How to Use the Foam Roller to Prevent and Recover From Injuries

            Do you know what a foam roller is? If not, it’s a long, dense cylindrical piece of foam. It looks like this.

            It’s a low-tech, low-cost way to do deep tissue massage on yourself. The benefits:

• You can use it for injury prevention
• You can use it as part of your recovery from different injuries
• You can pretend that it’s a light saber, and have sword fights with your friends (and this is coming from a guy who doesn’t like Star Wars. Can’t compare to Rocky!!!).

In this article, you will learn:

• What a foam roller does to your body
• How to use a foam roller properly
• Common foam rolling mistakes
• The best time to foam roll
• Speed of foam rolling
• Foam rolling when sore

Unfortunately though, I won’t teach you how to use it as a light saber. I have to keep some secrets, after all.

What a Foam Roller Does to Your Body

            A foam roller is used to give yourself deep tissue massage. Let’s get one thing straight: for massage, nothing beats a qualified practitioner, with a great knowledge of anatomy, and strong hands. That offers more precision than anything else. But since it’s not practical to get a deep tissue massage every day, or even 3-4 times per week, your next resort is a foam roller. It doesn’t give you the precision of a good practitioner, but it does give you the convenience to do it whenever you please. Plus, it’s only a 1-time expense of about $25-$35.

            So what does a foam roller do to your body? The idea is that it should do the same thing as deep tissue massage: break down scar tissue, and reduce the muscle tone of tight muscles.

            How does scar tissue develop? Through a few ways, like:

• Injury
• Actual scars from surgery
• Heavy exercise (both strength training and cardio)

Initially, scar tissue is needed as a protective mechanism, because it gives you passive support (by “passive”, I mean you can’t contract it and relax it, the way you can a muscle). But once the injury has healed, or you’ve recovered from a particularly difficult exercise session, that scar tissue no longer has its purpose, but it still sticks around. The end result: less flexibility, and a greater feeling of tightness. Plus, a greater risk of injury.

Deep tissue massage (and by extension, foam rolling) is meant to break down the scar tissue, giving your muscles the flexibility that they need.

The technical term for foam rolling, and other tools that have the same effect is “self myofascial release.” I like that term, because it’s descriptive of what foam rolling does. If you break down the word “myofascial”, you get “myo” (which means “muscle”), and fascial (which is really the connective tissue. Fascia is like the white film around chicken. We have that too. Not that I’m calling you a chicken. I wouldn’t do that). Here’s what fascia looks like. It’s the white stuff that encapsulates the muscle fibres.

How to Use a Foam Roller Properly

            To properly use a foam roller, you have to identify the muscle or area that you want to release, and extremely slowly, slide the foam roller over that area. Here is a 40-second video of how to use it to roll your IT band (the side of your thigh). Although the person in the video is going too fast, the rest of the video is accurate.

            Here’s another video showing you how to use it on your calf. Again, the person in the video is going too fast, but the rest of it is good.

            These are just two examples, but the same can be applied to large muscles in the body (like your thigh muscles, butt muscles, and large back muscles, like your lats). However, foam rolling doesn’t work so well for smaller muscles. The reason for that is that the foam roller has a large surface area, and small muscles don’t. So it’s hard to get the same level of precision. For smaller muscles, it’s better to use tennis balls, golf balls, and lacrosse balls. You’d use these when rolling out your chest and shoulder muscles, the muscles running along the spine, as well as the smaller hip muscles, like the piriformis.

            Here is a quick, 1:18 minute video showing you how to use the tennis ball to roll out your chest muscles.

Common Foam Rolling Mistakes

Mistake #1: Foam Rolling Before Exercise

            One common mistake people make is foam rolling before exercise. When people do this, they reason that it will warm up their muscles. Yes, it will certainly do that. But it’ll also weaken the muscles. The purpose of a warm-up is to make you stronger, not weaker. Remember, foam rolling isn’t just massage. It’s deep tissue massage. Whereas light massage will bring blood to the area, and strengthen it, deep tissue massage is different. It’s obviously deep. Deep enough to break down scar tissue.

            In order to break down scar tissue, you have to dig deep enough to cause a tiny amount of damage to the muscle and associated connective tissue for the body to have a rebound effect, and repair it.

            Just as with strength training, you cause slight damage to the muscle, so that the body can repair itself, and you’re stronger next workout. But you are weaker by the end of the same workout. Same with foam rolling or any type of deep tissue work. You have to cause slight damage to the muscle and connective tissue, in order for it to get stronger later.

            That’s why foam rolling or doing deep tissue work before exercise is a bad idea. Foam rolling and doing deep tissue work after exercise is a good idea. And even then, not for everyone.

Mistake #2: Foam Rolling Too Quickly

            I frequently see people get on the foam roller, and aggressively and quickly start to roll. Wrong! When you get on the foam roller, you have to give your brain and nervous system enough time to perceive what’s going on. It takes about 3 seconds of holding a position for your brain to register what’s happening.

            So you want to go extremely slow. For instance, when going from your hip, down to your knee, it should take about 30-40 seconds. Most people do it in 10 or less.

            Then, when you find a spot that is more tender than other spots, just hold that spot. Keep holding that spot until it loosens up. That may take anywhere from 30 seconds, to 2 minutes. And if you’re doing the IT band (side of your thigh) or you’re doing the calf, expect your tender spots to make you want to jump out of your skin. They hurt. A lot. On a 0-10 scale, it might hurt 8-10, but persevere, and hold those spots.

            They key, however, when holding the tender spots is to relax that muscle as much as possible. It’s a challenge, considering that it hurts. And when it hurts, you want to tighten up to protect it. Don’t. If you relax the muscle while you’re over the foam roller, you allow it to penetrate deeper fibres, and the effect is even greater.

Mistake #3: Foam Rolling When Sore

            This is another mistake that people make. They reason “if I get a massage when I’m sore, it will speed up recovery.” And for a light massage, yes, that’s the case. But once again, foam rolling is the equivalent of a deep tissue massage.

            When you’re sore, there’s some local inflammation going on, to speed up the repair from the micro-damage that the workout created. And deep tissue massage also aims to create a small amount of local inflammation, to stimulate the repair process. So does foam rolling.

            So rather than speeding up recovery, foam rolling can end up slowing down recovery by breaking down already broken down muscle, and increasing the inflammation in an already-inflamed area. Don’t do it.