Whether your outdoor winter plans include backcountry skiing and ice-climbing or simply shoveling the drive and walking the dog—maintaining your body’s fascia is the key to success. Fascia is, ultimately, the most important aspect of your connective tissue system that we move with every single day. Keeping your holistic fascial system hydrated, flowing, and reactive is essential. Here’s how to keep it fun and enjoyable!
By Dr. Trish Murray
Moving into the winter months brings about a feeling of excitement for many who love snowy outdoor activities and dread for others, who typically spend the majority of this season bundled up indoors. If you are an avid skier, ice climber, or winter hiker, it is so important to maintain the mobility of your connective tissue, or fascia, so that you can continue to enjoy these activities. If you find yourself a bit more sedentary in the winter, it’s just as imperative that you practice some type of movement so that you can maintain your strength and flexibility for your favorite outdoor activities come spring and summer.
Fascia is, ultimately, the most important aspect of your connective tissue system that we move with every single day.
Regardless of which category you identify with, it’s crucial to continue moving your body during the winter to maintain your overall health and well-being. To optimize your performance in any athletic sport, you need to diversify your movement techniques. Diverse full-body movement stimulates your brain, muscle, fascia, balance, circulation, and reaction time.
What Is Fascia? (pronounced fah-shah)
The connective tissue system of your body includes the muscles, ligaments, tendons, and fascia. Fascia is, ultimately, the most important aspect of your connective tissue system that we move with every single day. It can be considered the master designer of your body as it is a holistic system that surrounds all aspects of our physical body, including muscles, ligaments, tendons, nerves, organs, and blood vessels. There is a great analogy that can help you to picture this fascial network in a visible, relatable way. Take, for example, an orange. Beneath the thick outer orange peel is a layer of white fibrous substance. That substance is essentially the fascial layer of the fruit. If you then start to separate sections of the orange, you’ll find that each section is enclosed in a thin layer of tissue—again, this is equivalent to fascia within the human body. If you look even more closely, each section of the orange contains many tiny bags that hold the juice of the fruit. These little bags are also made up of fascia.
Fascia and Circulation
Your body, mind, and vessels need to be ready to function in varied temperatures, so no matter how cold and raw it is outside, your hands and feet stay warm and your extremities can move the way you need them to. This is how you can ski the glades with gusto and flow throughout the trees or climb that multi-pitch route you’ve been dreaming about during the warmer months. In order to be able to do this, you must keep your holistic fascial system hydrated, flowing, and reactive.
Imagine a sponge that has been sitting out on the counter overnight. It is dry and rigid. But once you wet that sponge, it becomes soft and pliable. The same is true for your fascia.
Blood vessels flow through the layers of the fascial network. When these layers of connective tissue are hydrated and mobile, veins and arteries can easily carry blood to and from the heart to the rest of the body. Blood vessels that are impinged by tight and immobile fascia can lead to problems with circulation and decreased athletic performance. This could become even more detrimental in the frigid cold months as blood vessels naturally constrict or narrow in cold weather, particularly in the extremities. Movement and manipulation of the fascia all year long helps to hydrate the tissue and prevent blood vessels from becoming trapped within the layers of connective tissue.
Don’t Freeze Up This Winter!
Have you ever wondered why you experience more aches, pains, and stiffness in the wintertime? Winter weather here in the Northeast is dry and cold. Cold tissue that is not adequately hydrated becomes stiff and immovable. Our days have shorter periods of daylight, so you may feel less motivated or struggle to find enough time to squeeze in an outdoor workout while it’s still light out. If you tend to be less active in the winter months, this lack of movement starts to bring about more stiffness in the connective tissue network.
Movement for Longevity incorporates applied movement neurology techniques to help you find the right level of challenge for your body and brain to improve your strength, balance, posture, and your sense of your body in space.
Imagine a sponge that has been sitting out on the counter overnight. It is dry and rigid. But once you wet that sponge, it becomes soft and pliable. The same is true for your fascia. Without proper hydration or frequent movement, it becomes stiff and you’ll feel uncomfortable and inflexible. If you have a regular movement practice and drink adequate amounts of water throughout the day (especially in the winter), you’ll find that your connective tissue feels much more fluid.
Supporting Your Fascia with Movement
If you’re looking for fun and new ways to get moving this winter, Discover Health Functional Medicine Center, has recently launched an online membership providing three different movement modalities to complement your favorite activities.
Self-Myofascial Release is therapy for gently manipulating the soft tissues of the muscles and fascia to treat pain and immobility, resulting in increased joint range of motion, increased flexibility, relief from pain caused by restricted movement or scar tissue, and increased activity of the parasympathetic nervous system.
Movement for Longevity incorporates applied movement neurology techniques to help you find the right level of challenge for your body and brain to improve your strength, balance, posture, and your sense of your body in space.
Discover Yoga is a gentle yoga class that begins with a mindful warm-up before moving into demonstration, basic terminology, and slowly paced sequences for safe alignment and practice of foundational poses. Visit www.discoverhealthfmc.com for more information.
Whether you are preparing for a day exploring the outdoors or cozying up by the fire instead, the fascia is the universal connective tissue of your body that must be kept fluid and mobile, especially in the cold and dry winter months. Movement is imperative to maintain the health, hydration, fluidity, clarity, and purification of the fascia to maintain your overall health. Keep in mind that this movement should be fun, enjoyable, and nurturing.
Make it Fun!
Here are a few tips to try this winter to maintain
the elasticity and function of your fascia.
• Drink plenty of water (at least 64 ounces per day) to stay hydrated.
• Eat a balanced diet full of colorful fruits and vegetables, healthy fat sources,
and lean protein, while avoiding overly processed and packaged foods.
• Get moving! Experiment with trying a variety of activities that incorporate
aerobic and anaerobic exercises, balance, and strength-building. Find activities that you enjoy.
• Incorporate some dynamic stretching before your activity and static
stretching afterwards.
Catch this article in the Winter 2020/21 edition of Mt Washington Valley Vibe available at any of these locations around the region.
For more information, visit online at
www.discoverhealthfmc.com/#Movement
Discover Health Functional Medicine Center,
24 Pleasant St, Conway, NH • (603) 447-3112
