Untying Knots

What Releasing Fascia Taught Me About Life

This week, I stood barefoot on a lacrosse ball. It was pain inducing. I contemplated my life for a solid 20 minutes, and then realized: this is what change feels like.

I've been running for a while now. Naturally the body adapts. Muscles strengthen, the cardiovascular system becomes more efficient. Ligaments harden, adjust, begin to get used to the long days out.

But as no system is perfect, along with the adaptions come small inefficiencies. A rigid foot here, a tight hip there. Over time you realise that injuries or niggles pop up repeatedly. Most likely there is a root cause in your system. They are not always conscious. Your body simply learns a way to move – efficient or not – and repeats it until it becomes a pattern. Patterns are hard to break.

When I think back to the beginning of my running, I remember ease. Loose legs, light feet, and a lightness when I was flying down a descent. Over the years this feeling changed a bit. Nowadays it’s a feeling of control and focus.

Stronger, sure, but stiffer too.

The tension in my legs changed. They are more rigid. I know there’s a balance between strength and fluidity. Too flexible, and you lose power. Too tense, and you can’t move freely. Yet, if I think about how I want to feel during running I lean towards words like ease, fluidity and rhythmic.

I’ve started to feel the desire to bring that feeling of ease back. Not at the cost of strength — but alongside it. I want to be strong and fluid. They're not mutually exclusive. And so, this week, I started down a new path: releasing tension. Relearning movement. Rewiring patterns.

That led me to myofascial release.

The Hidden Web

Fascia — the connective tissue wrapping our entire body — is essential for fluid, efficient movement. Mine? Tighter than I realized. Everywhere.

One of the worst offenders is my plantar fascia, the thick band on the sole of my feet. I always had rigid, high-arched feet. I know they are a problem. After all they are the first contact point in each and every stride.

I’ve been working on their flexibility for a while now – stretching, mobility drills – no real lasting change. I realized I’d missed a crucial piece: Without the fascia being smooth the underlying muscles are restricted in their movement.

You can stretch and mobilize all you want if you don’t release the fascia.

Imagine tying a knot into a resistance band and trying to pull it apart. No matter how hard you pull, the band won’t fully stretch until the knot is gone. You can’t access its full flexibility.

That’s been my week. Slowly, painfully untying knots.

And somewhere between deep breaths, pressure and fading pain, I started to realize: this isn’t just about fascia.

What Releasing Fascia Taught Me About Life

Without Pressure, Nothing Changes

To release fascia you need pressure. Literal pressure.

A ball underfoot, your weight pressing down on it. Finding the most painful spots. Staying there. Breathing. Not resisting. Observing. Waiting for the tension to let go.

It’s a strange kind of meditation. A painful one.

On Tuesday, during minute nine of one of those sessions it dawned on me: this is how change works!

You need pressure. In running, in habits, in life. Some kind of internal urge has to build up – discomfort, restlessness, pain – before you actually act. In Germany, there’s a phrase: “Das Fass zum überlaufen bringen” – the moment a drop overflows the barrel. The English equivalent: “The straw that breaks the camel's back”.

For lasting change, I currently believe it’s essential. The overflow needs to happen. Without it, any change is most likely only temporary.

Sometimes, we need to feel bad to get better. I feel the urge to run more fluid for a while now but I’m just now acting on it. Might it be related to my shin acting up currently? Might be.

Maybe that was the missing last drop for lasting change.

You only grow with some resistance.

You Can Only Loosen Knots That You Know Of

I’m following a course that guides me through the essential parts of the body where tension might be held in the fascia. It’s not necessarily fun discovering how much tension you hold literally everywhere.

Only through following along throughout the course and placing the pain-inducing lacrosse ball on many different spots on my body, I realised what I could improve.

That’s the thing with blind spots: you can’t fix what you can’t see.

This made me reflect – how many other inefficiencies do I carry? In movement. In mindset. In how I react to stress. Handle relationships. Not every tension needs fixing right away, but the more aware you are, the more options you have.

What I find interesting about this is that it might be completely fine to not fix it. It might always stay an insignificance. It might not lead to any issues down the line.

This means there is this balance. Do I search for things that might be wrong, or do I let the pressure build up and fix it once it occurs. I think both are viable. It all depends on the context.

I might not run optimally and have repeated little niggles. I might wait for issues to pop up and fix them once they do or I might seek out a professional to help me improve my running to prevent them from even occurring.

The professional will help me find my blind spots.

You have two options: Search for things to fix, or live and wait for the signal, the pain, the pressure that tells you it’s time.

Time to change.

Sometimes nuances are important, too.

The Issue Might Not Be Where The Problem Is

I first learned this in mobility work, but the work this week reminded me: pain is often just a symptom, not the source.

The body is a complex system. Everything is connected — muscles, nerves, fascia, posture, habits, stress. Sometimes, when I applied pressure to one area, the pain showed up somewhere different. When I sat on a stool, the torture ball cramped underneath my hamstring I felt the pain moving. My lower back lit up. The chain reacted. Everything is connected.

This interconnectedness reminds me to take a step back. Look at the whole picture.

Right now, my shin hurts. But maybe that’s only the symptom, not the source. Maybe it’s the increased road mileage since moving (the trail doesn’t start in front of my door anymore). Maybe it’s the tightness in my feet. Maybe I pushed the volume too fast. Or maybe it's all of it, together.

It’s easy to go straight to the symptom and trying to fix only that. To treat the obvious. But often, that’s not where the true issue lies. You need to look up and down the chain. Untying knots you didn’t know existed.

It applies to life, too. Zooming out on any issue doesn’t mean you ignore what currently hurts. It means understanding it in context. It means asking yourself: What else is connected to this? What could be the cause?

Real change often starts somewhere unexpected.

The Journey Forward

I’ve asked myself: What am I willing to do to get back to a feeling of ease and fluidity again?

Those first days on the torture ball were rough. My body resisted. I felt nauseous, lightheaded, short of breath. But I stayed. I breathed through it. And slowly but surely, something shifted.

My mindset.

Now I’m embracing the pain. I observe it. I’m intrigued where it might move. What I will discover next.

Change doesn’t come from wishing. It starts from pressure, awareness and seeing the whole picture.

It turns out: sometimes, the body is the best teacher.

See you next week!

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Todays reflection:

Where in your life might you be treating a symptom without seeing the big picture?