Tips to using a foam roller
Your foam roller is an incredible tool for increasing your muscle health, healing yourself, and improving your range of motion and athletic performance. However, it shouldn’t be considered a silver bullet that cures everything with no applicable warnings. Here are some things to remember to use your foam roller with maximum effectiveness and minimal risk
Foam rolling is for recovery, not for repairing
Foam rolling helps with muscle recovery after a hard workout. It does not work for repairing muscle, bones, joints, or ligaments after an injury. You should never use a foam roller on an injured area. The compression can make the injury worse.
Foam rollers work by putting pressure on muscle groups, increasing circulation and providing a massaging motion. They help your circulation, wash toxins from your tense muscles, remove lactic acid from sore muscles, and heal muscles that have been too tense for too long (trigger points). Foam rollers even help to break up scar tissue to provide long-term improvement in muscle performance.
What foam rollers do not do is repair injured muscles. If you have an injury that you would usually put heat on to increase circulation, a foam roller may increase range of motion too much and cause instability. If you have an injury that you would usually put ice on to decrease circulation and prevent inflammation, you should NEVER use a foam roller because it increases circulation. And of course, any injury to bones, joints or ligaments can easily be made much worse by using a foam roller.
If you have had a hard workout, your foam roller can significantly improve your recovery afterwards. It can make it possible to work out again the next day, where otherwise you would have had to rest the next day to let your muscles recover. It can keep your muscles from getting sore and stiff after your workout. It can increase your range of motion so that you can stretch more effectively after a workout. But you need to be using it for normal recovery, not for injury repair.
Foam rolling isn’t a “no pain no gain” activity
Foam rolling often hurts. It often hurts a lot. In fact, the way you know that you have found a myofascial trigger point is because it hurts. When people first start foam rolling, they often find it to be excruciating. As you continue foam rolling every day, the pain often subsides somewhat because your muscles begin to carry less and less tension.
But just because foam rolling hurts, that doesn’t mean that more pain is more effective foam rolling. In fact, pain can cause problems with foam rolling. Pain often causes a protection response in the body where you tense up against the pain. So if you’re digging deeper into your muscles with the goal of making it hurt more, and you’re doing this because you believe it will make your foam rolling more effective, you may be doing more harm than good.
This is why we recommend that you keep it light when you’re rolling. It will probably hurt anyway, but you don’t need to make it hurt more than it already does. Even if you’re not feeling much pain, your muscles are benefitting from the compression that the foam rolling provides. They are benefitting from the increased circulation, the breaking up of scar tissue, and the removal of toxins.
Furthermore, the more you can roll without feeling a bunch of pain, the more your muscles can relax so that the foam roller can massage deeper and deeper into your muscles. Just as with massage, you can have enormous benefits even without experiencing a lot of pain. It’s okay if foam rolling hurts because it means you are targeting tense spots and myofascial trigger points, but it’s also okay if foam rolling doesn’t hurt very much because you are still getting benefits from it.
Hold pressure on tight areas
Many people use a foam roller and forget (or don’t know) that you should hold your positions on very tight areas of the muscles. When you have trigger points or tight muscles, one of the best way to get your muscles to release the tension is consistent pressure on the tender area.
Don’t do it for too long (but don’t rush either)
One common mistake that first-time foam rollers make is that they use their foam rollers for too long. This is a process that has long-term benefits over a long period of time, but overdoing it all at one time won’t do you very much good. You should aim to spend about 30 seconds on each area, for 3 repetitions.
For every muscle group that you target, roll for about 30 seconds, and if you find any especially painful spots you should rest on them for 20-30 seconds additionally to give your muscles the chance to relax. After rolling for 30 seconds, you should stretch that muscle group, and then move on to rolling and then stretching the next muscle group. Do 3 repetitions of this.
You also want to slow down when rolling, and don’t just rush through the motions. You need to give your muscles and brain time to relax and enter a parasympathetic state.
Follow a complete health regimen
Foam rolling isn’t the only or even the main thing you should be doing to maintain your muscle health. It is just one tool in your arsenal. Balance foam rolling with weight training, stretching, and cardio work and you will see the best results from your regimen.
You should also aim to eat a healthy diet. There is a lot of information out there on eating a healthy diet and what the best diet is. There is also a lot of debate on that so you will have to do your own research. In my opinion, all the information over complicates things because in reality eating healthy pretty simple. I believe that simply eating a variety of a lot of organic vegetables, grass fed organic beef, organic chicken, healthy bacteria (probiotics) and a balance of fatty oils (getting enough omega 3 fatty acids) is what we should all be focusing on.
The things to stay away from are processed foods, sugar and too many grains (especially processed grains). If you can get by eating things that are as close to the source as possible such as plants and high-quality meat, your muscles should get all the nutrients they need to operate at their optimal performance.
If you fail to eat a healthy diet then you may have imbalances in your nutrients that can cause imbalances in the functioning of your muscular system, as well as all your other organs in your body.
Consult your doctor
If you foam roll on an injury, you are probably just going to hurt yourself worse. For the most part, it is completely obvious when pain is due to tension, and when it is due to an injury. Most people, especially athletes, know their bodies well enough to know when they have an injury.
Nevertheless, it’s always better to be safe than sorry. Before you start foam rolling or make any other changes to your exercise regimen, it is always a good idea to consult your doctor and get approval. Foam rolling is great for your muscles and can help to improve your performance enormously, not to mention making you feel better overall, but it’s good to start by knowing that you don’t have an existing injury that you are going to be aggravating.