The interconnected network of the human body that represents tension and integrity.

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Tensegrity, a combination of the words “tension” and “integrity”, is a structural principle in architecture that offers the most elegant model for illustrating how your fascia and internal structures work together.

How does your body compare to a tensegrity model? The bones in your body float in a sea of soft tissue – they are held in position by tension from your muscles and fascia. The shape of your body isn’t maintained by rigid joints and compression like a house, but by this balance of tension across your entire structure. (Source)

The error of mainstream thinking that muscles move bones...

Two Different Point of Views

In the mainstream, we are taught to think of the body almost as a brick wall or a house with everything stacked on each other. In early human cadaver research, researchers only knew muscle, bone, organs, etc. Fascia and connective tissue was tossed out as it got in the way. Researchers assumed it was just stuffing and had no actual function. So in normal education, the human body is just thought of as a skeleton with muscles.

In actuality, it is more like a giant webbed suit where muscle and bones all float within. You can imagine tensegrity structures as a sail on a sailboat with its series of pulleys and levers, or even simply a tent.

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Most of our houses and other man-made structures are ‘compressionegrities’ – their integrity lies with the continuity of compression from the highest brick in the Empire State Building to the lowest block of granite – the compression runs in an unbroken line from element to element all the way to the ground.

We have thought of our bodies in the same way: the skeleton is a stack of bones, like a stack of checkers – a continuous compression structure – with the individual muscles hanging off each bone to move it.

But every classroom skeleton you have ever seen is wired together. Similarly, in the actual skeleton the bones float in a sea of soft-tissue. (Source)

First, a brief overview of the two paradigms is needed. It is easy to miss the significant difference between tensegrity structures and continuous compression structures. With few exceptions most human edifices are based upon the latter strategy and the practice of monolithic construction favours materials that can withstand compressive loading much better than tensile loading. Bricks and stone for example, are easy to find or make, and work with.

They have the advantage of gravity to stick them together and properly constructed, they last centuries. But they don’t do as well in tension, and their very strength also disqualifies them as a strategy for living structures. They are immoveable and any flexibility is a failure in the form not a feature. Wood construction for the most part follows the same strategy but lighter.

This building style parallels an ‘either/or’ bias in Western thinking (Aristotelian) and a good part of global culture as well. It is the failure to recognize the interconnected, ‘both/and’ nature of everything. A building style where the failure of a west wall doesn’t always affect the east wall lends itself to a mode of thinking that is atomistic and partial rather than synergistic and global.

Tom Flemons (Source)

The short-term relief of treating the overworked and/or painful area creates unforeseen consequences down the line as your body attempts to compensate for your band-aid solutions.

If you were to play with a tensegrity model, you’d see instantly how your fascia and other internal structures respond when you get injured.

Press down on (injure) one of these models – disconnected rods (bones) held together in a three-dimensional shape (your body) with elastic cords (muscle and fascia) – and you see that the model distorts all over.

It doesn’t crack at the point of highest compression like a house would. Instead, the force disperses over the model and it concentrates, or breaks, at its weakest point.

Stretch the model and everything stretches. Where will it break? Again, at its weakest point where, to bring us back to the human body, you’re feeling pain or experiencing dysfunction. (Source)

The tensegrity model shows how treating the symptoms will actually lead to more problems down the line. That knee or hamstring that hurts isn't the problem. It's the glute/hip upstream or the arch and ankle below. By applying strengthening exercises to a specific muscle that you think is the problem, now you're segmenting that muscle from the rest of the chain. Which means another injury will pop up somewhere else because now that muscle isn't working right anymore.

When we see dysfunction in the glute, we know for sure that the feet aren't working right. When we see dysfunction or pain anywhere in the body, we know there is a problem somewhere else.

That is the nature of tensile structures. The whole system absorbs and puts out force. It's not one muscle doing this and one muscle doing that, like we are taught to believe.

Tensegrity creates the theoritical foundation for the rubberband elasticity of the fascial network. It almost acts like a slinky or a pogo stick. Tensegrity explains how this can be.

Bio-mechanists still persist in measuring forces acting on joints, bones and muscles based upon fictitious fixed fulcrums and still use linear analysis to delve into the parts that don’t simply add up to the whole. The spine is described as a vertebral ‘column’ of stacked vertebrae, with attached muscles and ligaments. The whole contraption is pulled together in a compression model – a pile of parts bound up for stability.

It’s increasingly clear that such theories miss the mark and spawn any number of therapeutic interventions such as fusing of spines, and hip and knee replacements which might be avoided if a better understanding of the body’s tensional integrity were available. Challenges to the ruling paradigm are cropping up everywhere, from myofascial manipulation to neuro-repatterning of muscles that have sensory and motor amnesia. But the overarching theory that tensegrity provides still needs elucidation.

Mainstream thinking of only looking at bones, muscle, even tendon and cartilage does a poor job of explaining the brilliance displayed by Natures best offerings, world class athletes and animals like jaguars, gazelles, and other speedy land animals.

It makes little sense that cartilage tissue could withstand the bounding of three to six times our body weight crashing up and down on it over a sustained duration such as someone running a marathon. I am not aware of any tissue that could withstand such forces.

Sharkey is referring to tissues compressively loaded. Research in the last 10 years has demonstrated that fascia under tension has the requisite strength and properties to effect joint integrity and augment the work of muscles. (Schleip, Gracovetsky) I think it’s likely that tensegrity can disclose how this works in the fascia.

Origins of Tensegrity

Architecture was the first realm where tensegrity was materialized into real objects. Even though Nature created it far before.

Have a look at the three videos below to get an idea of tensegrity's origins.

Frei Otto - Munich Stadium

The architecture work here helps us understand what tensegrity is really doing. It also explains how magnificent and sophisticated the human body is that humans are having to spend millions to replicate the thousands of variables. Nature hides her jewels in plain sight.

Kenneth Snelson

My art is concerned with nature in its primary aspect,the patterns of physical forces in three dimensional space.

Website

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This video illustrates the interconnectedness of the tensegrity structure. Without the tensional lines, all the sticks fall to the ground rendered useless. This is what I equate to athletes who become all muscle-driven. Their body works in parts and struggles to perform. Injuries come because muscles and joints are asked to peform the job of fascia.

Buckminister Fuller

Graham Scarr - Biotensegrity

Structural Hierarchies

Mechanical integration of multiple components at different size scales

Reduce weight

Increase strength

Efficient use of space

Forces distributed throughout the structure at every size scale

Tensegrity Model For Biological Structure

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We see here how he is illustrating that the strength comes from the integration of the whole, not the size or weight of the parts. Efficiency is what Nature is all about. Anything extra or taking up space without purpose is recycled or tossed out. Footballers have to play 90 minutes at high speed. There is no room for extra weight or dysfunctional muscle.

I saw this first hand in myself when I could lift almost twice as much as my teammates, and I was on the bench. My legs were twice as big, but I was getting outmuscled and outplayed.

Take a look at the video below to see how a tensegrity structure holds up on the move.

So what does this all mean for the footballer?

Learning Points

• Tensegrity in the human body explains the tai chi adage "one part moves, all parts move". When you have pain in one place, the problem is somewhere else.

• It also explains how the glutes can generate the power for running, passing, shooting, and almost all athletic movements. It shows how your abs can be activated with your feet. It helps us understand how to handle injury and not without thought treat the symptoms.

• Strengthening the muscle that hurts is often the worse thing you can do. That's not where the problem is. Look for what's not doing it's job. This is usually the feet.

• Elasticity is real, and you can build poweful spring through the feet. You can affect your pain somewhere else in the body by taking care of your feet and fascial adhesions up and down the body.

• I'll likely do a part two as there are many topics to cover, and it is an in-depth subject. Not to mention, it's really important.

Further Reading:

Tension and Integrity - Tensegrity a Balance of Tension Members

Tensegrity, architecture and Buckminster Fuller

Bones of Tensegrity

Tensegrity and Your Fascia: a "Whole Body" Approach to Treatment.