"The anatomy tells a story!” - The tissues respond to specific demands and force profiles!
…and the story Nadia Comaneci tells in this picture about her anatomy is amazing…observing the hip flexors area (seems more Tensor Fasciae Latae) you can see how she had to build new anatomy, new tissue fibers to better handle the particular force profiles acting on those tissues, in time and for her sport specific demands. Nadia Comaneci @comaneci10 is one of the greatest Romanian gymnasts and worldwide known for her Olympic winnings and World records.
Is it possible to change a hip flexors area looking more as Six pack abdominal muscles when we know very well the muscle bundles are running pretty much straight down?
It is, it is if we stop looking at muscles only from a macro (outside) perspective, if we observe at micro level we know:
- muscles are not isolated from its surroundings so are not independent actuators for movement, there’s relationship between muscles of one compartment and another in terms of force conduction,
- force transmission occurs along different and various pathways, intramuscular, intermuscular and extramuscular,
- joint position influence force transmission and other structures as connective tissue will be involved in force transmission, not only red matter (muscles)
- measuring the force production of a muscle from one tendon to another will result to be not equal,
of course…inside of a muscle we have thousands of muscles and each one with their tendons at the extremities, reason why Nadia developed these hip flexors “squares”, to sustain time under tension at extreme short range hip flexion, the adaptations are shorter length of muscle fibers so divided by additional stiffer white connective tissue deposition, at the same time changing the type of muscle fibers in slow-twitch.
From an evolutionary perspective the human species had to build or unbuild anatomy based on lifestyle and the physical demands at that time…seems that currently we stopped giving to our bodies the necessary movement variety, as our ancestors were experiencing, and we continue unbuilding anatomy!
See podcast: https://youtu.be/URYpG5UvjnA