The Benefits and Necessity of the Foam Roller

The Benefits and Necessity of the Foam Roller: If you have yet to try this tool, I strongly suggest checking it out.

For anyone who has any sort of muscle that seems tight or has noticed pain in specific muscles often from a new or repetitive motion could probably benefit from this simplistic and modestly priced tool. Essentially the foam roller is a form of self-myofascial release technique that one can do to improve their function, flexibility, performance, and help to reduce injuries.

Often the muscles build up a large amount of metabolic wastes and increases in tissue density. The foam roller is there to work out the muscle similar to what massage and trigger point therapy can do. It allows for soft tissue adhesions and scar tissue to be broken up, works on trigger points, helps with tight fascia, and increases blood flow that helps rid the muscles of the accumulated metabolic wastes. It can be done pre and post and post work out and provide athletes with great overall performance. The pre work out foam rolling will work out the dense areas of the muscle (soft tissue adhesions, trigger points, etc) and the post work out rolling will help rid the muscles of the accumulated metabolic wastes and help with blood flow.

The kinetic chain in the human body helps provide the explanation as to why it is essential to have all aspects of the body working symmetrically to avoid problems. If one muscle is tighter or weaker than the surrounding muscles it can be more prone to injury because it is the weak link in the system. One must work to make that weak link stronger to account for the imbalance and asymmetry. If you have increased metabolic wastes, increased muscle density, or an overall just tight or weak muscle it could create problems for the surrounding areas. Note that of course the foam roller cannot solve this problem, but can aid in fixing this problem. It would be important to see what exercises should be done to fix the underlying issue.

There are different ways to roll out different muscles that are demonstrated on multiple sites. Check them out on youtube or through search engines like google using (Foam Rolling Techniques). A bunch of videos are out there for the taking.

For runners:

The iliotibial band (ITB) and tensor fasicae latae (TFL) are useful areas to tackle to increase performance for running. From personal experience I had always stretched before running and after, which helped but never got rid of my problems of tight hip flexors and lateral knee pain. Once I experimented with actually spending the time to roll out my ITB and TFL everyday during my training I performed significantly better and was able to run pain free without hip flexor problem and without knee problems. This is because I went to the source of the problem and worked on it (TFL and ITB) so that I could avoid the asymmetry and weak link that could have then progressed to hip, knee, ankle, etc problems.