Fascial stretch – what is it?

It’s a really commonly used term these days, but what does fascial stretch even mean?

You might think it’s an easy situation of the fascia getting pulled on in order to make it longer. But that’s not really it, or at least it’s more complex than that. All stretching technically includes the fascia – so what makes “fascial” stretch more fascial than regular stretching? We’ll discuss below.

The fibers that make up the fascia, which are primarily types of collagen, aren’t really stretchy individually – so in the sense of the fascial fibers stretching, that’s not really what’s happening.
What is happening, is the structure and organization of the fascial fibers is being stretched. This is possible because of the way all these little inflexible structures are arranged into a larger vacuolar network.

Some of the bonds that make up the web are really strong and stable, and can only be broken by really generous forces that we don’t generate with legitimate massage. There’s also a reasonably well supported hypothesis now too that there are also a bunch of other weaker bonds that are part of the linking force of the entire web.

These weaker bonds can be broken with lower forces, making the web something that is dynamic – as in, its arrangement can be changed by normal forces (like moving and stretching) by the weaker bonds breaking and reforming between different fibers.

It’s that re-arrangement of bonds within the web that we refer to as “fascial stretch”.

And we specifically target the fascia (or even more specifically, the myofascia) by introducing sheer forces into the tissues to specifically try and drive layers of tissue past one another. That is what makes the techniques we talk about below, more fascial than regular stretching.

To be clear, this does mean that all stretching and all movement and all manual therapy can probably be classed as some kind of fascial stretching (even when the practitioner doesn’t call it that). But in terms of how people are using the name, we can zoom in on techniques (especially in something like manual therapy) that are focused on driving force directionally through the tissue with a little more intention or reasoning behind why they’re moving the tissue in a particular way.

So in terms of the application of fascial stretch technique, we talk about 2 general possibilities:

• • Pin and stretch – this involves the careful positioning of a limb for a target muscle, the application of “pinning” pressure to the tissue and a gradual passive movement of the limb to achieve a gliding of muscle through a stationary tissue.
• • Sink and draw – essentially the opposite to the pin & stretch, this method involves the “gripping” of the superficial tissue when you sink and then a directional force applied in order to take the tissue over stationary musculature.

Within this style of manual therapy application, you may encounter significant increases in intensity – not that should necessarily always be a part of fascial stretch. Our mantra “slow it down” really helps to mitigate this intensity increase, AND it’s also a bit rare for people who practice “fascial stretch” tools to move so slowly as to take that intensity out of it.

With a concentrated breaking of weaker bonds and the encouragement to rearrange themselves, we often see a short term (and generous) increase in flexibility. Of course, this is not only about the fascial changes but about the nervous system changes that occur in a massage too, but at least some portion of the changes in flexibility right after a fascial stretch session are likely to be due to the reorganization of those weaker bonds.

If we want to keep those changes, we have to keep using that extra space with our movement.

The next time you hear people talking about fascial stretch, you’ll have a bit more of an understanding of what they’re talking about.

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If you’re obsessed with learning about fascia, you might want to check out this online module I made on it.