Fascia Training in Application Summit Review: Part One

Life without growth doesn't amount to much. We either keep acquiring or refining our skills or we become stagnant. This is something I posted on X not too long ago.

If you would like to follow me, I post about various things that relate to coaching, performance, and life. Check me out -> X - Chris Larrauri & Instagram - Chris Larrauri

Returning to the main topic, I believe in the importance of continuous self-improvement. This past weekend I had the privilege of learning from some of the best in performance training. Bobby Stroupe, Bill Parisi, and Sue Falsone headlined a conference in Pheonix, Arizona called "Fascia Training in Application Summit". In today’s article, I will highlight some of their presentations and major takeaways I had that are instantly applicable.

Nick Bufano's Presentation

Nick Bufano started the conference off with a presentation covering how merging different ecosystems creates a more dynamic institution. What I mean by that is merging major departments such as sports medicine and sports performance allows for better collaboration and better outcomes for the people we serve. 

He goes into detail about several things, including someone's state, story and strategy.

Here is a graphic from Tony Robbin's, one of Nick's Mentors

When it comes to coaching, when we are interacting with our athletes, the state they are in is crucial for performance. If they are in a negative state, it’ll be hard for them to be compelled to get work in. They’ll do the bare minimums but there focus will be somewhere else. If there focus is somewhere else then their physiology, which is what we are trying to adapt, won't be in a state to get optimal results.

Pay attention to their state, it’s probably coming from the story they are telling themselves. Identify that story and ask questions about it. This will allow the creation of a relationship but also provide insight on how we can capture and maintain their focus.  

Through learning about their story, this leads to what drives them. We can ask better questions such as, what human needs are they needing to satisfy to create a better state? When it comes to our needs as a human it comes down to these 6:

• Certainty

• Uncertainty

• Significance

• Connection/Love

• Growth

• Contribution

Learn these and find a way to satisfy them and you will become a better coach. If you are an athlete, learning these can lead to better leadership qualities toward your peers.

Key Takeaways

• Significance Stage

  
  

A valuable piece of information I got from Nick's presentation is most people get stuck in the significance stage. They can't make it to the proceeding 3 stages because they want significance so bad. We create significance by connecting. loving, contributing and continual growth. Seek the process, not the outcomes, and outcomes will come. 

• Hold the standard

  
  

The biggest take away from Nick's presentation was to never waver on standards. Once you set the standard for yourself, your business, and others, stick to it. Don’t fold no matter what. 

Bill Parisi's Presentation

Up next was Bill Parisi, in his presentation “Fascia Training for Athletic Performance,” Bill brings a lot of energy to his presentation that keeps you engaged into what he is saying.

A major topic covered was Newtonian mechanics. For those that don’t know Sir Isaac Newton created three laws of motion. These laws govern a lot of principles in physics. In the modern era we are trying to add a little more complexity to those three laws. Bill pointed out how the Newtonian laws are great for robots but not so much for humans. Check out one of his slides below:

We're more like plants, not machines. Humans self regenerate, to a certain extent, like plants. We often times take a reductionist perspective toward several categories in the performance space but tend to reduce to many of the different variables to where it makes things confusing to the outside world. If you're a coach, I recommend exploring some of the complexities out there. Then find your own simple solution to then provide to athletes or your clients.

In other words, DO YOUR RESEARCH. 

From Newtonian dynamics, Bill made a shift to fascia. This led to Dr. Stephan Levin, who coined the term Biotensegrity. Tensegrity combines the words tension and integrity. then, in biology, Bio means "life" or "of living things". So biotensegrity means the tension and integrity of living things. It is a structural principle that describes how tension and compression forces balance to create a stable 3D form. This describes fascia.

Let’s take this table for example.

If you notice, the table doesn't have any structural (the metal not the chains) pieces touching. But the structure is still able to hold its form as a table. This is because the chains have tension on them in a way that allows the structure to stay upright. If you notice there is one chain in the middle holding the two L pieces together. If it were just the middle chain alone, the top piece of the table would fall over. With the addition of the four chains surrounding the table, this allows for the two pieces to pull tension into one another without toppling over.

This is how our body works with fascia. The bones, muscles, organs etc. stay true to form because our fascia creates tension in a way that holds it so. Like the table.

Bill would describe the tensegrity more like this picture below

The man in the picture is Thomas Meyers, who most would credit with bringing the concept of fascia to eastern society from western medicine. The structure he is holding is a tensegrity model. This model helps explain expansion & compression of the body but is an advanced representation of this stuff. I like the table example for simplicity's sake.

From diving into what fascia is and what it’s made of, Bill relates why fascia is important by using a case study to add a proof point to how fascia relates to helping athletes be more athletic.

Check out this slide from his presentation:

Now, why would he have a sheet of plywood on a slide while talking about muscle pulsing? I'll leave you in suspense so you will go to one of his presentations soon. It'll be worth it. Here is a link to find some of his content -> Parisi Speed School

Key Takeaways

• Dynamic Systems Theory

If you haven’t heard of the dynamic systems theory yet, I would recommend looking into it. The basic top-down approach toward motor learning helps, especially with younger athletes. As an athlete advances the bottom-up approach, or how dynamic systems theory approaches development, is impactful. I won’t cover much on this, but one overview of this model is we want to create unpredictable problems for athletes to solve. This, in return, helps with enhancing our reflexes making movement more automatic and faster.

• Fascia is the largest sensory organ

Fascia has up to 8 times more sensory nerve endings than muscle. I found this interesting because we tend to look at proprioception, or the awareness we have toward our body in space, as more of a muscle thing. In actuality, is it the fascia? Is how we are interacting with our environment more of a fascia thing? These are some questions I'll have to explore further.

• Exercise Variations

After covering some of the ins and outs of fascia, we did a warm-up covering Bill’s application of some of these theories.

Two exercises I got from his application were:

1)

2)

Waterbag curtesy of Tidal Tank

We did a bunch of other exercises for his warm-up but these two stood out. They are much harder then they look. Give them a try and let me know how you like them.

To end Bill's part, we all hit two claps and got out of there. (awesome finishing touch)

Great presentation and demonstration by Bill Parisi. I would have to give it a 10/10 if I gave it a rating. I highly recommend you check out a presentation soon.

I don't like to make these articles too long, so I'm going to end here for today. Come back for part two as I give an overview of Sue Falsone’s, Michol Dalcourt’s, and Bobby Stroupe’s presentations.

Thank you for reading