What is Massage? Part 4b: Connective Tissue

This post is going to be short. The following post which will be on muscles and their fibers, therefore, very long and I did not want to overwhelm anyone with and overload of technical information.

The next tissue in our series is connective. It connects the skeleton and muscular systems and over all holds the body together.

There are three types of connective tissue: Ligaments, Tendons, and Fascia. They are all made out of collagen, but each are different densities.

Fascia:

(Color Atlas, plate 15)

Fascia is a very recent discovery. Well, not discovery, it has been there forever. It has been around for as long as animals have had muscles that needed to slide easily over each other. For a long time, no one knew what it was or did, so during surgeries doctors would remove and discard the “white film” that covered the muscles before suturing the animal/person back up. Now, however, studies have found that it is a massive web-like tissue that winds its way around everything in the body. It varies in density and can be superficial (between the skin and muscles) or deep (wrapping around and covering some deeper muscles from view). Fascia holds it all together, like a huge spiderweb holds flies, except not as icky.

Ligaments:

(Hourdebaight, 24)

Ligaments are a very strong connective tissue that hold the bones of the skeleton together:

(Hourdebaight, 22)

They wrap around joints and help protect from abnormal range of motion, sudden strain, and torque. These bands are made of collagen fibers and are the least flexible of the connective tissues so they can hold their shape. They have minimal blood flow which hinders their ability to heal when injured, which, in severe cases may need to be fixed surgically. 
A rule of thumb of rest for recovering ligaments is one month for every letter in the word: L-I-G-A-M-E-N-T= 8 months.

 Tendons:

(Scott, 18)

As shown, tendons connect muscles to bone. They are dense fibers very similar to ligaments. They have high tensile strength that allows them to endure large amounts of tension. The muscle attached usually cannot produce enough force to rupture its tendons, so they do not tear easily and it can be devastating when they do. They are not as elastic as muscle fibers, but are more so than ligaments. They also have limited blood flow, but more so than ligaments. 
Therefore, they heal more quickly than ligaments, but not as quickly as muscle. 
T-E-N-D-O-N= 6 months.

Each muscle has two tendons: the origin and the insertion. The origin connects to the least moveable bone, and the insertion connects to the most moveable. The muscle acts on the two tendons to bring the insertion towards the origin.