The Neuro-Musculo-Skeletal-Fascial System
The Four Primary Systems of Movement that Support Moving Well.
The following is meant as a very basic overview on the four systems of the body that primarily affect our ability to Move Well: The nervous system, the muscular system, the skeletal system, and the fascial system. This is by no means an exhaustive explanation, but it is hopefully enough to give you a basic understanding on how each system contributes and why each system requires maintenance to keep you Moving Well. This is intended to get you thinking about movement from a new perspective and stimulate your curiosity!
An analogy I find helpful to maintain perspective: Imagine the human body as a factory. It has many different systems which could equate to different departments. Each system/department is composed of cells with unique properties, similar to workers with specific training and skills. It is the specialization of the cells/workers that allow each system/department to efficiently contribute to the productivity of the body/factory. Unlike a factory, which is focused on the creation of a limited number of products, the human body utilizes its resources dynamically in variety of ways.
Nervous System.
How It Works: The central nervous system (brain) builds patterns of movements that we utilize to perform basic activities like getting a cup out of the cabinet to advanced activities like a dancer spinning on one toe. Accomplishing any of these activities is the result of repeated attempts of trial and error, assessing what worked and got us closer to our goals and what didn’t. When we first figure out how to accomplish an activity it is usually clunky, lacking the smoothness and coordination that comes from practicing the movement and refining the details of the pattern. All of this is accomplished through neural plasticity. Over repeated attempts of an activity the connectivity is increased between individual brain cells (neurons) increase, neurons outside the brain, and the targeted muscles [1]. Additional information from the proprioceptive cells (they tell us about where we are in space/in relation to gravity, how our joints are organized relative to each other, areas of our body that are under tension, and more) is utilized to help us learn about how we are interacting with our environment as we perform our activities [1]. This increase in connectivity and integration of proprioceptive information improves the coordination of the movement through improved timing of muscle firing and better control over the amount of contraction a muscle is generating.
Where Dysfunction Can Happen: Our nervous system will reinforce the pattern we teach it, so if we learn and pattern movements that are not terrible efficient or place a small strain on the same tissues repetitively, over time we may start to notice a reduced performance either due to fatigue or minor aches and pains.
How Function Can Be Restored: The system is adaptive! Through activities that improve our awareness of our own movements we can change movement patterns and relearn healthier patterns. Useful tools in starting to change your movement patterns include increasing your understanding of anatomy, working on improving your proprioceptive abilities, working with a trainer who can give you feedback about signs of dysfunction you may not have noticed, and varying your activities to increase your brains flexibility in creating movements.
How Chalk Move Well Integrates This System:
Blogs, video introductions, and live online classes include tips on the relationship between movement and anatomy.
MELT Method classes are an excellent place to work on improving your proprioceptive abilities.
Individualized training is available to help you optimize your movement patterns with customized training programs.
Muscular System.
How It Works: Not all muscle cells are the same, even within this system there are further specializations. This allows the system to adapt more effectively to the variety of demands that are placed on it and increases the efficiency of the system overall. Training results in specific adaptations of certain cell types which support an increased ability to perform the exercise or activity that is being trained [2]. Cell function specialization is related to structural specialization. Muscle cells that support sustained posture are slow twitch cells whereas muscle cells that create power are fast twitch cells, and the significant difference between them is the structure of the protein that creates a contraction and the capacity to perform enzymatic reactions that fuel the contractions [2]. (To be thorough, there are also intermediate twitch type cells which contain varied proportions of the fast and slow protein structures [2].) There is a specific effect of the type of exercise training performed which results in the stimulation of different molecular pathways resulting in the unique adaptions of the muscle cells to more efficiently facilitate the same type of exercise in the future [2]. Endurance training will make it easier to run a marathon and weightlifting will make it easier to carry heavy things. In our daily lives we need to be able to both hold ourselves upright for a sustained period of time (endurance) and carry things around like groceries and laundry (power), we need to be able to get up off the floor (power) and we need to be able to climb stairs (endurance).
Where Dysfunction Can Happen: When we favor training in only one type of exercise (endurance vs power) or we favor training in one region of the body over another, we start to lose balance and our system functions less optimally overall.
How Function Can Be Restored: Vary the types of exercise you perform so that you include both endurance type exercises and power type exercises. Make sure that you are working through the all ranges of motion throughout the body so that you stimulate balanced development in muscle regions. It is good to note that there are many types of endurance or power exercises, and many that fall in between. Endurance can be found in traditional distance running or cycling exercises, but it can also be found in sustaining stillness in dynamic positions or moving at a consistent pace through a variety of positions such as in yoga. Likewise, power exercise can come from traditional weightlifting or it can be found in explosive dynamic movement training using only body weight. The takeaway is don’t give up on a broad exercise category just because you didn’t like the specific exercise discipline.
How Chalk Move Well Integrates This System:
Stronger Moves classes incorporate a variety of sustained postures and dynamic movements in isolated regions and throughout the body to help you maintain a varied and balanced training.
Individualized training programs can help you find overall diversity and balance in your training routines.
Skeletal System.
How It Works: Our bones are an integral component of the lever system we utilize to exert forces on the world around us. They are a relatively passive component of the system compared to the others, but their ability to support us during movement is essential. The density of bone is, which creates it strength, can be affected by weight-bearing activities. Activities that place a mild strain on bones cause an increase in the activity of bone cells that increase the strength of the bone and the strength occurs is in a direction that is specific to the direction of the strain [3].
Where Dysfunction Can Happen:
Osteopenia/Osteoporosis: The adaptive response of bone to activity is most profound during childhood and adolescents, slowly decreasing in magnitude as we age and resulting in decreased bone density later in life [3]. One of the more concerning situations when bone density is decreased, is that there is a higher risk of fracture if a fall occurs.
Bone Stress Responses: Sometimes, when introducing new weight-bearing exercises, such as running on pavement, the cumulative amount of strain applied to the bone is greater than the bones ability to adapt in a short time, resulting in a stress response of the bone.
How Function Can Be Restored:
While exercise has not been shown to reverse bone loss later in life, it has been hypothesized to slow down the loss of bone and help to maintain bone density [3]. Exercise can also help with balance, mobility, and coordination, which can help to reduce the risk of a fall or improve the ability to safely catch oneself if a fall occurs, indirectly reducing the risk of fracture as a result of decreased bone density.
To reduce the risk of a bone stress response to training, slowly integrate load baring activities, leaving sufficient recovery time between trainings to allow for positive adaptions and complete recovery. Also, always listen to your body and get checked out by your doctor if you are having pain. If you catch it early and slow down to the appropriate pace, you will bounce back faster and ultimately achieve your goals sooner.
How Chalk Move Well Integrates This System:
MELT Method Moves classes can help to improve sensory connection, enhancing balance and coordination.
Stronger Moves and Essential Moves classes can help with overall strength and coordination.
Restorative Moves can help with overall mobility.
Individualized training programs can help you address how you are integrating weight-bearing exercises into your training plan.
Fascial System.
What It Is: Fascia is a Latin word meaning tissue. Literally, it does not define any specific tissue of the body, but it is used generically to refer to the tissue that surrounds other more specific tissue systems like muscles, bones, heart, lungs, kidneys, etc. To get a sense of what this is and how integrated it is into our other systems, think of an uncooked chicken breast, that slimy white film that seems like it is somehow connected into the meat of the breast, that’s what we are talking about. (For a deeper diver down this path go look up Strolling Under the Skin on YouTube). But it is also the substance that composes our ligaments and tendons, structures that give us an incredible amount of spatial awareness (proprioception) and support for movement [4].
How It Works: Fascia is a complex substance that is part fluid and part protein matrix. The matrix creates a flexible support system that limits its elasticity and directs forces. The fluid component allows for lubrication of movement (so that, for one example, muscles which contract in differing direction can contract individual) and insulation from outside forces. This support system adapts to the loads the body encounters frequently to become more effective by increasing the complexity of the system where it is needed and organizing the structure to better direct the forces (movements) which are often encountered [4]. The process of remodeling our fascia is slow taking several months to a few years to achieve maximal results [4]. The reason for this slow response is the nature of the detailed mechanism of the remodeling process: Movement creates distortive forces on the structure of the fascia, pulling on the membranes of the fibroblast cells which maintain it. The forces on the fibroblast cells cause a chemical reaction within the cell that activates certain regions of DNA causing an increase in the production of the components of the matrix, resulting in more extensibility of the fascia in the direction of the original movement.
Where Dysfunction Can Happen: When daily movements do not push through full ranges of motion, or particular ranges of motion are avoided due to injury or dysfunction, the fascia may lose some of its extensibility and resilience in the affected region. Over time, the fascia will remodel itself in accordance with the dysfunctional movements, resulting in a further sense of restriction.
How Function Can Be Restored: Fascial will remodel itself if we stimulate it properly. Find activities that allow you to assess and improve the resilience of your fascial system. There are many fascial movement disciplines out there to choose from (I utilize MELT Method and Merrithew’s Fascial Movement Foundations for myself and my clients). Make sure to integrate full body movement training into the program. And keep in mind that the adaptability of fascia can be affected by many other physiological circumstances (most importantly the amount of water you consume).
Specific Ways CMW Can Help:
MELT Method Moves, Restorative Moves, and Essential Moves classes all integrate elements of fascial awareness and mobilization.
Individual training programs can help to target fascial exercises to best address your needs.
Truly, Moving Well is a result of appropriately stimulating all of our direct movement systems and the systems that indirectly support movement. The human body is extremely complex, but amazing in its ability to adapt. If you take nothing else away from this blog, please take away the sense that it is important to move and train your full body, and to keep variety in your training disciplines.
If this blog provoked any questions please feel free to ask them! Chalk Move Well is dedicated to the idea that movement education is important to help promote autonomy and confidence in training programs. I don’t guarantee that I will know the answer off the top of my head, but I can promise that I don’t like unanswered questions and would be happy to comb through the research to find it for all of us.
Much of the information provided is based on the synthesis of my years of studying for my Doctor of Chiropractic and my Masters of Science in Sport’s Medicine degrees. For those areas I felt I needed to remind myself of the science before I posted this, here are the references:
[1] A. E. Papale and B. M. Hooks, "Circuit changes in motor cortex during motor skill learning," Neuroscience, pp. 283-297, 2018.
[2] R. Qaisar, S. Bhaskaran and H. V. Remmen, "Muscle fiber type diversification during exercise adn regeneration," Free Radical Biology and Medicine, pp. 56-67, 2016.
[3] L. Santos, K. J. Elliott-Sale and C. Sale, "Exercise and bone health across the lifespan," Biogerontology, pp. 931-946, 2017.
[4] R. Schleip and D. G. Muller, "Training priniciples for fascial connective tissue: Scientific foundation and suggested practical applications," Journal of Bodywork a& Movement Therapies, pp. 103-115, 2013.