Fascia Training in Application Summit Review: Part Two

After the first couple of speakers, it was clear that this event would be a deep dive into the complexities and nuances of fascia training. Some conferences provide surface-level contributions toward topics; this one was different. The conference was a melting pot of innovative ideas, groundbreaking research, and practical applications centered around fascia.

Over the course of the summit, I noticed a seamless flow from speaker to speaker. All of them brought a different perspective intertwined with their own background. Previously I covered a couple of the speakers. Now, I will give an overview of three more: Sue Falsone, Michol Dalcourt , and Bobby Stroupe.

Sue Falsone's Presentation

After Bill spoke, next up was Sue Falsone. It was obvious that she was a person of interest to everyone in the crowd when she got up to speak. Sue's subject knowledge has depth and her presentation proved it.

There were five main components to Sue's presentation:

• Fascial Manipulation

• Needling/Acupucture

• CBD/CBN

• Cupping

• Eldoa

Before you ask, yes, CBD is what you think it is. We'll cover it more later on. Just wanted to clear the air because I was a little confused when it came across one of the slides.

Let's step into the first two topics of fascial manipulation and needling.

Sue begins her presentation with a slide stating "Where east meets west" referring to the interaction between eastern and western medicine.

For simplicity sake, we can look at eastern medicine as chinese medicine to provide a little context. It's natural remedies by nature. Western medicine revolves more around surgeries and pharmaceuticals.

I loved how Sue reiterated multiple times that in the western world we tried a bunch of eastern medicine practices. Where we failed, was once something didn't make sense we wrote it off like it didn't work and eastern societies were stupid. We got this wrong.

Take a look at one of the presentation slides

If you notice at the top of the slide there is a chinese symbol. Sue goes on to explain what that symbol translates to. It means "underground rivers of silk." This symbol was trying to indicate fascia.

In the past, when surgeons did surgery, they would cut through the fascia as if it didn't matter and threw it away. Now we know that the fascia is important and eastern medicine has been trying to tell us for centuries.

On the road to mastery, usually, similarities start to emerge toward different models or systems. Sue started to connect the dots from different countries that were essentially saying the same thing. When she is doing various soft tissue modalities she follow her Pentamodal Method shown below.

These five systems together tend to eliminate the problem and the solution with regards to pain. What I mean by the problem and the solution is a vast majority of the time, athletes or patients have pain in an area but the pain isn't being caused by that area. This means it's the solution. The problem is actually stemming from a different situation.

Let's use the knee as an example. A common thing in sports is knee pain. Most of the time the knee pain isn't caused by things happening at the knee but rather the hip or ankle. The problem at the hip and ankle is creating a down stream or upstream affect causing pain at the knee.

One problem I have found is the glutes not operating in a manner that allows synergy with the leg. The problem is the glutes but the pain is in the knee. By only treating the knee, we aren't solving the problem.

From a soft tissue manipulation perspective, the Pentamodal Model eliminates these issues.

If we look at one side of the Pentamodal Model we notice that one of them says fascial. This is where Luigi Stecco comes into play. Stecco is an italian that originated fascial manipulation and identified fascial lines. I highly encourage you to review more of Stecco's work toward fascia.

After laying a bunch of information on us about Fascia, Sue then made a left turn and started to talk about Endocannabinoids.

Check out her interpretation toward what the endocannabinoid system (ECS) is

Why is this system important? It is shown that there is a mild to strong ability to produce a desired result toward:

• Chronic Pain

• Opiod Dependency

• Muscle Pain

• Epilepsy

• Multiple Sclerosis

  
  

To name a few.

This is an interesting frontier seeing as how for a long time we viewed marijuana as a drug that just got people high. Now we know that some parts of cannabis can actually be beneficial.

The National Institute for health even went as far as to say that the ECS is involved in all disease processes. That is a strong statement that is going to need a lot of evidence to back it up but thats for someone else to gather.

I'll leave this topic with this last graphic that shows the different types of cannabinoids. Cannabis obviously has a lot more functions than to just get us high. I believe there are multiple reasons as to why most leagues don't test for cannabis and all leagues have CBD as a legal substance.

As the presentation continued on we shifted gears to cupping. I'm going to keep this section short and sweet.

Cupping is the only soft tissue modality that creates negative pressure as opposed to positive. This means that most modalities push down or puncture the skin, this creates positive pressure. Cupping pulls the skin and underlying tissues up creating negative pressure.

This is relevant because by creating negative pressure we can cause the fibers of the muscle, fascia, and skin to slide and glide easier. This in return can reduce densification of the area being treated.

Sue goes on to describe three techniques she does when using cupping. Want to know what those are? I recommend you see a presentation by her soon. Here is a link to her some of her educational options -> Structure and Function

We didn't get to cover eldoa but Sue did mention essentailly eldoa is creating tension on opposite ends of whatever part you are trying to create traction, space, in. Lets take the lowback for instance. If we create internal tension that pulls the body from two different ends allowing the low back to"get long" as opposed to being compressed.

Key Takeaways

• Description of Fascial Manipulation

  
  

"FM allows an organized approach to specific areas that may best influence the network as a whole"

• ECS is the largest neuroregulatory system

  
  

The ECS signals both the sympathetic and parasympathetic systems. It can create a big relaxation response and in other situations provide a high amount of alertness.

• Different size cups affect different layers of the underlying fibers

A 30 mm cup was shown to create more space in the tissue closest to the skin. The 30 mm cup is one of the smaller cups in a cupping set. Whereas a 65 mm cup was shown to create space in deeper tissues away from the skin. This has implications on which cup to use depanding on what level of the tissue is having issues.

Michol Dalcourt Presentation

The next presentation was done by Vipr and ViprPro creator Michol Dalcourt. This slide is an overview of objectives he covers.

Michol gives definitions of key terms that lead to why he does the various exercises he does and why he created the Vipr products ( which you can purchase here -> Vipr )

I won't go into too much detail with regards to his presentation because I want to cover more of his practical. I will touch on a couple of things he discusses. I recommend going to listen to Michol talk. You can sign up for that hear -> Perform Better

Side note: I'm a huge advocate of personal development. I believe we should learn from everyone. This doesn't mean we have to apply what we are learning but a piece of being open minded is understanding that everyone has their own background. It doesn't matter if they are younger, older, come from a different discipline ect. Learn from them, apply what you can, and #Become5D (Like how I threw that in there)

Back on topic.

A chunk of the presentation was wrapped around how stress, or in the context of training 'load', affects five key areas:

• Muscles

• Nervous System

• Skin

• Joints

• Fascia

Here is a graphic from one of his slides that shows how the different loading patterns work and affect tissue. The three main patterns of loading are: tension, compression, and shear. This helps with the rationale of doing the movements he does with the ViprPro.

Now, I want to give some options for movements in the sagital, frontal, and transverse planes.

Michol showed us with the ViprPro, but I don't have my ViprPro's in yet so I demonstrated with a Ultimate Sandbag that you can purchase here -> Perform Better

1) Sandbag Forward Lunge to Forward Press

2) Sandbag Lateral Lunge with Spear and Rotate

3) Sandbag Lateral Lunge with Rotational Press

4) Sandbag Rotational Lunge to Rotational Press

Key Takeaways

• Hebbian Learning

Hebbian learning is a key principle to synamptic plasticity. The synapse is the junction between two nuerons responcible for transferring an action potential through the nervous system. Essentally it's the bridge that allows a a movement to go from a signal to an action. It's important because when it comes to a movement, although no two repetitions of a movement are the same, we want to create an environment where it's close. Hebbian learning "Nuerons that fire together, wire together"

• Advanced Glycation End Products (AGEs)

Glycation is a process where sugar molecules react with proteins, lipids, or nucleic acid, leading to the formation of AGEs. This matters because these AGEs can get caught within fascias collagen fibers (I have a feeling other tissues also) leading to increased stiffness, reduced flexibility, and possible pain

• Exercise Variations

Once a coach has their overall systems in place and the corresponding principles that make up the system, the tactics used are many. What I mean by tactics are the exercise variations used to fulfill the input needed to create an adaptation for an athlete or client. For example, If I'm trying to increase someone's speed (this is the adaptation I'm chasing) then the exercises I choose are the input that can help. Above are some options for more advanced athletes.

Bobby Stroupe's Presentation

I'll start this next section with a couple of the presenters slides

I think it's funny that Coach Stroupe announced himself as "Patrick Mahomes Trainer." It puts it further in to context that as a player development coach, S&C coach, Physical therapists etc. that we are support staff. Although I wasn't there because he's Patrick Mahomes trainer, It's quite the accomplishment. On top of other feats he has. Let's get into his presentation.

Coach started with some thought provoking things toward philosophies he holds in life and training. He brought up the word coach and how it orginated. The difference between attaining vs nourishing and what that means with reagard to our athletes. He aludes to the fact that athletes are very resourceful. This all led to the most interesting part of the presentation.

Check out this slide

Lets bring attenton to the trees. The trees are called Aspen trees. What's interesting about them is their root system. They have a unique characteristic called root sprouting. In the beginning the roots gain range. They grow vast and wide, then sprout new trees out of them allowing the root system to continue gaining range. The system becomes so abundant that it drowns out other species of trees that try to grow within the network. Now go back and read the qoute at the bottom. Having range allows the system to be able to withstand a multitude of problems.

Bobby has range and started to solve his own problems with his athletes. This is where the cake system came to fruition.

He goes into further detail about what the cake system entails. He breaks his weekly programming into 3 main days

• A Day - Main focus is mobility and making sure everything is working as it should

• B Day - Main focus is movement literacy and power

• C Day - Main focus is speed

Anyone that works with high end athletes knows this is a simple solution to a reoccurring problem.

After covering these main components in detail we went on to do a practical portion. I won't cover much of the practical portion because that's where the magic was. I will give you this last slide though.

If you can figure out what this means on your own, good for you. If not, I highly recommend you go visit Bobby or find out the next time he has a speaking engagement and attend it.

I'll skip the key takeaways for this part as I've already made this blog longer than I wanted. I enjoyed the Fascia Training in Application Summit and recommend you attend the next one that comes along.

Until next time, thank you for reading.