Does foam rolling actually have any benefits?

Foam rolling used to be reserved for professional athletes. Today, it’s difficult to enter a gym without tripping over someone rolling around on a neoprene tube. Dedicated classes are available at trendy Recent York gyms. visited by like Sarah Jessica Parker and Shakira. Forget protein shakers, resistance bands or Fit Bits: foam rollers are a must-have gym accessory this season.

The development of foam rollers is largely due to an Israeli engineer and physicist Moshe Feldenkraiswhose pioneering work on body movements to improve muscle function became popular in the 1950s. Feldenkrais, a black belt in judo, incorporated them into his system of physical improvement when he came across them in the United States decades later.

More recently, American sports therapist Michael Clark helped introduce these accessories into widespread operate with his 2001 book, Integrated training for the new millenniumFirst American Patent for Foam Roller was submitted back in 2004.

For the uninitiated, the exercise involves applying your own bodyweight to a foam cylinder, using diminutive, repetitive, undulating motions to apply pressure to the muscle. The Internet is full of guides on how to do it well: YouTube has more than 600,000 videos that fit the term; a quick search on the search engine returns about 40 million results.

Yet the scientific evidence supporting the practice remains surprisingly constrained. So does it work—and if so, how?

Stretching Goals

Most people understand that stretching before exercise is critical; it loosens up and improves flexibility. But too much stretching – more than 60 seconds – weaken Your muscles and can make your workout more complex. One of the biggest benefits of foam rolling is that it can improve flexibility similar to stretching, but with an critical added bonus – NO weaken the strength. Foam rolling maybe also improve performance if connected with stretching. This may be better than doing one or the other, but so far the research evidence is inconclusive.

Meanwhile, we can now say with certainty that foam rolling is better than doing nothing. Recent Works from our laboratory at the University of Stirling, conducted in collaboration with Malcolm Fairweather SportScotland, tested the effects of foam rolling on a group of volunteers performing leg extension exercises.

We found that they had to exert less effort to do the exercise after two minutes of foam rolling than after two minutes of rest. Because of that reduction in effort, the volunteers who repeated the exercise for three days were able to perform better leg extensions than those who didn’t foam roll every day.

Foam rolling he also showed promises as a way to recover from exercise by reducing muscle pain. Because muscle pain can seriously hinder fit muscle function, dealing with this problem can help People do better next time.

There is still a lot we don’t know. One of the main problems is that we are still not sure how foam rolling works on the body. For years, it has been considered as a way to release tension from the cushioned connective tissue known as fascia creating a kind of matrix around the entire human body – including muscles, bones, organs and nerves.

Scientists are skeptical, however: Given the amount of force needed to manipulate the fascia, many believe it is more likely that the pressure exerted by the foam roller Maybe acting on the nervous system instead.

The results regarding the operate of foam rolling to avoid muscle pain provide additional evidence. We know that this pain relief is not related to “warming up” the muscles, while Is only constrained evidence that foam rolling increases blood flow. If either of these were the case, it would suggest that the benefit comes from stimulation of the cushioned tissue in that area. But if we rule out both, it suggests that a more global or neurological response must be taking place.

It goes on and on

All of the research to date has focused on the immediate and short-term effects of foam rolling. Our understanding of the long-term effects remains unclear. So, while we know that foam rolling both before and after exercise can complement a training program, we can’t say for sure whether these benefits will continue into the future. And while foam rolling has previously been shown to have no negative effect When it comes to short-term athletic performance, we still cannot say for sure that there are no harmful long-term effects.

We also don’t have enough evidence to say how best to operate foam rollers. Researchers have adopted protocols that range from one to five foam rolling sessions per exercise session, and from five seconds to two minutes. There’s no suggestion that longer periods are better, so when in doubt, limit rolling to compact periods.

On the other hand, scientists are finding that you need repetitive sets to escalate range of motion. So if your goal is flexibility, you should roll and repeat at least twice during your session—just make sure no one trips over you while you’re doing it.