You already know how important your ankles, feet and muscles are for walking. But there is one more element without which you wouldn’t be able to take a single step. That element is fascia. Check out its vital role in the gait cycle.
Our previous posts on the gait cycle gave you a general overview, a rundown on efficiency, and insight into what’s happening with foot and ankle as well as your muscles. Your walking movements would neither be efficient nor even possible without one more important element: that thing called fascia. Fascia consists of thin sheaths of fibrous tissues that surround muscles and organs, with myofascia referring to the fascia specifically around your muscles.
Meet the Myofascial System
While it doesn’t typically get as much attention as, say, your skeletal or muscular system, the myofascial system is what helps to keep the entire body working together as a whole. It plays a major role during all movement, especially the gait cycle.
Walking is a subconscious activity, relying on many different muscles working together without any conscious input from the brain. The muscles instead rely on something else to coordinate their movements. That something else is the proprioceptive system, which gets its information from mechanoreceptors within the fascia.
Thanks to the intricate computing system established within the fascia, along with the extensive chains of fascia throughout the body known as “Anatomy Trains,” we can walk without giving it a thought. These Anatomy Trains allow fascia to carry signals and communicate with other tissues and each other as needed to ensure your body is most efficiently and effectively working as a single streamlined unit.
Conscious Action and Subconscious Reaction
Myofascial tissues can be directed consciously, which is the case when you perform a move such as actively contracting your tibialis anterior to dorsiflex and evert your foot. But the tissues are also able to react subconsciously, which is the case when your foot hits the ground to take a step.
When walking, the role of your tibialis anterior is to react to your body’s interaction with the ground to control the dorsiflexing and eversion of your foot. As your foot hits the ground, the tissues surrounding your foot lengthen, causing the tibialis anterior to contract. This contraction is due to the proprioceptors in the fascia, which take their cues from the body’s nervous system.
Proprioceptors throughout your body are constantly sensing any changes in position and tension, then sending the information along to the relevant muscles that may need to adjust. Any force that affects your tendons is not only communicated to the muscle directly associated with the tendon, but also to the surrounding fascia. Proprioceptors in nearby muscles then pick up the communication, becoming stimulated as needed to perform the desired pattern of movement.
Seamless Communication
This seamless communication happens constantly during the act of walking, due to what James Earls refers to as the body’s “walking system.” Here the “bones, joint alignment, and the neuromyofascial continuum” produce a flowing, efficient gait. Joints move freely in the indicated range and direction. At the same time, myofascial tissues take in the necessary information from the nervous system and by sensing the mechanics of the surrounding tissues.
Three forces are at work on your body during the gait cycle: the upward ground reaction force, the downward force of gravity, and the forward force of momentum. In addition to holding your bones together, the elastic myofascial tissues absorb the forces coming in from all three sources. They then communicate necessary information to relevant bodily structures so your body performs the necessary adjustments to maintain balance, align joints and stimulate muscles to keep you moving forward.
While the exploration and function of fascia goes much deeper than this article allows, this overview hopefully provides a basic understanding of what fascia is, how it works and its vital importance during the gait cycle.
REFERENCES:
- Earls J. Born to Walk: Myofascial Efficiency and the Body in Movement. 1st ed. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books; 2014.