Fascia, Fascia Release and Results

The last few days a couple of the bobsled athletes that are heavy squatters, had been having some TFL, IT band discomfort with some of there heavier sets. Upon inspection, I released a lot of adhesion's in the vastus lateralis. To my surprise, both experienced visual growth in the quad, with one experiencing new found "cuts" in the vastus medias, lateralis and rectus. I had heard that this can happen with the biceps with guys that work arms a lot and don't do much stretching or self care. It was pretty cool to visually see the quad flex harder and larger on completion of the releases.

Fascia interpenetrates and surrounds all organs, muscles, bones and nerve fibers, creating a unique environment for body systems functioning. Lately I've been reading about fascia may be considered an organ of support for the human body. In it's simplest example, it forms a support tube around the muscle. When the fascia gets to tight from adhesion's, the muscle has no where to go on contraction. So the contraction isn't as powerful or is painful. When you release the fascia the muscle is able to contract to its full capability, so the muscle didn't exactly grow, you're just taking away it's restriction so to speak. Interesting to see for the first time.