Have you ever head of Proprioception? It's a big word that basically describes how you can feel where you are in space and time. You can test your proprioception with a simple task: close your eyes then touch your nose. You don’t need to look to know where the position of your nose is in space and how to bend your arms.

"Proprioception is the ability to sense one's own physical being" (1)

It can represent your brain's connection to the rest of your body. It also used to describe an athletes balance and coordination. Your brain will never allow greater feats of power and speed if it doesn't have the necessary proprioception to handle itself and prevent destruction.

This is a mistake I see in many athletes who only care about how much they can lift, how high they can jump, or how hard they can work. They are unaware of the other side of the equation.

Newton’s third law of dynamics states that every force implies an equal and opposite reaction force. (2)

Your body must be able to absorb whatever force you try to give out. Your brain will put neurological limiters on your ability until you elevate both sides of the equation. You must be able to recover adequately in response to how much stress and stimuli you apply to your body. Otherwise, you body will take charge and put you on the sideline (Injury, sickness, chronic fatigue) in order to get what it wants.

The typical features of the superficial and deep fasciae and their relationships to nerves, vessels and muscles are reported here, highlighting the possible role of the deep fascia in proprioception and peripheral motor coordination.

The fascia: the forgotten structure (3)

Proprioception and motor coordination are fancy words for what represent smoother, fluid, and more talented athletes. Players who have far more control of their bodies and can manipulate themselves in real time develop their touch, technique, and talent simply because they are unlocking their true potential and pushing its limits.

Most people never even come close to unlocking their base potential because lifestyle, nutrition, and stress continually eat away at any progress. To top it all off, if you never learn how to consciously develop your fascial system the way I've learned then your proprioception and coordination will be capped off at whatever you developed naturally through childhood. For most people, this is not very high unfortunately due to our modern unnatural lifestyles.

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The roots of a tree spreads throughout the ground to gather resources and create a sturdy base. A river branches off into dozens of off-shoots creating a vast network of water-ways.

Fascia does the same inside the body connecting every piece of you from head to toe. A vast interconnected network that works as one, seamlessly yet decentralized. This is the beauty of Nature hidden in plain sight inside of us all.

Acting as our biggest sensory organ, the fascial network stimulates and awakens our coordination and proprioception. Like mentioned above, our modern unnatural lives especially in childhood have left most athletes thoroughly underdeveloped and understimulated.

Proprioception is truly the sixth sense in human movement.

Proprioceptors quickly process information within milliseconds. This supports the proprioceptive role in the accuracy of human movement. (4)

Fascia holds a vast amount of sensory receptors within it’s structure, they are responsible for proprioception (co-ordination of movements) and communication throughout the body.

It allows us to move with energy efficiency, via a mechanism that works like a spring (catapult mechanism), as it lengthens it stores energy then recoils back to it’s original length.

Fascia has the ability to absorb stress and tolerate strain (to a point), this allows us to move and perform exercise with grace (well, sometimes!) (5)

Proprioception is a feedback system between sensory receptors and the nervous system. The sensory receptors located on your skin, joints, and muscles send information about the effort, force, and heaviness of our actions to our brain.

And the brain sends signals back to the skin, joints, and muscles on how to respond so that you can complete the desired movement. (6)

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Fascia is important in proprioceptive ability is that you have 10 times as many proprioceptors in your fascia than muscle fiber. Fascinating, right? Your fascia contains the richest sensory nerves that create awareness of body position, balance and conduct movement…

Yet most athletes today still focus on a combination of strength training and cardio to increase their athletic potential. Healthy fascia means healthy proprioception. (7)

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Proprioceptors are highly specialized sensory receptors on nerve endings found in muscles, tendons and joints. They’re responsible for communicating information about motion and position between our brain and body to make us aware of our own body position and movement in space. Proprioceptors detect subtle changes in movement, position, tension and force within the body.

Think of the fascia like a superhighway for our nerves to travel between the body and brain. If that superhighway crumbles in places or gets squished to only one lane, then those nerves are going to have a much harder time traveling and communicating freely. And our sensory receptors – proprioceptors – won’t be able to communicate efficiently. (8)

Learning Points

• How well you can feel your entire body from head to toe will more or less determine your technique on the ball.

• The same can be said for your touch. The more your feet becomes connected with the rest of your body, the better you'll be able to control the ball.

• Your talent is the sum of so many things, but how much control you have intrinsically over your body will elevate or plateau your talent level.

• The fascial work being done inside The Way of the Natural Presentation and the Private Community is not only developing your glute and ab connections but awakening all the dormant proprioceptors in your body that you didn't even know you had. This are the things that separate the best from the rest. These are the secrets hidden in plain sight that all top athletes developed naturally.

Sources

1. The Endless Web by R. Louis Schultz (pg. 49)
2. https://www.britannica.com/science/law-of-action-and-reaction
3. The fascia: the forgotten structure
4. https://barefootstrongblog.com/2017/06/20/interoception-the-emotional-side-of-the-human-myofascial-system/
5. https://www.optimal-movement.co.uk/omguide/sports-remedial-injuries/fascia-the-forgotten-system
6. https://dogwoodstudioyoga.com/blog/2021/2/23/fascia-plays-a-role-in-proprioception
7. https://mobilitymastery.com/two-reasons-your-movement-potential-is-dependent-on-healthy-fascia-proprioception-and-glide/
8. https://mobilitymastery.com/athletes-increase-your-efficiency-power-potential-as-a-mover-by-up-to-10x/