Foam Rolling
Got a foam roller at home? Do you know how to use it? Or do you even use it at all? Well, if these questions have you thinking, then keep reading for some top tips on how to use your foam roller.
Foam rolling is a form of self myofascial release, which essentially gets rid of muscle tension. If you can’t see a massage therapist or a specialist, then this is the next piece of equipment that you should come to, to help release off some of that tension.
This is tailored towards the quadricep muscle specifically, it should be noted that the body works as a whole, and every muscle works in conjunction with each other in one way or another. This is why it’s advised that if we’re releasing one area of the body, that we should focus on other areas of the body as well.
So just because we’re focusing on the quad today, we should also look at the surrounding muscles either way of it. Quadricep is made up of four different muscles, all of which we use to help stand, walk, run, and use in our daily lives. Because it’s used so much in sport and also in our lives, it’s prone to injury. This is why it’s so important that we use a foam roller if we don’t have use of a massage therapist to help reduce these risks of tightness and injury.
So how can we roll our quads?
We can start in a forearm plank position where we place the roller underneath our quad muscle in the centre, and we just roll gently back and forth. Once you find a tender spot, hold it there for a little while to help reduce some of the tension that you might be getting.
We can also bend the knee to help increase the stretch in towards the muscle as well. And as we spoke about four different muscle groups in the quadricep, we can work on the vastus lateralis and medialis muscle as well. This we can do by rotating the body slightly as they’re found on the inside and the outside of the quadricep muscle.
Other tips
Foam rolling can be done using different items, such as smaller items as a tennis ball or a cricket ball. This helps to pinpoint the muscle in a way that a foam roller can’t because we use a smaller surface area, so we can work a lot deeper in this.
Our last bit of advice would be to actually stretch after you do use a foam roller. This will help to reduce further risks of injuries and help to amplify the effects of the foam roller as well.