Pliability for Runners

What is Pliability?

“I love and believe in pliability. In fact, improving my pliability was a major reason I was able to set the world record while staying healthy and injury-free. Pliability works!”
—Becca Pizzi, first American to run seven marathons on seven continents in seven days

‘Pliable’ is defined as a person or thing that easily bends or is influenced. It can describe anything from leather, plastic, or wood to the nature of public opinion, and everything in between. In the realm of exercise physiology, the word ‘pliability’ takes on a similar connotation and can be defined as the ability of our soft-tissue (muscles, tendons, ligaments, fascia) to be compressed without excessive resistance or discomfort. It is a clear, easily deduced physical attribute that many exercise professionals now rely on when assessing an athlete’s or client’s health and fitness.

“Pliability is the foundation of muscle health. A muscle that is not pliable cannot contract, cannot gain strength or power, lacks nutrition and hydration, is prone to injury and cannot perform as intended.”
—Physical therapist William Hernandez with Delos Therapy

Delos Therapy is a thriving physical therapy practice based out of Chicago and is part of a recent movement in the health/fitness industry. This movement values improving pliability before anything else—before strength, before flexibility, before training. This simple concept has been known and practiced by individuals for decades, and over the past 10 years is moving quickly into the mainstream (including Tom Brady's TB12 training center, where the pliability of NFL football players is valued just as much as pure strength).

As Mr. Hernandez suggested, pliability is perhaps the single most important building block from which a healthy, strong, and coordinated athlete can be fully developed.

Are Your Muscles Pliable?

If you are pliable your muscles are soft when relaxed, and while relaxed, feel little to no pain if direct pressure is applied. In other words, positions on the foam roll, acute pressure into the muscles of the back, targeted strong thumb pressure into the calf, are all no problem.

If a muscle lacks pliability there is some discomfort and noticeable tension when pressure is applied. A pliable muscle feels like soft Play-Doh, easily absorbing pressure, whereas a non-pliable muscle feels a bit stiff and slightly aches with compression.

Why Does a Lack of Pliability Affect Performance?

When a muscle lacks pliability that area of the body is likely in the midst of an inflammatory response. This means pro-inflammatory proteins, called cytokines (with ‘chicken scratch’ names like IL-1β, IL-6, and TNF-α), have flooded the area to localize and reduce damage. This causes an increased sensitivity to pressure, stretching, and perhaps even muscle contraction. Unfortunately, not all damage is repaired by the inflammation response, and not all of the pro-inflammatory agents clear out when their work is done. This leaves an altered chemical makeup within the blood and tissue cells, which then inhibits normal functioning throughout the system. The result is decreased coordination, inhibited super-compensation, and attenuated strength gains.

Why is this so? Envision a desk at a high school chemistry class, covered with tiny vials of various fluids. In this experiment, all of these vials need to be added and subtracted from each other at a specific nano-second or your desk catches on fire! This is how our neuromuscular system works…with perhaps slightly less drama. It is a perfectly executed chemistry experiment, where the passing of positive and negative ions, sodium and potassium exchanges, the opening and closing of synapses within the blood plasma membranes, and the traveling of neighboring neurons within the peripheral nervous system all happen in perfect synchronization.

When a tissue is chronically inflamed, however, the experiment has gone awry. Too much from this vial, not enough from that vial, what’s this new vial! The major role of inflammation, myogenesis (to repair and build muscle tissue) is no longer possible, the muscle is easily fatigued from exercise, atrophies, and is much more likely to get injured. Not quite the recipe for a PR performance.

For this reason, it is critical to have a healthy, fully circulated, loose and pliable body before training. If you don’t, and you continually train when your muscles are inflamed, it is like trying to mortar a brick wall together with dry cement. It might stand for a bit but with a slight wind, watch out below!

Putting Things in the Right Order

It is unfortunately very common for runners to find out they have a weakness and then immediately start doing strength exercises. A muscle simply will not be as responsive, meaning it will not get as strong as it could, if you are ‘strengthening’ it when it is tight, stiff, not-pliable. Too help right the wrongs of this relatively small but important part of your world, let’s start by putting things in the right order, with pliability BEFORE strength.

Pliability for Runners: Order of Operations

Imagine two deflated balloons, each the same exact size. Balloon #1 is full of nothing, just the air that fills the folds of the balloon. Balloon #2 though has a spoon-full of sand inside. On the surface they look the exact same, but if you poke around, you feel #2 has a bit of stiffness to it. No big deal, the difference is very slight.

Now inflate the balloons. Sure enough the balloon with the sand inflates quicker, since there was less air space to fill, but then you notice the empty balloon eventually lifts higher and higher.

This is the difference between strengthening a muscle that is pliable versus not pliable. The ‘not pliable’ muscle will often contract quicker (as it is always stiff, so it is essentially contracting all the time) and thus initially seems stronger. However, this can be thought of as a ‘false strength’ as this stiff muscle will fatigue and reach its maximum output well before the healthy, pliable muscle.

Okay, we’ve defined what muscle pliability is, and that the benefits of improving pliability extend to injury-prevention, strength training, and your bio-mechanics. Many coaches, athletes, and health practitioners recognize it is a critical piece to optimal performance, and slowly but surely the science community is coming along.