With the now available version 6.1 of our diabetes management program SiDiary, there are new features available such as an improved use on Windows Tablets (with its own software keyboard and enlarged selection fields), a fresh layout with brighter colors and above all an improved evaluation of CGM systems such as the Abbott Freestyle Libre, the Freestyle Navigator or Dexcom CGM systems. Farm fresh, glass-bottled milk, our own pasture-raised beef and pork, and over 100 local items. HOW HOME DELIVERY WORKS. Be assigned a weekly delivery day (Monday - Friday) based on where you live along our route. Powered by: Delivery Biz PRO - Online Home & Commercial Delivery Software Solutions.
Meet Mark Let me introduce myself. My name is Mark Sisson. I’m 63 years young. I live and work in Malibu, California. In a past life I was a professional marathoner and triathlete. Now my life goal is to help 100 million people get healthy. I started this blog in 2006 to empower people to take full responsibility for their own health and enjoyment of life by investigating, discussing, and critically rethinking everything we’ve assumed to be true about health and wellness.
Meet Mark new here? I own a foam roller. Every fitness facility I’ve visited in the last three years has hosted a large arsenal of foam rollers, lacrosse balls, and other instruments of fascial torture. The community has 2.3 per capita. I hear sleeps on a bed made of lacrosse balls with foam rollers for pillows.
Everyone and their grandma has one. I’m not even joking; I saw a group of track-suited seniors doing some kind of a synchronized foam rolling routine in the park recently. The things are everywhere. And you can certainly spend an inordinate amount of time rolling around on the things, causing all sorts of painful sensations that should, in theory, help you. But does it really help? As I mentioned earlier, I have one.
I’ve used it and, I think, benefited from it. But it hurts. It’s pretty much the most unpleasant thing you can do.
Not just because of the pain, but also the tedium. It had better be worth the trouble. What does the science say? What foam rolling seems to do really well is increase range of motion without harming performance. Foam rolling the calves works better than stretching the calves before a workout,. Stretching increased ankle range of motion slightly more, but it also lowered performance; foam rolling increased performance. Several other have found foam rolling to improve range of motion at the hip and without hurting performance.
Performed post workout, foam rolling may reduce (DOMS) and the associated hit to performance (hard to move when you’re sore all over!), making it an effective if moderate recovery tool. After a heavy workout, subjects did 20 minutes of foam rolling immediately, 24 hours, and 48 hours post-workout. Four weeks later, they did the same workout without any foam rolling afterwards. Foam rolling decreased DOMS and mitigated the performance decrements.
Another study had similar results, that foam rolling after a reduced soreness and improved vertical jump and muscle activation. Should you foam roll everything? Is it worth getting into those ridiculously contrived positions in order to hit some small ribbon of fascia hidden between limbs? Should you foam roll your face? Hamstrings see mixed results.
Several studies find a lack of effect. In a, foam rolling had no additional effect on hamstring range of motion or tightness in people with tight hamstrings when added to regular static stretching. Found that 2 minutes of foam rolling was insufficient to improve hamstring tightness or increase knee extension range. Yet another found that foam rolling was effective at increasing hamstring flexibility, comparable to contract-relax stretching. In my experience, the hamstring isn’t a great candidate. I rarely feel any tender spots on my hamstrings with the roller.
Using a lacrosse ball produces some tender spots, but the foam roller might just offer too diffuse a stimulus to work. One study had decent results using a on the hamstrings, which is kind of “rolling pin” for your tissues that lets you really bear down.
Lately, folks that I respect (like of ) have been saying not to foam roll the IT band. That the real cause of IT band issues is in the surrounding musculature, particularly the glutes. This makes sense. The IT band is a tough and fibrous swathe of connective tissue that connects to and supports the most powerful muscle group on the body—the hip-glute-hamstring-quad complex.
Rolling around on some foam isn’t going to do much to such an impressive piece of physiological real estate. Yet I’ve experienced direct benefits to knee pain after foam rolling my IT band for a few minutes. I’ll do a set of, feel a sharp pain in my knee, suspect the IT band is inhibiting something, foam roll the band and focus on the tenderest spots, and squat again pain free. Am I fooling myself? But I’ll take it. It’s pretty clear that foam rolling doesn’t do what a lot of proponents say it does: Foam rolling doesn’t “stretch”.
You can’t squeeze out any extra length like you’re rolling out some dough. Foam rolling doesn’t remove mechanic adhesions. To do that, to “peel apart” gummed up tissues, you’d need shear stress, not compression. Some people think foam rolling opens a window of opportunity for better movement.
You roll a tender spot. For whatever reason, your nervous system has determined that this is the proper, safe range of motion for you. Foam rolling clears that out, giving you a short opportunity to establish a new safe pattern. More than physical adhesions, it’s removing neuromuscular blocks and harmful patterns. You reset the system and reprogram it.
Others think foam rolling (DNIC). DNIC is how the brain dampens pain. Usually, pain increases survivability; it occurs to warn you against danger.
If something hurts, your body’s trying to stop you from hurting yourself more seriously. But sometimes the brain “decides” that maintaining the pain is more trouble than it’s worth or more dangerous.
If a solider loses a limb in battle, he might not feel much pain until he’s able to get to safety. If he felt the full pain of the lost limb, he’d be unable to save himself. That’s DNIC—the brain determining that reduced pain is beneficial to survival and less dangerous than prolonging it. In causing momentary pain that we regard as beneficial and necessary, foam rolling may “tell” the brain to turn the pain off.
Whatever the mechanism(s), it can work. Foam rolling before your workout is, especially if you take advantage of the open “movement window” and move. Foam roll, do some mobility drills, then get to training. Foam rolling after your workout can and performance declinations. Studies show that this can reduce post workout soreness, increase range of motion (without reducing power or strength output, like pre-workout static stretching does). The majority of the research deals with standard foam rollers, but any self-myofascial release tool (lacrosse balls either individual or, roller-massagers, your own knobby elbow) should. Don’t foam roll the site of the pain.
If your knee hurts, don’t foam roll the knee. Foam roll the tissues above and below it. Foam rolling is not enough. You have to foam roll and move and mobilize. Foam roll and train.
Foam rolling is an excellent tool on the belt, not the only one. In some respects, foam rolling only treats the symptoms. If your incorrect movement patterns, your life stressors, and your lack of regular movement are causing the tissue issues, foam rolling but won’t “fix” the underlying problem. Unless you fix the problems causing the pain and mobility issues, you’ll have to keep rolling. The research is equivocal. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, and despite some promising hypotheses, no one is quite sure why.
That doesn’t mean you can’t benefit from foam rolling. Based on the research, thousands of anecdotes, and my own experience, I’d say it’s worth a shot.
Thanks for reading, everyone. What’s your experience been with foam rolling?
Useful, placebo, pointless, harmful? Let’s hear all about it down below! Prefer listening to reading? Get an audio recording of this blog post, and subscribe to the Primal Blueprint Podcast on iTunes for instant access to all past, present and future episodes. I’d seen them now and then in shops and thought – until just now – they were for play-fighting with, like foamy light sabres, maybe on a trampoline or something. I mean I actually genuinely thought that, I’m not joking, I’ve seen TV “Gladiators” using padded baton things to fight with. So, I bought one in a discount store, cut it up, and I’ve been using it as a pincushion and for sewing leather – you can really stab into it and it doesn’t fall apart, it’s super.
I might try some foot exercises with what’s left of it, thanks! Foam rollers work, provided you roll the right area, and not the area that hurts so to speak. For instance, one of the most popular areas to roll is the IT Band, yet it is completely futile to roll it because the problem is caused either below or above the area. Think of it as a kinetic chain, instead of rolling the IT Band, you roll things like your TFL, gluteus medius, and gluteus minimus. Then on the other end, gently foam rolling just above your knee. The thing is, if these are tight, then it’s more than likely it’s either your hips our out of whack causing the issue, and/or your exercising in bad form causing the kinetic chain to misfire.
This basically makes foam rolling useless unless your addressing the actual problem. Where it does help is resting it on trigger points, but at that point it’s better to just use a tennis or lacrosse ball.
I use the yoga tune up balls and recommend Jill Miller’s book. “The Roll Model.” The book goes through everything that you would need to target any area of the body.
Lots of pictures to demonstrate. The tune up balls come in different sizes so you can target different areas including the shoulders. The balls are not as hard as a lacrosse ball and the rubber is grippy to hold to the skin. The book has methods for using cross friction and shear to break up adhesions.
I feel like using them has helped with my mobility and reduce my pain. Gosh, I have had truly amazing results with the foam roller. I was having persistent knee problems which I developed through yoga. Too much back stretching and not enough front stretching. I developed a Baker’s cyst and my range of motion was utterly stalled. After a ton of chiropractor visits with litte results, I rolled my IT band – 3 times a day. I went straight for the torture instrument – the Rumble Roller being totally ignorant and thinking, how bad can this be?
I nearly puked every time. My thighs went black and blue. I stuck with it because of my experience with massage therapy. The body shouldn’t feel so much pain from touch, albeit insistent touch.
Not so much you sweat and feel nauseous. The pain of rolling eventually went away and with it, my knee pain vanished in about 2 weeks. To keep it at bay though, I did have to do other things too. I changed my yoga practice and cut out all forward bends, beloved by yogis (think downward dog) and emphasized back bends and strengthening all muscles at the back from shoulders on down.
I paid attention when Mark highlighted Esther Gokhale’s work on primal posture and I added glute strengthening to my regimen (gluteus medius especially). I still use it as maintenance two to three times a week and am pain free and fully mobile. I walk a lot and have found that anything that strengthens the quads benefits from the opposite activity -quad stretches and rolling that IT band.
It also really helps my sleep to roll just before tucking in. Thought I got that tip from Mark too? Airrosti.com is a great clinic for myofascial release.
That therapy, as well as lacrosse balls and foam rollers certainly work. They do manual therapy, and then send you in for 30 minutes with an airrosti trainer to show you how to strengthen the areas of pain appropriately to help resolve the issue. I don’t think there’s any controversy, doing this fixed an injured back I got from doing crossfit in Prague, as well as the whole body effects that injury incurred (still be treated for that part). Also for people who are twisted up like I am, foam rollers and lacrosse balls are the #1 way to lower personal stress due to pain.
I feel far more clearheaded after I’ve sorted out the tie ups in my shoulders and neck. Really don’t mean this in an accusatory way, but it just occurred to me that in light of the accept-your-body-when-you’re-at-a-healthy-body-composition advice from yesterday’s post and may times in the past, it would be helpful to see pictures of women (and men) who reflect this advice in the stock footage for the Marksdailyapple posts in general. I could be wrong, but all post pics that come to mind are of very lean, standard-model types, and this female torso with a foam roller is no exception. My Physical Therapist suggested I get a foam roller specifically for my weak back musclesall of my muscles have have always been very loose, hyper-extensive, etc.
They are hard to build. They’re long and lanky. She had me lie on it lengthwise, head at one end, tailbone at the other. Breathe slowly in, outdo the deep breathing thing. Allow the muscles to truly relax and the spine to gently align itself.
I will lie there for about 20 minutes (TV remote at hand as I bore easily). I can feel my vertebrae subtly coming into better alignment. I can move very slightly side to side, slowly and it’s like a deep massage to the lower back – which always seems to be longing for it. Between my shoulder blades – again, slight movement is like getting a massage there. I slide off of it to the floor and lie there a few more minutes, and then get up slowly, usually doing a bit of leg stretching and “unwinding” sorts of stretching.
It all feels wonderful. I feel greatly energized afterward and it seems to help my spine and hips stay in place. This is really helpful to my overall well being and it makes me feel like walking, afterwards. Not much else makes me fee like walking.
It’s a long story, but I am walking! I look at foam roller work, and the like, as palliative care. It is meant to be used to increase our ability to perform the activities which truly advance our health. By using foam rollers, we are able to engage in strength training, conditioning, ROM and stretching exercises with more effect, or with less pain, etc. Sometimes we need palliative type care just to be able to exercise at all. This, of course, makes it extremely useful.
But do not over project its abilities beyond this. If you can exercise without pain or limitations, then your time may be better spent doing something else besides foam rolling.
Or, at least, limit the foam rolling. It will not advance your health in and of itself.
Often we get caught up in the “if some is good, more is better” or “I need to do every possible exercise to succeed” dogma. Sometimes you are okay not using the foam roller. And in some cases, your time may be better spent on other activities. Another tool to use is nerve flossing exercises. I recently finished a round of physical therapy that I needed because of chronic shoulder and hip dislocation. Something that I have been doing wrong for YEARS because no one ever told me I was an expression to the rule, was stretching until I felt the stretch before and after exercising.
I have hypermobility syndrome and I was hurting myself. She told me to warm up by starting slowly to exercise and to never stretch, but instead use a foam roller if my muscles got tight. She also taught me joint stabilizing exercises with a little extra core work added by lying on the foam roller and balancing while doing the exercises. So people with hypermobility/EDS, get a foam roller and stop stretching!