What exactly is Foam Rolling?
Foam rolling and Muscle rolling is a form of myofascial release. The tissue that separates your layers of muscle is known as myofascial tissue, or myofascia. You are actually probably very familiar with myofascial tissue: When you prepare a piece of chicken to cook, you will see a layer of translucent material within the chicken breast, leg, etc. This is myofascial tissue.
Myofascial Tissue
You can think of it as a sort of biological saran wrap that surrounds the muscles to and separates the muscles into different segments. In facts, some view the entire skeletal muscle as one huge muscle and the myofascia is what separates our muscle groups into the biceps, triceps, shoulders, etc.
Humans and animals have this myofascial tissue. It can become tense and inflamed through the stresses of everyday life. Ideally, myofascial tissue is supposed to slip against the muscles underneath like two pieces of paper. However, with stress and strain, your muscles can actually get stuck to your myofascial tissue, creating spots where your fascia is strained and your muscles are not able to move freely.
Myofascial Release
Foam rolling is a method of putting gentle but firm pressure on areas of myofascial tension. It separates the fascia from the muscles. It causes the muscles to release. The compression also increases blood flow to the area, which helps the muscles and the myofascial tissue heal.
Tension and myofascial trigger points
Everyday life creates a lot of tension in our bodies. When our muscles are overworked, or conversely, when our muscles are underworked but have to perform a lot of small repetitive movements all day long, we end up with spots where the muscles are constantly contracted. These spots are known as myofascial trigger points.
Myofascial trigger points may be large, or they may be as small as pinpricks. What they all have in common is that they hurt when pressure is placed on them. They also often cause pain to other areas of the body, and is a reason why muscular pain is often so hard to diagnose.
Different kinds of myofascial trigger points
Myofascial trigger points may be latent or active. Latent trigger points only hurt when pressure is placed directly on them. Otherwise you may go through your day not even being aware that they are there. Active trigger points often cause constant or intermittent pain (often to other areas of the body), whether or not there is pressure being directly applied.
Active trigger points may cause pain that you feel somewhere else. This is called referred pain, and is thought to be caused by nerves being pressed by the muscle contraction. Therefore, the nerves are sometimes pinched and you may feel a shooting pain down your leg or your arm if you have a trigger point on your back for instance. If you are foam rolling and you start to feel pain somewhere else in your body, chances are that you have hit a myofascial trigger point with referred pain.
How does foam rolling help?
Foam rolling puts pressure on these trigger points and forces your tense muscles to loosen up. It also “dislodges” your muscle tissue from your fascia, thus allowing your muscles to move freely. Because of this, Foam Rolling often gives immediate relief. In some cases, it hurts during and after foam rolling, as if you had a hard workout. This is because of the trigger points and myofascial tissue. However, the benefits are that the increased blood flow to the muscles and the loosening of the myofascial tissue help your body in many ways, such as:
- Reduce Muscular Pain
- Decrease DOMS (delayed onset muscle soreness)
- Increase Flexibility
- Increase mobility
Why does foam rolling hurt?
Just like deep tissue massage, Foam Rolling can hurt. However, it is often reported as a “good hurt.” It usually hurts because you either have several myofascial trigger points, or you have dehydrated and stiff myofascial tissue (or likely both). Foam rolling can also hurt if you have just worked out the day or two before and you have DOMS (delayed onset muscle soreness)
- Myofascial tissue is stiff/ dehydrated
- Myofascial Trigger points
- Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness from a workout
Foam rolling can also feel great, like a massage does. Just remember that one session of foam rolling can feel good but it won’t help in the long term unless you keep up with it. Your muscles are in the habit of holding a lot of tension, so relaxing them one time won’t have much of a long-term effect. You have to force them to relax over and over again, thus giving your body the chance to heal and teaching your muscles to relax rather than staying in a constant state of contraction. Though you may see some immediate benefit from foam rolling, it takes some time for your body to heal its trigger points and for your myofascial tissue to enter a healthy state again.
Unlike massage, foam rolling is something you can do as often as you want, for as long as you want, and whenever you want, without spending a cent. Most of us wouldn’t begin to be able to afford daily massages to retrain our muscles to relax. With a foam roller from musclefoamroller.com, you can have the benefits of a daily massage without the price tag. All you have to do is commit to using your foam roller every day to start to see benefits in your posture, your health, and even with your mental state!