many years, is more and more being recognized as an important part of the human body.
The DFL begins at the sole of the foot with the distal phalanges, the flexor digitorum longus, and flexor hallicus longus. Another part of this origin is the posterior tibialis which has attachments to all of the metatarsal bases and most of the tarsal bones (ankle bones), except the talus. These tendons, together with the anterior tibialis and peroneus longus “stirrup,” help to lift the arch of the foot. And raising the arches of the feet is critical to work in safe mode so it helps if we understand its functionality once and for all.
Short Foot
“Short foot” is an exercise that isometrically contracts the muscles of the feet. It increases the compartment pressure with rapid isometric contractions. Let’s start with one foot at a time.
- In a split stance, place the foot in neutral and bend the knees.
- Make contact with the ground through three points on the bottom of your foot, which we refer to as the foot tripod. These points are the heads of the first and fifth metatarsals, and the calcaneus (heel).
- Lift the toes, spread them out, and place them on the ground.
- While exhaling, push the tips of the toes down into the ground.
- Practicing the “short foot” increases both the medial and lateral arches, and when we increase the transverse arch we will notice a relative lift of metatarsal heads. And that’s completely right.
The next step of integrating the deep core, brings everything listed above together and is the most important to engage the full line: when you exhale, focus on lifting your pelvic floor and pushing the tips of your toes down toward the ground.
I strongly recommend the EBFA website for a better understanding and visualization of the existing techniques on how to create a perfect connection of the activations, as well as knowing the wonderful and amazing work of Thomas Myers, on Anatomy Trains website, a challenging but extremely pleasant reading, also rich in history, culture, and art.
For me, this is the real beauty of the journey! Understanding that the path of knowledge is long and that little we know is the biggest door that we can open for ourselves. Blessed is the one who embraces the opportunities and who enables the immediate application of the new knowledge.
Float the bell with a solid root!
Sources
Myers, T. W., Anatomy Trains, 2009.
Schleip R, Findley T. W., Chaiton L., Huijing P. A., Fascia-The Tensional Network of the Human Body, Stecco C., 2012.
Functional Atlas of the Human Fascial System, Stecco C., 2014.
Osar, E., Exercicios Corretivos para Lesoes de Qualdril e Ombro. 2017 Rolf, I.P. Rolfing: The Integration of Human Structures, 1977.
Tsatsouline, Pavel. StrongFirst Certified Instructor Manual, 2015.