Roll It Out. Save Money. Reduce Injuries.

It all started in the beginning of the new millennium when physical therapy began crossing paths with mainstream sports performance training. This is when the sports performance industry began trending towards this idea of “injury prevention”. Advances in physical therapy exposed the athletic community to a popular technique used for rehabilitation called “soft tissue mobilization”. Soft tissue mobilization looks a lot like massage, but the intention doing it is different. Instead of performing it for the purpose of relaxation, it aims to mobilize the soft connective tissue and improve range of motion.

But seeing a therapist has a couple limitations for a majority of the athletic population. It’s hard to find someone who specializes in soft tissue work if you’re not well connected, and it’s very expensive. Most families can’t regularly afford seventy-five to one hundred dollars for one hour of therapy on top of a mortgage and bills. Insurance won’t cover it either unless medically diagnosed with a muscular injury. So basically you’re stuck paying out of pocket or waiting until you get hurt.

Then somewhere around 2005, the first foam roller emerged from a patent office to be sold as a self-massage tool. In the next four to five years, there was enough research and empirical evidence that it was considered a suitable tool for soft tissue mobilization. Most importantly, we now had something that could address the limitations of manual therapy. It was soft tissue work for the masses that anyone could afford. But I’m sure you’re wondering why soft tissue mobilization is important? Can’t I just stretch to improve my range of motion?

Before we get into the rationale, you need a basic understanding of a couple things. For starters, you need to understand the muscular system. Here’s the cliff notes. Muscles are made up of millions of contractile components that form fibers. Muscle fibers are bundled into small groups, called fasciculi, which group together to make up every muscle in our body. Coursing around every fiber, fascicle, and muscle is a network of connective tissue called myofascial tissue. Myofascial tissue is like the glue that holds everything together. It’s primarily composed of type-1 collagen fibers, which is a type of connective tissue that has a very high tensile strength and is also slightly elastic. It has enough elasticity to absorb some of the ground reaction forces created during high velocity movements. This is an important component because it helps protect our muscle tissue and tendons from injury. It also gives us the ability to create passive elastic energy, causing a spring-like effect which increases power producing potential. This is a key component to athletic movements such as sprinting and jumping.

Now you need a basic understanding of how an athlete trains and how it affects the muscular system. The entire premise behind physically preparing the body for a sport is based on the principle that our body adapts to whatever stimulus it’s exposed to. For the athlete to see continual improvement, the stimulus must intensify or be increased in volume over time. When the stimulus is changed, the athlete will sometimes feel sore for the next day or two. Current literature suggests that this feeling of soreness is the result of microscopic trauma to the myofasical tissue. It heals and our body has adapted to the imposed demand.

Think of the trauma as little tears in the myofascial tissue. Going back to our glue analogy, our body fixes the old glue by filling in the cracks with new glue. Overtime we accumulate a build up of glue in the areas we stress the most. This is a natural adaptation to cope with the continually increasing demand of stress. When enough glue accumulates in one area, we have created what’s known as a muscle knot. Knots are different in structure than original myofascial tissue. They are much more dense and the fibers are unaligned, which reduces its elasticity. Less elasticity means decreased range of motion, increased probability of muscle tissue injury, and less power producing potential. That’s a big problem for an athlete.

Here’s the real kicker. Myofascial tissue also begins to lose its elasticity when the muscles are static in any one position for an extended period of time. Sticking with the glue analogy, think of the myofascial tissue as a type of glue that’s supposed to stay tacky and moist. The longer we stay in a static position, the drier the glue gets. The drier the glue gets, the harder it becomes. Foam rolling rehydrates the glue. This is extremely pertinent when you think about the typical student-athlete who sits in school for a majority of the day; sits on the bus or in a car to get to school; and sits most of the night while doing homework, staring at a phone or computer, watching television, or playing video games. And this goes on for 9 months out of the year.

Now we’re finally at the “why”. Why is using a foam roller to perform this soft tissue mobilization so important? It’s the most convenient and cost effective way to help get rid of muscle knots, rehydrate the myofascial tissue, and restore its elasticity. This is something that stretching doesn’t seem to address. We’re actually changing the quality of the muscle tissue. However, it is very important to understand that pairing them both together is the recipe that keeps our athletes healthy. Remember to foam roll first, then stretch.

In my opinion, every athlete should be foam rolling everyday when they are in-season and every training day in the off-season. Age doesn’t matter. They just need to be strong enough to support some of their body weight. As an added bonus, I provided a video of our entire pre-workout foam rolling routine at the beginning of this article. Review it with your child and have them follow along several times as they learn. Emphasize that when foam rolling is performed correctly it isn’t supposed to be enjoyable. A little pain is actually a good thing here.

Once they learn, encourage them to use it before and after practices and workouts. Doing it before improves the quality of the muscle fiber and helps to improve joint range of motion. Doing it after reduces recover time between workouts and practices. Encourage them do it when they’re sitting around watching television in the evening. The more, the better. There’s no law of diminishing returns here.

Whatever foam roller you may have or end up buying, make sure it can fit in their hockey bag. If you need to buy one, it’s as easy now as going on amazon and searching “high-density foam roller”. I suggest one that is somewhere between 13-18 inches. No need to buy anything fancy. I promise it’s the best twenty dollars you’ll ever spend on a training tool.

References

Currier, D. P. & Nelson, R. M. (1992). Dynamics of human biological tissues. Philadelphia, PA: FA Davis Co.

McGill, S. M. & Brown, S. (1992). Creep response of the lumbar spine to prolong full flexion. Clinical Biomechanics; 7: 43-46.

Myers, T. W. (2014). Anatomy trains: Myofasical meridians for manual and movement therapists, 3rd edition. Philadelphia, PA: Churchill Livingstone Elsevier.