Foam Roller: Your Personal Physiotherapist!

Foam Roller: Your Personal Physiotherapist!

Everyone loves a good massage but not always the price and effort that comes with it. After a tough workout or while rehabilitating injuries, nothing is better than that “hurts so good” feeling of a greatly relaxing massage.

Although not as luxurious, using a foam roller is considered a form of self-massage and can produce many of the same benefits.

So, what is a Foam Roller?

A foam roller is a lightweight, cylindrical tube of compressed foam. It may be used for many reasons, including increasing flexibility, reducing soreness, and eliminating muscle knots.

Rollers come in different sizes and degrees of firmness. The firmness (often identified by the color) can range from soft to firm, soft being best for beginners.

Foam Roller: Your Personal Physiotherapist! Dr. Bhanu Abohari FITrebel.in

Benefits of Foam Rolling:

reduces soreness
reduces inflammation that occurs during the muscle repair process
aids in muscle repair recovery
helps injury prevention by maintaining muscle length and remedying tension and tightness
increases blood flow and elasticity of muscle tissue, joints, and fascia — the body’s connective tissue — which helps with mobility, overall well-being, and a smoother appearance of fat underneath your skin
promotes relaxation and reduces stress!

Why You Should Consider Foam Rolling?

Rolling out your muscles isn’t just for professional athletes. While it has the ability to increase performance, foam rolling can also be used to relieve and reduce tension caused by daily stresses.

Foam rollers are a popular tool for helping athletes release muscle knots or trigger points. “Myofascial adhesions” is the physiological term for these inflexible areas that can be caused by muscle imbalance, overuse, and injuries, among other things.

Foam rolling is a method of self-myofascial release. This Self-myofascial release, by the way of “foam rolling,” has transformed from a once mysterious technique used only by professional athletes, coaches, and therapists to a familiar everyday practice for people at all levels of fitness. Recent information, technology, and affordable products have introduced an increasing array of training and recovery methods to the average person.

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What Causes Trigger Points, Muscle Knots, and Tight Muscles?

All of the above have the same contributing factors including training, flexibility, movement patterns, posture, nutrition, hydration, rest, stress, and other lifestyle factors. Our bodies learn to compensate for what we throw at them every day, but we can exceed our ability to recover via too many intense workouts, poor posture, and other lifestyle factors.

This is when you need assistance using recovery techniques or through seeing a professional. If you lived a perfect life with everything in balance, you would theoretically never have either of these conditions, however, I’ve yet to meet that person.

Isn’t Stretching Our Muscles Enough?

Utilizing stretching alone is not always enough to release muscles tightness and knots, which is why foam rollers are so popular with athletes. Imagine a bungee cord with a knot tied into it and then envision stretching the cord. This creates tension, stretching the unknotted portion of the muscle and the attachment points. The knot, however, has remained unaltered.

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Foam Roller Your Personal Physiotherapist!

Self-Myofascial Release: The Holy Grail Of Muscle Recovery

Self-myofascial release is a fancy term for self-massage to release muscle tightness or trigger points. This method can be performed with a foam roller, tennis ball, a cricket ball, or your own hands. By applying pressure to specific points on your body you are able to aid in the recovery of muscles and assist in returning them to normal function. Normal function means your muscles are elastic, healthy, and ready to perform at a moment’s notice.

How Does Self-Myofascial Release Work?

Deep compression helps to break up or relax tight muscles and adhesions formed between muscle layers and their surroundings. Imagine you are tenderizing your own muscles. They should be soft and supple like a baby’s muscles. However, if our muscles are not taken care of properly we can experience loss of flexibility, adhesions, and painful movement.

The deep compression of self-myofascial release allows normal blood flow to return and the restoration of healthy tissue. The body naturally wants to be healthy and strong, but sometimes an extra boost is needed to achieve optimal muscle and tissue health.

Foam Roller Your Personal Physiotherapist!

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Here’s How Foam Rolling Can Reduce Stress and Tension In The Body.

Stress has a direct impact on our muscular tension. People who are more stressed-out have tense muscles. And that paralyzing pain in the muscles? For example “Trapezitis or inflammation in the upper back muscles is one of the major causes of stress-induced headaches, neck stiffness, and heaviness in the back. When we work out these muscles, there is continuous stress which results in the muscles getting strained or tightened. Foam Roling provides relief from pain, and aids in muscle relaxation, inducing a sense of wellbeing. Primarily, a foam roller helps in releasing the tension on the affected muscles.

The key benefits of a roller are that it helps smooth out and moisturize the fascia, which is the connective tissue between the joints and muscles. Since foam rolling improves circulation throughout your body and helps oxygenate the blood, it helps to flush toxins from the body too, reducing inflammation.

Sometimes when I train, I might have to foam roll before a workout to aid in a better warm-up and release muscle tension if need be. Sometimes after a workout, as it could help recover faster from strenuous activity and help decrease muscle soreness. If you do it before sleeping, muscles that are opened up and at ease help you literally sleep better.

The act of rolling out those knots of tension in your muscles elevates the mood which increases the level of serotonin in the brain. This leads to a feeling of ease and joy. When you are working out with a foam roller it helps in giving focused attention to those muscle groups. Plus, muscle relaxing increases the dopamine levels in the brain too, improving the mood.

It’s not just for professionals! Whether we work-out on the regular basis or not, we do use our muscles every day to help us in daily movements. Not all these daily movements are of-course perfect. So, in an attempt to heal the overworked muscles and connective tissues, the muscles form knots or adhesions, which restrict proper movement and are painful.

Foam rolling can assist in breaking up these muscle knots, resuming normal blood flow, and function. The goal of any corrective or recovery technique is to get you back to the point of normal functioning as if nothing was ever wrong.

Releasing trigger points helps to reestablish proper movement patterns and pain-free movement, and ultimately, to enhance performance.

And What To Expect After Foam Rolling?

You may be sore the next day. It should feel as if your muscles have been worked/released, however, you should not push yourself to the point of excessive soreness. Drink plenty of water, get enough sleep, and eat clean. This will help to flush your system and fuel your muscles more effectively. Give it 24-48 hours before focusing on the same area again.

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Be Careful On The First Try.

Foam rolling can be painful, especially if you’re new to it. Pain in a specific area while foam rolling is typically a sign that your muscle or tissue is tight and needs some tender loving care.”

Ease into painful spots by starting in the areas right around it and sensitivity should decrease fairly quickly. But, if it’s too much to bear, don’t continue.

Foam Roller Your Personal Physiotherapist!

But Why Should I Be Doing Something That Hurts?

Many people develop a love/hate relationship with their foam roller. The process of rolling out knots can be quite uncomfortable, but working through the discomfort can help you increase your range of motion and decrease recovery time after a hard workout.

For many, deep tissue massage is easy to understand. Ideally, someone is able to work out the knots in your muscles, and it is commonly known this process may be uncomfortable and at times painful. The self-myofascial release provides the user with the ability to control the healing and recovery process by applying pressure in precise locations because only you can feel exactly what is happening.

It is always recommended to consult with your physician or physical therapist for therapeutic/sharp pain and receive approval before starting self-myofascial release. For most people, you will be cleared immediately and your doctor will encourage the practice.

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How Do I Know What to Foam Roll and How to Do It?

You may target specific areas/muscles that relate to the movements you are focusing on.

If after using the foam roller your movement improves, you have a more specific strategy to follow. Secondly, trigger points and tight muscles can be found through self-exploration, utilizing the list of techniques below, and exploring each one.

To foam roll properly, apply moderate pressure to a specific muscle or muscle group using the roller and your bodyweight. You should roll slowly, no more than one inch per second. When you find areas that are tight or painful, pause for several seconds, and relax as much as possible. You should slowly start to feel the muscle releasing, and after 5-30 seconds, the discomfort or pain should lessen.

If an area is too painful to apply direct pressure, shift the roller, and apply pressure on the surrounding area and gradually work to loosen the entire area. The goal is to restore healthy muscles – it is not a pain tolerance test. You may also use other objects to work on muscles such as a tennis ball, cricket ball, Theracane, or Trigger Point Therapy Kit.

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Foam Roller Your Personal Physiotherapist!

A Word Of Caution

Avoid These Common Mistakes!

Don’t roll directly on the spot.

However tempted, don’t massage exactly on the spot that is paining. Move a few inches away and try and cover a larger area near the pain point.

Don’t roll too quickly.

Your movements on the foam roller should be slow and concentrated. If you roll too fast, your muscles won’t have time to adapt to and manage the compression, which won’t help the cause.

Also, if you place sustained pressure on one body part, you might actually hit a nerve or damage the tissue.

If you feel a knot, spend time working that spot with the foam roller. However, don’t spend a lot of time on the same area and attempt to place your entire body weight onto the foam roller. Sustained pressure on one body part might actually hit a nerve or damage the tissue, which can cause bruising.

Avoid foam rolling the lower back. Not in The Learning Phase At Least.

It could play havoc with your lower back muscles and their shape. While it is fine to use a foam roller on the upper back because the shoulder blades and muscles in the upper back will protect the spine, the spinal muscles in the lower back could contract and cause more damage, especially if the cause of back pain is a condition in the lumbar spine. To target these muscles I recommend using a tennis or lacrosse balls.

Never roll a joint or bone.

Joints and bones are not flexible, the chances of bruising them are rather high if they are foam rolled. And bone bruises take quite some time to heal.

My Experience With Foam Rolling.

I got my first(and only) Foam Roller about 10 years ago and since then not a day has gone by when I don’t use it multiple times a day.

In fact, I have carried it to almost all of my vacations!

Even if I had a day off from exercise, I don’t recall taking a day off from Foam Rolling! It’s that good and costs less than cup of Starbucks and a muffin!