IF you go to most college or high school weight room you will see athletes foam rolling.  In my experience, if you decided to ask most people WHY they are using the foam roller you would hear two common responses:

1. I’m tight in my (enter muscle here)

2. I am trying to release (enter muscle here)

In our training system we view tightness as a neurological response that can be addressed by increasing body temperature and providing isometric training variations at specific joint angles to overcome these issues.   When it comes to “releasing” a muscle we know that is going to be best accomplished with soft tissue therapy- particularly a method called Active Release Techniques which is the gold standard for any manual therapy and sought and used by many professional athletes.

The reason active release techniques works so well is because through clinical palpation  it identifies a specific area along the muscle that is dysfunctional and addresses that specific area.  The clinician in this case provides depth and then tension across the muscle increasing the amount of blood flow to the deoxygenated area.

A prominent strength coach out of Massachusetts named Mike Boyle has commonly referred to foam rolling as the “poor mans massage”.  If we look at massage in general we know the primary benefits are going to be general in nature mostly due to the increased parasympathetic response or calming of the nervous system.  Form our perspective we feel that this would be better served at the end of a training session rather than at the beginning where we are trying to ramp up the nervous system.

Often times a built in cool down like foam rolling is simply non existent and this can provide an easy way to kick start the recovery process.  

Below is a video of one of my favorite foam roll routines: