Roll Your Pain Away
How Foam Rolling Can Alleviate Pain, Increase Performance, and Improve Overall
Quality of Muscle Tissue
What if I told you that you can relieve muscular pain while drastically improving your
ability to function, all by just rolling around? Rolling around on a foam roller that is.
Self Myofascial Release or ‘foam rolling’ is a self help technique that helps the
following:
• increase joint range of motion
• increase neuromuscular efficiency
• decrease muscle soreness & relieve joint stress
• decrease neuromuscular hyper tonicity
• Corrects muscle imbalances
• Maintain normal muscle function and length.
In other words using a foam roller on a daily basis basically improves the overall quality
of your muscle tissue.
How does this work?
Foam rolling works very similar to a massage, except by using your own body weight to
self massage (roll away) restrictions by breaking up knots and adhesions, that your body
develops through exercise, activity, as well as from chronic inactivity and overload
patterns such as poor posture from work related tasks (sitting hunched over at your desk
all day).
How do you do this?
To perform foam rolling you simply position a muscle on the roller and use your own
body weight to apply pressure into the roller looking for tender spots. When a tender spot
is noted just hold on that spot until the tenderness decreases by at least 50% - 70%. The
knots or adhesions (that cause the tenderness) won’t just disappear they will travel to
different spots of the area you are working on, so be sure to scan the rest of the area you
are working on to find where the knots and adhesions moved to. You can perform this on
all the muscles of your body with the exception of directly on your neck and lower back.
When Should You Foam Roll?
It is best to Foam roll as part of your warm up (pre-exercise) before any kind of static
(reach and hold) or dynamic (active/moving) flexibility work, as well as on your off days
to help aid in recovery. You should perform you foam rolling work first because you will
be freeing up your muscles allowing for better range of motion during your static or
dynamic flexibility work, as well as prepping your body for more intense activity.
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(Foam Rolls can be found at your local Academy or Sport Authority Store.)