One thing that any gym goer or gym-home owner fears is developing muscle knots. Muscle knots can mess up your workout and your performance, but foam rolling can come to your rescue. In this guide, you’ll learn how foam rollers can help you before and after a workout. Read on to discover more.
What Is Foam Rolling?
Foam rollers are cylinders for reducing muscle tension, loosening up muscles, or increasing muscle length before or after a workout. Producers use light or solid foam or plastic materials to make these long cylindrical tubes. You can get different shapes, sizes, and materials to suit your unique needs.
How Do Foam Rollers Work?
Foam rolling is a type of myofascial release technique. The fascia is a fibrous tissue layer surrounding your muscles. It makes it easy for you to move or exercise. Also, it protects your muscles from injury.
When the fascia contracts due to injury or overworking, your muscles become tense. As a result, the contraction affects blood flow and mobility. You end up having stiff and sore muscles.
Regular foam rolling can reduce muscle tension and ward off joint pain and soreness.
You can target the tight muscles thanks to foam rolling and its self-myofascial release (SMR) technique. You do this by moving your body weight over a foam roller to zero in on the lower back, thighs, calves, and glutes.
If you’re starting in foam rolling, it may feel uncomfortable. However, the more you use foam rollers, the more your body gets used to them. As you loosen the tight spots, you’ll see the massive benefits of foam rolling.
Let’s jump into the benefits of foam rolling.
Foam Rolling Benefits
1. Relieve Muscle Pain
You can perform foam rolling to relieve sore muscles and reduce inflammation. After a workout, foam rollers can help you minimize delayed-onset muscle soreness (DOMS). DOMS is the stiffness and pain you feel in your muscles hours or days after intense training.
To reduce DOMS, you can use foam rollers, say 20 to 30 mins after an activity. Foam rolling may also improve your performance due to relaxed muscles.
2. Boost Range of Motion
Using foam rollers may also better your range of motion (ROM). ROM refers to your ability to move or stretch one part of your body, like a muscle or joint. The more rigid your muscles are, the more difficult it becomes to do stretching exercises, for example.
ROM affects your performance and flexibility. Thanks to foam rollers, you could increase your range of motion. Start with stretching and end with foam rolling after a training session to make the most of foam rolling.
4. Soothe Back Pain
Another benefit of foam rolling is easing back pain. The SMR may reduce the tension in your back, but you need to be extra careful when using foam rollers. You can injure your back if you apply incorrect techniques.
One way of using a foam roller to target your lower back pain is to align it in line with your spine (vertically). While it’s vertical, you can move the roller side to side. A horizontal position may cause more backache.
5. Control Fibromyalgia Symptoms
Experts also say that foam rolling can help individuals with fibromyalgia cope with its symptoms. Fibromyalgia is a rheumatic disorder causing your muscles to be stiff, painful, and tender. Regular foam rolling could make people with fibromyalgia feel better, reduce muscle stiffness, pain, and depression.
6. Limits Sports Injury & Helps You Recover Quicker
As a gym-goer or anyone with a home gym, the SMR can prevent injuries and help you recover in no time. That’s because foam rolling increases your blood flow, range of motion and improves your movement.
Foam rollers can reduce your recovery time after an exercise. As a result, you can have more workouts per session and improved results.
7. Breaks Up Your Scar Tissue
Scar tissue can cause collagen fibers and adhesions between the skin. As a result, you may feel some tightness, pain and have challenges in moving. To treat scar tissue, you may do foam rolling to target your fascia. In this way, you can ease pain due to IT band syndrome and shin splints.
8. Your Mobility and Flexibility Improve
Training gurus recommend several exercises to relieve muscle tension. They include static or dynamic stretching, an intense warm-up routine, and post-workouts. You can also have foam rolling as part of your workouts to improve flexibility, range of motion, and mobility.
9) Remove Lactic Acid to Speed up Recovery
As you exercise, your body produces lactic acid in your muscles. Lactic acid leads to muscle soreness and pain. While it’s temporary, it can cause discomfort, affecting your training. However, foam rolling may help with removing lactic acid.
10. You Can Save Money
Getting one or two foam rollers saves you money in the long term. You can perform foam rolling at home with no additional equipment. And this minimizes your spa visits, helping you slash costs.
11. You Can Use It As a Workout Tool
Another beauty of the foam roller is that you can use it as a workout tool. See the video below on how foam rolling can make your booty firm in three simple ways.
How Often Should You Use a Foam Roller?
Professional trainers advise foam rolling daily to help your muscles respond to it. But start with a few foam rolling exercises, but increase them as your body gets to grips with foam rollers. You may take between 10-20 minutes per foam rolling activity at least once per day.
However, you may feel discomfort in your early days. If the pain persists, it’s better to stop to avoid injuring yourself. This is where you need professional help.
Where Can You Get Top-quality Foam Rollers?
You can get top-class foam rollers from our recovery collection. The Premium Eva Foam Roller is longer than the standard large foam rollers. It’ll give you more of a rolling surface to let you target large muscle groups without frequently adjusting the roller foam.
Here are more remarkable benefits of the Premium Eva Foam Rubber:
- It’s made from Eva foam, which is firm. It offers you support and softness at the same time.
- Eva foam is durable. You can use it many times over a long period.
- Its honeycomb pattern provides you with a better grip.
- The foam enables you to target contracted muscles due to its myofascial release technique. As a result, you can improve circulation and your performance.
Need a foam roller for rehab and other routine exercises? The 13” Core Foam Roller is stronger and more durable than regular hollow foam rollers. Its inner wall is 4 mm thick, twice more than the standard ones. It can absorb your body weight without bending and cracking.
If you’re looking to stretch, self-massage, and do stability activities, the Core Foam Roller is your perfect choice. You can roll out those stubborn kinks and knots.
Foam rolling has many benefits. Its myofascial release technique can help you zero in on tight and painful muscles and increase range motion. Regular foam rolling can ease your muscle pain, prevent injury, and improve your performance.
Start foam-rolling your stubborn kinks and knots today by visiting our recovery collection.
