A painful yet worthwhile investment of time to explore the condition of your muscles.
As good as a Sports Massage is for you, your recovery and muscle management, it's not always financially feasible to get regular, weekly massages to tackle your aches, pains and niggles - espcially if you're very active. Sometimes, it's necessary to do some homework and self maintenance! Enter Foam Rolling.
Yes, a Sports Massage (like those I personally dish out) will help to keep your body in good form, but the progress doesn’t have to stop there once you've left the treatment room! Foam Rollers come in all shapes and sizes. From traditional ones to hand held, from more expensive mechanical/vibrating ones to wallet friendly massage balls. You can spend anywhere between £10 to over £100 depending on your budget and your needs - although, in my experience, anything over £50 has marginal benefits over cheaper alternatives.
It may seem a bit expesnive at the point of purchase, but, realistically, a very decent roller is often only the cost of a single sports massage! Hence, foam rolling is a decent, low-cost means way of managing your muscles. It won't go as deep as a sports massage therapists elbow, but it’s still effective. Foam rolling is basically a form of self-massage.
The most effective time to foam roll is relatively soon after exercise or when the muscles are warm and relaxed. Foam rolling does this by squeezing the deoxygenated blood away from the muscles back to the heart, and encouraging new oxygenated blood to fill the space, bringing all the nutrients the muscles need for growth and repair.
“What happens if I foam roll away from the heart?”- don’t worry, your body’s got you covered with a wondrous piece of evolution! Your veins have valves which prevent the blood flowing backwards. Blood in the veins has to fight against gravity to get back to the heart, so without those little valves, we’d have quite the predicament!
Foam rolling is also an excellent tool to help you better understand the condition of your body and the various muscles, but observing how sore, tight or stubborn the muscle tissue is. This can be then useful to take on board for your next bout of exercise and determine the intensity of said session.
Getting the benefit of foam rolling doesn’t need to be long (even 3 mins on a given msucle group can make a difference!) and it can be done in front of the TV etc. Try and mix up different muscle groups and see if you can feel the benefits. You’ll feel more bouncy, less sluggish and ready to take your next training session to the next level!
The best Sports Massage is a PowerKnapp (well, I think so at least…!), but to make sure you're doing all you can to keep yourself and those muscles in top shape outside the treatment room, invest time and a bit of money into Foam Rolling!
What Foam Roller(s) do you use? I have a varitety of Addaday rollers and a couple of nasty Rumblerollers!