Roll to aid recovery and increase performance

Foam rolling has become a popular tool of most personal training and sports performance program simply because it works.

Foam Rolling Helps Recovery

While foam rolling has become popular, it still is used most often as a way to prepare for training. However, foam rolling also is helpful after training to delay and decrease onset muscles soreness (DOMS) and speed recovery, thereafter increasing performance.

A study was made with 2 groups of 8 collegiate men each performing a 10×10 squat protocol to completely exhaust their quads and cause DOMS. One group performed this with foam rolling afterward and the other without foam rolling.

In the foam rolling group, rolling was performed immediately after squatting, as well as 24- and 48-hours later.The foam rolling procedure consisted of 2 rounds of rolling for 45 seconds each over the quads, adductors, hamstrings, IT band, and Glutes.

Results of the study showed that DOMS was significantly reduced when foam rolling was performed. However, they also discovered 30 meter sprint time, broad-jump distance, and change-of-direction speed were all negatively effected by the presence of DOMS, but the impact was lower in the foam rolling group.

Implications

Based on this study we do understand more of “how” foam rolling works.

Foam rolling isn’t just a way to prepare for training, but also a useful tool to recover from training.

Foam rolling should be performed both before and after training, and likely even on off days. Doing so will reduce the amount of soreness you have after a hard session and allow you to train hard or perform better next time. This is important for everyone from the personal training client to the in-season athlete.

Put simply, foam rolling helps you recover faster and then perform better.