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INTRODUCTION 0:04
Welcome to the fit and healthy Denver podcast where we discuss all things revolving around health, fitness and wellness in the amazing state of Colorado so you can get behind the scenes information from industry insiders, special events, and more. Coming up is our host, physical therapist and strength coach, Dr. Jamie Beauvais. And here we go.
JAMIE 0:30
foam rolling, is there anything else and health and fitness that so many people have such a love and hate relationship with it? I think some of the issues is we don’t really know a lot about foam rolling, or most people don’t. And I think there’s a lot of preconceived notions and there’s a lot of thoughts and there’s a lot of things thrown out there that people don’t fully understand. So this little minisode is all about foam rolling, and everything you need to know. So let’s get started. foam rolling, what does it do? The foam rolling relieves tightness, it increases range of motion, it can help with pain, can help with soreness after exercise and help to speed up force recovery. So there is a lot of talk out there about that foam rolling is kind of blasting away knots and adhesions in the muscle in the scar tissue. Whether that may or may not be true, we don’t necessarily know that when they’ve taken what we thought were like adhesions and knots in cadavers and tried to identify them. They weren’t there for adhesions in some of those scar tissues, knots or something that’s more in the living body, and you can’t really find, so they’re probably not breaking up adhesions or scar tissue. And so why is that important? I think the reason that’s important is because if you are breaking up scar tissue, and you’re knocking out adhesions, then more is better. And the harder you go, the more you would break up the knots and adhesions. So knowing that you’re not doing that will prevent you from overdoing it with your own rolling or at least potentially, I think words matter. We need to use the right terminologies in the right explanations to help people have the right idea about how to go about foam rolling. All right. So next, how does foam rolling work? This is really interesting, because we have some ideas. But truly, we don’t really know, we know it increases range of motion helps with pain. But we don’t truly know exactly why it works. The best thing I’ve read is what’s called diffuse noxious inhibitory control. A little bit of a mouthful, but let me break that down for you. So what that is, is when you are foam rolling, and you think in your head, this is going to help. Hey, this is a little bit hurtful, but I know it’s going to help me in the end, your brain believes it to be beneficial. Therefore it will downplay your pain regulators making you feel less pain afterwards, when you feel a little bit less pain, you can improve how you move. That’s kind of the best theory about why it works. Now, there probably are some other things going on there. foam rolling is a form of self myofascial release or self massage. And it helps the skin and the fashion the muscles, they kind of lay on top of each other almost like layers. And it helps those layers to slide and glide over each other and increases the blood flow to those areas. And that probably helps with movement as well. So how can you foam roll or what are let’s say what’s three ways you can foam roll. There’s a lot of different ways, but one way is just up and down the muscle, moderate pressure on the muscle just kind of controlling your bodyweight in most places. Pin and stretch. So you find that not let’s say Well, let’s talk about your quads. So the first first one being up and down the muscle, you’re just rolling up and down your quads, let’s say in your stomach, you’re using your body to go up and down that muscle. Next one pin and stretch. So you’re rolling up and down your quads, you find that one spot that really kind of is quite a bit more tender than the rest to keep your pressure on that spot and then you bend your knee. So it’s pinning the tissues and then you stretch the rest of the tissues as you move your knee. This is a massage technique, just modified for foam rolling can be very effective at forcing that sliding and gliding I was telling you about to be more effective. The next thing is slow holds slow holds, you just go up and down. You find that knot and then you just hang on it. They just let your body weight go into that tissue. And you almost just want to think about that foam roll kind of sinking into the tissue slowly and you just hang out, you know 1020 seconds, let it relax, then move up and down on it again, find a new spot and then repeat. So there are different ways to do it on the spine as well. So let’s say you’re doing it on like your mid back on how to get one joint to move and just kind of stomp on one joint then you move the neck joint above it kind of over and around the foam roll and that that works very well for the mid back What are the best areas to foam roll, mostly the soft tissues, like the IT band where the IT band blends in with the quads.
JAMIE 5:10
And where the IT band blends in with the hamstrings kind of on those diagonal lines that’s really effective. So soft tissues and muscles are really the best areas to foam roll on, with one major exception, the joints of the middle back, like I was just telling you about in the spine, I think that’s actually the best place to foam roll and the most effective really gaining a lot of mobility. And it just feels great, you know, just to kind of go up and down to have that stiff back and then all of a sudden, you’re back down a little bit looser, you can move better, that’s a really great place. And when you can loosen that mid back up, it takes pressure off your neck, takes pressure off your low back, it takes pressure off shoulders, can be a really effective way at just hitting one area and improving a bunch of different areas. So how intensely should you foam roll? Doesn’t need to hurt? No, absolutely not. Really with this, you want this to be of moderate intensity, I would say you know like that, like, sometimes when you’re going on those trigger points, like in the quads, for instance, maybe four out of 10 discomfort, but you don’t really want to be pushing it into that seven or eight range, it’s not necessary. You know, I told you earlier, we’re really thinking that this is really an effect on the nervous system and having the nervous system calm everything down so that you can move better. And the opposite will happen if you push it too hard. If you push it too hard, what’s going to happen is that that pain intensity is going to get up, you know, let’s say 678, all of a sudden, what’s going to happen is your brain is going to start realizing that and thinking you’re actually hurting the tissues and feel like it needs to protect them. So it will contract them and you will have the opposite response, you won’t get a lot out of the foam rolling at all. So sometimes you can get more by doing less, and especially with the intensity. It does not need to hurt. And really it shouldn’t hurt when we say that. So when should you foam roll? There are benefits to doing it both before workout and after workout. Or, you know, if you just do it, even if it’s not before or after a workout, there’s still benefits. But before a workout, what will happen is you will increase that range of motion and increase blood flow to the area kind of prime those muscles for a little bit of work. And it will help you to have better range of motion throughout the workout, possibly have a better workout, possibly use work of a wider variety of muscles, feel better afterwards, after workout, there are some benefits in doing it just for about two minutes for sports recovery. And just to help those muscles kind of get back to a normal state and kind of work out and kind of get them moving real well, after a lot of that the metabolites from a hard workout are kind of getting stored in the muscles. Sometimes foam rolling can really just help you the next day. Does it prevent injuries? And does it help with athletic performance on the cover tees at the same time? So does it prevent injuries? We don’t know, maybe not? Maybe not? Does it help with athletic performance? And maybe maybe some things that yes, some things say no. If it does help, it’s very minimal. And so these seem a little bit strange. Like Does that make sense? Or is this surprising? Yeah, a little bit, you know, you would think that improving your range of motion and increasing blood flow to the area would really help prevent injuries as well as help athletic performance. But, you know, kind of the jury is out there a little bit and kind of very small to moderate effects, if it does, but I think some of this just isn’t, it’s not able to be fully tracked well, because if you think about when you are typically injured, let’s think about the extremities for instance, it’s typically when you go into a larger range of motion than your body’s mobility is ready for. So if you can improve your mobility over a long period of time, similar to what you do with foam rolling and stretching, at least in theory, you would think that it would prevent injuries. Does it improve athletic performance? I think we may need to define what athletic performance is: things that need a wide variety of mobility, let’s say gymnastics or dancing. If you can improve that mobility with foam rolling very possibly. It’s something that doesn’t need a wide range of motion. Yeah, maybe not. Yeah, maybe not. So
JAMIE 9:37
yeah. So there are a lot of foam rollers out there that look pretty mean and ugly. And they’ve got big knobs sticking out of them and mean little pokey things everywhere. Do all the knobs and all the pokey things make a foam roll better? Probably not. Unless you believe it’s going to make you feel better. Now if you believe it’ll make you feel better the placebo effect is for be powerful, and you may get a better result. But with that being said, if I ever tell someone they should get a foam roll, I just tell them to buy a regular high density foam roll. There are sometimes if you see those white ones, they’re a little bit more squishy, they just don’t last as long. There’s nothing wrong with them, they’re just a little softer. So if you want a more gentle foam roll, those white little bit more squishy ones are typically cheaper. They work well, if you want to, and it’s gonna last a little bit, be a little bit firmer. Typically, they’re black, not always, but you know, they’re high density foam rolls, what I would suggest, I don’t necessarily suggest getting those with the big knobs and all the ugly stuff on it, I don’t think it really helps a lot more. Now, there are some foam rollers out there that vibrate or that have ice and cooling things in them. They might give an extra advantage as they do work on some mechanical as well as hot, cold receptors in the skin and the fascia. But honestly, we don’t know that from personal experience. I like the feeling of the vibrating foam rollers, but I can’t say it’s necessarily giving a better outcome. Try them if you like it better. And you think that maybe because you like it more, you would use it more frequently, then yeah, then maybe that way it could help. Can you foam roll too much? Yes, you can. So I have had patients come in before and kind of ask like, hey, you know, what’s going on? What are you doing, and they’re like, Well, I foam roll for 30 minutes to one person who was foam rolling two hours a day. And I was like, That is crazy. You know, if you fumble too much, you can bruise your body. And yes, you will feel discomfort. If you go like I told you earlier, if you go too intensely, your brains gonna recognize it, and it’s gonna feel minorly injured and threatened and try to protect you. So you don’t want to do too much foam rolling, sometimes you’ll get more out of doing less. So typically, what we say is, you know, about 30 seconds to a minute per muscle. And then about two to three minutes per body region. So let’s say hips, you’re getting multiple muscles, you’re getting the glutes, you’re getting kind of the hamstrings and the IT band and they are in quad, three minutes for the whole thing or about 30 seconds to one minute per muscle, a really good rule of thumb to use. Is foam rolling better than stretching or candidate replaced stretching? I don’t think we can say that. I think that both help each other out. This is a case where they’re very different, but they complement each other very well. Both will help with range of motion. foam rolling can help with the perception of pain or discomfort, which can make stretching more tolerable and effective. Stretching can help to calm your body down, which makes foam rolling more tolerable and effective. So I would say instead of either or try to figure out how to do both. So these are just some questions that I hear frequently in the clinic about foam rolling. I’d like to let you know if you have any questions. Otherwise, try these out and let us know how they go. All right. Talk to you soon. Thanks. Bye
JAMIE 13:11
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