A New Understanding of Biomechanics
Weekly Wisdom
Episode 51
For a long time, sports scientists have viewed the human body through a mechanistic lens, with the bones acting as levers and the muscles as actuators. This paradigm of force production fails, however, to explain much of human performance.
For example, in an EMOM workout with 50 power snatches at 135lbs completed in sets of 3, you would expect the workout to get harder as fatigue set in. And from a cardiorespiratory standpoint, that was true. In the later rounds, the athlete’s heart rate no longer recovered between sets to the degree it had in the early going. But from a strength perspective, the barbell felt lighter the deeper into the workout the athlete progressed, to the extent that the athlete reported the barbell feeling lighter later in the workout than it had at the start.
You would expect muscular fatigue to be a factor at that volume, but it wasn’t. Part of that is technique. Using legs and hips efficiently to move the barbell certainly helped to preserve the athlete’s strength. There is no doubt that played a role. But I believe there is more to it than that.
Take, for example, this strange anomaly: There are athletes in the gym who are much stronger than me. The Touch, Dangers and Bobo, for example, squat and deadlift loads in the neighbourhood of 100lbs more than me. I’m not even close on the absolute strength curve. And yet, when it comes to cycling the barbell for explosive movements like thrusters, snatches, or clean and jerks, I am able to hang pretty close to them.
Sure, I’ve been lifting a lot longer, so it is possible that my technique is more refined, but at this stage in the game, they are all experienced enough that their 100lb strength advantage should come into play. I think there is another factor besides skill at play here. I believe it comes down to tensegrity and the fascial chain.
What Tensegrity Means
Tensegrity is a portmanteau of tension and integrity (as in whole). It is a concept that comes from an interdisciplinary convergence of three fields: cell biology, architecture, and tissue work (Rolfing). Tensegrity views the body as a strain-distribution mechanism.
In school, we were taught that the shin bone’s connected to the knee bone, but did you know that’s not true? Absent soft tissue, the human skeleton just falls apart. Because in reality, one bone never touches another. Not in a healthy individual, anyway. If you ever experience bone-on-bone contact, you are in for a lot of discomfort. No, the bones float, enmeshed in a network of soft tissue held in place by counter-tension, like a Buckminster Fuller tensegrity sphere.
Coined by Fuller, this means rigid struts (acting in compression) do not touch each other; they are perfectly suspended and stabilized by a continuous web of tension cables. This brilliant balance yields incredibly strong, lightweight, and shock-absorbent forms.
Your bones provide the compression force, which is balanced by the tension produced by the connective tissue (fascia, tendons, muscles, etc). The present approach to strength and conditioning training is largely based upon the compression model of loading: the way we stack bricks to construct a building. Add load to a barbell, strain against it. And for developing compression strength, this works. It does not, however, optimize for athleticism.
The Body as a Shock-Absorbent System
The profound concept you want to attend to here is shock-absorbent forms. Because the epiphany I am experiencing in my fitness journey and hoping to share with you here, is that governed by the same principles, our bodies are designed to be shock-absorbent. And more to the point, from an athletic perspective, our bodies are designed not only to absorb force but to redirect it. And all of this through the fascia.
Pound for pound, I believe that Bobo probably has the heaviest back squat at Empower at twice his body weight. That’s impressive. There is no arguing that he has strong leg muscles. But did you know that the ground impact forces your body must absorb when sprinting can reach 10x your bodyweight? There is no one in the world who back squats anywhere near ten times body weight. So how does your body deal with the impact forces of sprinting or jumping? It’s not muscular strength.
My Sprinting Revelation
And this was my first revelation. You see, for nearly a decade I have struggled with pain in my right hip that is aggravated by running. On bad days, it is aggravated even by walking. But once a week since the start of 2026, HeeHee and I have gone to Almond Park to perform sprint repeats. Even on the bad days. This week my hip hurt so much on our walk there that I thought I wouldn’t make it. But I did. And here’s the remarkable piece: during the sprints, my hip was just fine. No discomfort after sprinting either.
How is that possible? It turns out that running and sprinting are not at all the same thing. Using the Parisi Speed School fascial prep warm-ups for sprinting taught me the principles of sprinting. It all comes down to ground reactive forces. Instead of muscular strain, I am attempting to bounce off the ground in something more akin to double unders or bounding. In this case, the impact forces never travel higher than my ankle joint, so my knees and hips never receive any strain from the max effort sprints. Done correctly, it feels like floating. Almost effortless. Not unlike my 135lb snatches in the later rounds of the workout.
Bouncy, Not Strong
When I engage my fascia correctly, my muscles and joints do not need to work hard because I am just redirecting force rather than creating it. And this is why I can lift with much stronger guys. I’m not using muscle; I’m using fascial chains developed over two decades of CrossFit and four and a half decades of judo. I’m not strong, I am bouncy. And that’s what Olympic lifts feel like to me, like bouncing. When I’m cycling the barbell, I’m not holding tension the way I do in a deadlift or back squat; I’m loose and relaxed, creating stiffness only in the areas that stiffness is required and only in the moment it is required. Just like sprinting. Just like judo throws. The idea here is that elasticity rather than rigidity generates power. Muscular contractions can only create a small amount of force (maybe 2-4 times body weight), whereas elastic connective tissue can generate far greater forces.
And this is why I love the Olympic lifts and now sprinting too. It is almost magical when you get it right: the body’s ability to absorb and redirect force. Effortless power instead of powerful effort. Instead of chasing speed or load, these days I’m focused on trying to capture that feeling of effortlessness because when I do, I am strong and fast without really trying. I can move heavy loads and sprint at top speed without wear and tear on my joints and muscles. Instead of tired, afterwards I feel invigorated.
Why Explosive Power Matters
And this is the reason why longevity researchers are finding that your ability to express explosive power is a far more accurate indicator of all-cause mortality than previously used correlates such as grip strength, muscle mass or VO2 max. Because strength, neurological adaptations, and efficient interaction with the world are required to produce explosive power. Power is, at its essence, an expression of how well you are absorbing and redirecting force. How well are you moving in the world? What forces are you capable of handling? For a long time, folks have associated power with strength, but strength alone is brittle. You can imagine rigid powerlifters shambling along with massive muscles but limited movement ability. In contrast, a gymnast is a much better model of true power, though wrestlers, sprinters, and Olympic lifters all provide good models as well.
Why CrossFit Works
CrossFit was the first program to incorporate gymnastics, Olympic lifting, and sprinting into a single program. That’s why it has been so game-changing. And this is not because Glassman was prescient enough to intuit tensegrity; it is because of his application of the black box model: look at what training modalities produce the best athletic outcomes and copy them. Only later do the rest of us fitness nerds come along, trying to determine why and how it works.
What This Means for Injury and Longevity
Why is the concept of tensegrity important to you? Because athletic injuries often occur when we are straining muscles and other tissues beyond their capacity or when we fail to appropriately absorb impact forces. Training rigidity leads to a loss of adaptive potential, which in turn leads to increased susceptibility to injury. If you switch your focus from powerful effort to effortless power, you are now using your body’s natural elasticity to absorb and redirect force. This reduces the impact on your joints. It also conserves energy since you are not holding excess tension or performing unnecessary muscular contractions.
Ancient Ideas, Modern Explanations
Interestingly, Chinese medicine identified this systemic interconnectedness generations ago, though it lacked the science to explain it. Ever a skeptic, I watched askance as my wife and her family healed headaches and digestive disorders through acupressure points in the feet and hands, and was baffled when it worked on me despite my disbelief. How? It is the same principle underlying acupuncture (though I have met few acupuncturists who actually know what they are doing). Everything in your body is connected through this complex web of tension and compression, which is why your sore neck might be triggered by excess tension in your foot. It sounds very mystical and far-fetched until you begin looking into the research and understanding the mechanisms at play. Only then do you realize that we have been looking at human movement all wrong.
Of course, I have been exploring this through Original Strength, Weck Method, and Parisi Speed School for some time now, as each of them has tried to address this concept in its own way. I’m also fortunate in that I have been trained in a sport since 1980 that is built upon these principles. So even though we never discussed the physiology per se, at a visceral level I understand the application of the principles. I can hurl men larger than myself through the air without effort, not because I am strong, but because I have been trained to use my body as a dynamic force redirection mechanism. It’s a lot like possessing a secret superpower.
As one boxing coach put it, when you punch your opponent, you are hitting him with the floor. In other words, how hard you hit is not a function of your strength but the efficiency with which you transfer the force from the ground through your limbs and into your opponent. In fact, to this end, strength may prove detrimental as the looser and more elastic you are, the more effectively you can do this. It’s why tall, skinny fighters like Tommy “The Hitman” Hearns boasted incredible knockout power despite their lanky frames.
Real Power Lives in Your Bounce
It is always exciting to discover new models through which to view athletic performance. No doubt there is a lot left to learn. The study of bioenergetics, for example, is beginning to get some solid research behind it with potentially profound ramifications for health and performance. But for now, turn your mind to the concept of tensegrity and the human body as a force distribution mechanism. Instead of equating power with strength, try to think of your elastic potential. How bouncy are you? Real power lives in your bounce.
