Advice regarding foam rolling

wayne0308

Hi,

I just purchased my first foam roller last week. I got the grid one in the end. I heard the standard white and blue ones soften a fair bit over time.

I used it for the first time Friday and it did hurt quite a bit, and I was a bit sore the next day. I used it again last night and the difference is actually quite noticeable. Areas that were very tender were noticeably less so. However I was still a little bit sore from using it on the Friday.

How often is considered okay to use the foam roller? Note I'm using it only for my legs, my calves and IT band primarily as these areas are the tightest.

Also, the way I'm using it is I start of rolling for around a minute on a muscle, and take note where the tender points are and then return to these and put a lot of pressure on these (as much as I can take) for about a minute each and then I just roll the entire muscle again for a minute. Is this correct?

If I find that I have a lot of tender areas (which I do around my ITB) I just picked the worst 2 in this case.

Cheers.

howtomake

My white one looks like a toothpick now, so good choice I think. I used the grid/trigger one once, felt hurty-good.

diegowhite

You can use a foam roller as much as you like, but pre-workout / once a day should be enough. At the start just work as long as is comfortable until the tightness relieves, it will take less work with time

Mellor

wayne0308 wrote: »

Note I'm using it only for my legs, my calves and IT band primarily as these areas are the tightest.

Why/

wayne0308

Mellor wrote: »

Why/

Stretching, for me at least, doesn't work very well on my IT band (main reason I bought the foam roller is to target this area) and my calf muscles are full of knots at the moment. This is why I primarily use the roller on these areas. I use the roller on my quads, glutes, hip abductors and hamstrings as well, but they are not my primary focus.

I would probably spend half my time on the ITB and calf areas and the rest on other areas. When I roll these other areas I can't find any bad tender spots, and stretching works pretty well here. I know tightness in these areas can lead to problems in the ITB for example.

If I'm doing something wrong please let me know, or if there's anything I can do differently to improve the effectivness of the foam roller please let me know, I am looking for advice...

Mellor

My point was that why are you only doing those area. If they are worst affected then spend more time on them, but don't ignore upper body.

I use it mostly on my legs but stil use it on my back.

TommyKnocker

wayne0308 wrote: »

Hi,

I just purchased my first foam roller last week. I got the grid one in the end. I heard the standard white and blue ones soften a fair bit over time.

I used it for the first time Friday and it did hurt quite a bit, and I was a bit sore the next day. I used it again last night and the difference is actually quite noticeable. Areas that were very tender were noticeably less so. However I was still a little bit sore from using it on the Friday.

How often is considered okay to use the foam roller? Note I'm using it only for my legs, my calves and IT band primarily as these areas are the tightest.

Also, the way I'm using it is I start of rolling for around a minute on a muscle, and take note where the tender points are and then return to these and put a lot of pressure on these (as much as I can take) for about a minute each and then I just roll the entire muscle again for a minute. Is this correct?

If I find that I have a lot of tender areas (which I do around my ITB) I just picked the worst 2 in this case.

Cheers.

I found this E Book on Self Myofascial Release by Mike Robertson which was mentioned in another thread a while back really useful.

wayne0308

Mellor wrote: »

My point was that why are you only doing those area. If they are worst affected then spend more time on them, but don't ignore upper body.

I use it mostly on my legs but stil use it on my back.

I had only just purchased the foam roller, the legs were the most affected area and they have improved dramatically over the last week and a bit. This is what I wanted to see. Now that they have improved I fully intend to use it on every area that I can.

You have to bear in mind I had never used one of these things before up until a week ago, (finally getting the hang of it, probably quite funny to see me flopping around on this thing) and I didn't know what to expect from it in terms of improvement. So I began as slowly as possible with only one area (my legs) and hoped to improve on that area (or at least see some improvement on that area) and then begin exploring other areas of the body.