Question

Answered by Jamie Kerem

A foam roller is a cylindrical piece of foam usually about 3 feet in length. You’ve probably seen one of these in your gym and not even given it a second thought. How could a piece of foam possibly do anything beneficial for your body?

Foam rolling prevents tightness, knots, and soreness in your muscles through a soft tissue therapy called myofascial release. This is achieved by relaxing tight and constricted muscles, boosting circulation within the muscles, and stimulating the stretch reflex of muscles. The foam roller essentially allows you to give yourself a deep tissue massage, and treat knotty, tender muscles.

This is beneficial to all people seeking health, wellbeing, strength, mobility, agility, even weight loss. Recovery is just as important as proper nutrition and training and is often overlooked by most people.

The foam roller helps your body recover from soreness and tightness, and primes your muscles for a new day and new workout by improving mobility and stretch of the muscles. It also improves blood circulation which, at a cellular level, allows for better uptake of nutrients and exchange of waste products.

So how exactly do you use this piece of equipment? You roll on it. Simple enough right? The foam roller can be used on almost all parts of your body (avoid torn muscles though). You simply place the body part in contact with the foam roller, and slowly roll back and forth over the surrounding area. Keep pressure for 30 seconds.

When you feel a tight spot, a spot that gives you more pain than usual, hold the foam roller on that point until pain begins to subside. This is the tight muscle lengthening up. You might find more trigger points (points of pain) in your body than you’d have expected.

Make foam rolling a part of your daily routine and reap the benefits of improved flexibility and strength and less injuries and stress!