Jake Harrison Therapies

Think your fascia is stuck, restricted or needs releasing? Someone on here will have a something to sell you.

Here is what the research actually says.

Fascia is a continuous 3D network of connective tissue that runs throughout your entire body. It envelops your muscles, organs, nerves and blood vessels. It is densely innervated, meaning it is full of sensory nerve endings, and it plays an active role in proprioception, force transmission and pain modulation.

It is not a passive wrapping. And it is not a separate system you can’t isolate, target or treat independently from everything around it.

The claim that you can mechanically release or restructure fascia with hands or a foam roller does not hold up to scrutiny.

Chaudhry et al. (2008) used mathematical modelling to calculate the forces required to create even a 1% change in fascial tissue. In some structures, the figure ran into hundreds of pounds. That is far beyond what human hands can produce.

Schleip (2003), one of the world’s leading fascia researchers, proposed that changes seen after hands-on work are better explained by neurobiological mechanisms, meaning changes in the nervous system, rather than direct mechanical alteration of the tissue itself. His later work continued to challenge the idea that therapists are physically reshaping fascial structure.

Bialosky et al. (2019) added further weight to this, demonstrating that the effects of manual therapy on pain and mobility are not mechanically mediated.

None of that means hands-on treatment has no value. It can be genuinely useful. But the mechanism is not what most Instagram content claims it is.

What does actually influence fascia over time? Load. Movement. Progressive training. The tissue adapts in response to demand. That is a slow biological process, not something you reset in a session.

If something has been painful or limiting since a genuine injury or impact, that is worth a proper assessment.

DM “MOVE” if you want to understand what is actually going on.

When things hurt, Don’t stop just modify!

This week so far

Looking forward to the conference, catching up with folk & bringing back some great learning in to clinic.

Being strong in the gym and being ready to run, jump, and change direction are two very different things.

This is the gap that most rehab never actually closes.

Someone does the loading work, pain settles, strength improves, and then they go straight back to full training. No bridge. Just a jump back in. And six weeks later they’re back to square one wondering what went wrong.

Late stage rehab is about building that bridge.

This is where plyometrics and sport specific movement come in. Not because they look impressive. Because tendons and muscles need to be able to store and release energy fast, absorb sudden load, and respond to changes in pace and direction. That’s what sport and active life actually demand. Heavy slow resistance work alone doesn’t replicate that.

But here’s the part most people don’t hear about.

Before progressing into that phase properly, there are benchmarks worth passing first.

One of the most widely used in the research is the limb symmetry index using single leg hop testing. The general standard used across the literature is 90% symmetry between sides, across tests like the single hop for distance, triple hop, and crossover hop. The idea being that if the affected side is significantly underperforming compared to the other, the tissue isn’t ready for the demands of full training.

It’s not a perfect measure. But it gives you something objective to aim for rather than just going on how it feels that day.

And that matters. Because pain settling is not the same as being ready.

If you’re not sure where you sit in this process, that’s exactly the kind of thing worth getting assessed properly.

Where are you in your rehab right now? Drop it in the comments.

Postural assessments are dead.

At least the old school version is.

Standing someone still, looking at their shoulders, pelvis, feet or spine, then blaming their pain on “bad posture” is far too simple.

People are not built from the same template.

Your hip shape, hip socket depth, pelvis, rib cage, shoulder blades and spinal curves can all vary massively from the person next to you.

So what looks “off” on one person might just be completely normal anatomy for another.

That does not mean posture never plays a role.

But it does mean we need to stop acting like there is one perfect position everyone should fit into.

A better assessment looks at:

How you move.
What feels sensitive.
What you can tolerate.
What feels guarded.
What you want to get back to.

Because your body does not need to look textbook perfect.

It needs options, strength, confidence and a plan that fits you.

If you’ve been told your posture is the problem, DM me MOVE and I’ll point you in the right direction.