If you’ve been anywhere close to a gym or training centre, you’d have noticed people sitting on these long, cylindrical pieces of foam and rolling back and forth. What are these? What are they meant to do? What do people do with them? Do you need to use them?
They are exactly what they look like: foam cylinders. They come in different sizes, colours, hardness and textures, but at the heart of it all, a foam roller is simply a roller that is made of foam, and in some cases, much harder materials like plastic. Their main function is to help with restoring muscle tone, and that is done by reducing tightness at the target muscles.
The process of structured pressure application is called myofascial release (MFR), and is typically done by a therapist. ‘Myo’ means muscle. ‘Fascia’ is a band or sheet of connective tissue, primarily collagen, beneath the skin, that attaches, stabilises, encloses, and separates muscles and other internal organs. And ‘release’ simply means to fix any knots and/or increase the pliability of the muscle. So the point of MFR is to apply pressure to the soft tissues systematically to release any restricted fascia or tight connective tissue.
When this is done by oneself without the help of a therapist, a foam roller is used, and this variation is called Self-MFR or SMFR. When done right, MFR or SMFR helps in decreased pain, increased flexibility, better performance and improved soft tissue health and recovery.
What can you use foam rolling for?
It can be used for general maintenance of soft tissue. So do this before a workout, as a part of your warm-up, especially if you feel tightness, pain or soreness, and are finding it hard to move freely; and after your workout, as a way to reset your muscles after all the contractions they’ve been through during the workout.
But foam rolling can be used to treat chronic soreness too. Firstly, let’s understand PEMS and DOMS. The former stands for Post Exercise Muscle Soreness and is the soreness you experience immediately after a workout (typically within 24 hours). The latter stands for Delayed Onset of Muscle Soreness and is the soreness that you feel only 48-72 hours after a workout and continues to get worse before it gets better. Both are common and often PEMS is followed by DOMS. But being sore past 72 hours of working out or feeling sore constantly is not ideal and can be classified as chronic muscle soreness.
Usually, the fight against soreness involves rest, stretching and increased blood circulation through movement. But if soreness persists even after all these, the foam roller is your tool to recovery! And this has been tried, tested and published. A study from January 2015, published in the Journal of Athletic Training (JAT), states the following:
Foam rolling enhanced recovery and reduced physical performance decrements.
A 20-minute bout of foam rolling on a high-density roller immediately post-exercise, and every 24 hours thereafter, may reduce muscle tenderness and decrements in multi-jointed dynamic movements due to DOMS.
Self-massage through foam rolling could benefit athletes seeking a recovery modality that is relatively affordable, easy to perform, and time efficient, and that enhances muscle recovery.
Easy to learn and execute from instructional videos on the Internet and inexpensive to purchase, the foam roller will help you maintain muscles and other soft tissues in your body, which will in turn, help improve your performance and make you feel better. How dense the roller needs to be and how frequently you need to use it depends on who you are and what kind of recovery work you need. Check with your coach or physiotherapist.
Raj Ganpath is an NCCA-accredited personal fitness trainer; a certified coach in fitness, nutrition, barbell and kettlebell training and a Functional Training and Senior Fitness Specialist, with over 5,000 hours of coaching experience
