Roll, Baby, Roll!

Foam Rolling To Warm Up, Stretch, And Relax Your Body

When I mention foam rolling to people I usually get:

• a quizzical look

• a grimace

• or a smiley ‘yeah, I know what you mean, it’s ace’ look

I’m in the ‘yeah, I know what you mean, it’s ace’ camp.

When you know how to do it, then it feels all sorts of GOOOOOD 

The secret is to start off easy using your upper body to slowly ease your body weight down onto the roller, then work into it. When done like this, you can almost class it as an upper body and core workout – it certainly uses them.

Slowly easing your body weight onto the roller is like when I massage.  If I was to go straight in with my thumbs and push down really hard on a muscle then chances are you’d shoot straight off the table and through the wall.

We need to ease the muscles into relaxation and then add some pressure.

(and yes, I know I’ll have some clients who still think that when I get to the deep thumb section of a sports massage, they’d rather be out the door than on the table – they all admit they feel much better afterward).

Below are photos and a video on how to use the foam roller as a pre-run warm-up and how to do a post-run stretch and deal with tight spots.

Warm-up rolling

The aim is to roll a couple of times over the muscles that you’re going to use when you run – the calves, achilles, hamstrings, butt, quads, and lower leg (tibialis anterior). Combine these with your running warm-up drills and you’re ready to go.

Post-run stretch rolling 

Start as above with the warm-up rolling then increase the weight load by putting one leg on top of the other – continuing to roll.  Take note of any spot that may be feeling particularly tight and at the end of the increased load roll, go back and add some more intensity by moving into a slow stretch of that area.