Even as much as a disalignment of a degree forward or backward rotation in the pelvis, caused by sitting for a long time and thereby shortening the back muscle, or hunching forward, can cause stress on other systems in the body.
Here is a little fun exercise to show the effect of fascia : bend over, straight legs and see how far your hands go, just measuring how close you get to your feet (they don’t have to touch, don’t push yourself, just see where you end up) Now take a tennisbal or small round object and stand or move with one foot on it for a while, and roll a bit especially on the arch of the foot, like a massage.
Now do the exercise again, bending over with your hands towards your feet and see what happens.
For that experiment to be valid you'd probably want to do a control where you try the stretch, then wait doing nothing for the same amount of time that you would roll your feet and try again and another where you just rotate your ankle in the same way you would if you had a tennis ball under it. Taking your baseline reading one day and trying the tennis ball plus stretch the next day or week would be good too.
This wouldn't really convince me because I find any additional stretching helps with my reach and I'm more likely to chalk it up to a warm up effect or maybe some other effect on the the tendons or muscles. I don't see any particular reason to attribute it to fascia release.
It is 4 and a half minutes of an incredibly ripped guy explaining that standing toe touches usually isn't stretching what you think it does and is often achieved by putting other body parts in positions that are not beneficial -- eg, rounding your back. Instead he gives a different exercise. Watch from about the 2:30 mark to see the recommended stretch.
> Even as much as a disalignment of a degree forward or backward rotation in the pelvis, caused by sitting for a long time and thereby shortening the back muscle...
This doesn’t pass the sniff test. Your pelvis tilts by more than a degree just from slightly tightening your glutes.
Also, how does sitting shorten the back muscles? Sitting puts the back in a mild state of flexion.
The condition is called anterior or posterior pelvic tilt. However you are right that the back muscles are not the responsible muscles and it comes from somewhere else. Thing is while looking up the issue I see many different causes stated. So the cause might be different in different people.
1 degree doesn’t make for anterior or posterior pelvic tilt. Also a number of doctors who specialize in fitness (e.g. Austin Baraki) do not recognize this as a legitimate disordered condition anyway.
This is how they sell those magnet bracelets that "align your chakras" or whatever. The reason you can reach farther the second time is that you stretched.
Here is a little fun exercise to show the effect of fascia : bend over, straight legs and see how far your hands go, just measuring how close you get to your feet (they don’t have to touch, don’t push yourself, just see where you end up) Now take a tennisbal or small round object and stand or move with one foot on it for a while, and roll a bit especially on the arch of the foot, like a massage. Now do the exercise again, bending over with your hands towards your feet and see what happens.