My interview with Sydney-based Erica Koo, a Level 3 fascia stretch therapist and former competitive powerlifter, explores how Fascial Stretch Therapy (FST) can make life better for people with significant mileage on their bodies, hearts and minds.

Erica and I discuss FST’s significance in pain relief, mobility and overall health, the role of fascia in the body, its connection to movement, and how FST can benefit people over 40.

Erica also shares her personal journey (see timeline below, if you’d rather jump to that fascinating part of our conversation) from a complete non-athlete to becoming a competitive powerlifter, lyra (aerial hoop) performer and FST therapist… who’s now on the road to also completing her psychology training. (Her latest athletic obsession is sprinting….clearly, Erica doesn’t do anything halfway.)

Takeaways:

* Fascial Stretch Therapy (FST) is crucial for pain relief and mobility

* Fascia is a web-like connective tissue that affects movement

* Aging increases the need for fascia care due to accumulated stress

* FST works by addressing the fascial connections throughout the body

* Therapists assess the body as a roadmap of experiences and pain

* Immediate relief can often be felt after the first session of FST

* Resistance training is essential for maintaining health as we age

* FST is a collaborative process that prioritizes client safety

* Psychological benefits accompany physical relief in therapy

* Holistic health involves 5 pillars: exercise, nutrition, hydration, sleep, community

Erica Koo/fascia stretch therapy video timeline:

01:01 Introduction to FST: What is it & why you should care about your body’s fascia

02:20 How Erica evaluates pain via fascial connections throughout the body

04:50 Why fascia is so important for people over 40 to understand

10:38 “The body is a roadmap” to everything it’s gone through in life

11:24 Expectations of FST as a reliever of chronic pain

14:15 Characteristics of people whose fascia is in the best shape

15:40 Erica’s story: competitive powerlifter, aerial hoop performer, psych student

22:00 The wide range of physical & neuro issues that Erica treats with FST

28:10 The 5 pillars of healthy living: exercise, nutrition, hydration, sleep, community

“With fascia stretch therapy, the more you move the joint, the more it does let go. And in doing so, you're able to create freedom in the joint and the muscle” — Erica Koo (aka “Stretch”)

(SKIMMABLE) INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT:

Paul

Erica Koo, thanks for being on AGING with STRENGTH.

Erica

Thank you so much for having me, I'm super excited.

Paul

Yeah, this is going to be an interesting conversation because I don't know jack about fascia stretch therapy — FST as it's called.

So could you tell us what FST, fascial stretch therapy, is and why we should care about it?

Erica (01:08 )

It's a form of assistive stretching that allows us to work deep in the joints and stretch the move the body in ways that the client themselves may not be able to. In doing so, what we're aiming to do is relieve pain, restore joint integrity and also improve overall long-term mobility as well.

How I would explain it to clients when they walk in is that fascia is a web like connective tissue that is all across the body. There is nowhere in our body that fascia does not exist. But the function is it helps hold our body together, but also helps coordinate smooth movements when we're walking, running, especially when we're training things like that.

It's very flexible. It's meant to stretch and adapt when you move, but it can become quite stiff or tight if you have things like poor posture, if there's lack of movement or injury. And with massage, when people come in and they go, my shoulder's really painful. A massage therapist would just look at the shoulder and go, okay, well, we'll release the bicep, release the shoulder, neck, off you go. A physio would look at it and look at it in terms of a diagnosis. So they'll probably go through multiple assessments to be able to see what's the range of movement like, where's the pain, what sort of movements are triggering that, has there been an acute event to have caused that pain.

With fascia stretch therapy, when someone presents with pain, I look at how that structure is fascially connected to different areas of the body. So for example, there's multiple different fascial nets across the body and you wanna think of fascia as a web like I mentioned before.

And this fascia connects anatomically separate structures together across the body. So there's one called the superficial back net, for example, and it's just a big slab of fascia that runs from the top of the cranium all the way down to the neck, back, lower back, hamstring, calves, and down to the plantar fascia as well. They've done cadavers on this too. So if you are interested, you can sort of Google superficial back net and it should come up with like this big structure. So I look at, okay, well, I can, yes, stretch the shoulder if your shoulder is painful.

But what other things, for example, cause internal rotation of the shoulder? What other things can lead to that sort of shoulder pain? So I look at an assessment that way. And then for my practice, I genuinely try to move away from pain, initially. So if someone's come in with a chronic issue that they've had for, let's say 10 years, which is not unusual for clients coming in to see me, I don't want to necessarily make them force through pain that they have been forcing through for 10 years.

And I feel like that's where the magic of fascia structure comes comes in is that we can start down regulating the nervous system by working on and stretching structures that that shoulder is connected to and then work our way closer to the area of pain. Once the person is feeling a lot less of that.

You mentioned foam rolling actually and how foam rolling relieves your back pain. When we look at how foam rolling works is essentially it, it inhibits the part in your brain that interprets the pain signals as threatening. That's why you get a relief in mobility, relief in overall pain, and then it helps you move better and actually get a lot more out of your training. So we're working very similarly with that process. If I'm looking at, what can I work on first? So is it bicep? Is it just the shoulder joint moving it around? it, is it okay? Is the body letting me move the shoulder around without pain? Okay, well then that maybe I can progress a little bit deeper into the structures.

Paul

Is this important for just young athletic people or, know, obviously my audience and this audience here at aging with strength is 45 and up, generally speaking. Why should they be interested in what you're saying to them right now?

Erica (05:00 )

Because fascia exists regardless of age and it is crucial for smooth movement and health overall. And one of the common things I hear from people who are 40 and over is, oh, you I feel so stiff and I think that's just a part of aging. I always ask the question, okay, well, let's think about it this way. How much stress have you been under across the 40, 50 years that you have been alive?

When did you start, when did your career start taking off? Did you start a family? Did you have any big stresses in your life? know, mortgage, moving house, moving, changing careers, things like that. And when did you stop moving the way that you did in your twenties and thirties, if you were training in the first place? So as we go through the different stages of our life, you also encounter different stresses. There's almost an accumulation of stresses and experiences, if you will.

There becomes less time behaviorally to engage in the self-care methods that you may have done or that you could have gotten away not doing in your 20s and 30s. So I think as people age into their 40s and 50s, there's an increased need to take care of their fascia because they might just just might not be getting the same opportunities with increased stress compared to when they were younger.

Paul

So what is…sorry, you may have answered this, but what is fascia? What's it made of? What does it feel like?

Erica (06:33 )

Very….So how I would feel it when I'm looking at the person on the table, we have a movement called traction, which is essentially where I kind of pull the joint away from the body to see how it responds. And depending on that pull, I can feel where the tightness is coming from, whether I'm pulling on the leg and I'm tractioning the leg, do they have more tightness in the calf or is it coming from the hip? And then based on that, I work on what needs to be done first.

And then even with fascia, you have the superficial layers on top and then the deep layers at the bottom. So fascia is like a connective tissue. when you, for example, look at images of what fascia is like under the microscope, it essentially looks like interweaving spider webs. So it's that thick layer that connects all together. And that's how it is able to stretch and able to produce force and absorb force as well.

Paul

Is it really a function of the more yo