A biomechanics expert explains why they stopped foam rolling, calling it a blunt instrument that traumatizes the fascial chain and causes chronic inflammation. They recommend myofascial stretching, ELDOA exercises, and manual therapy instead.
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How's it going? So I want to answer a question I've been asked a long time ago on why I won't foam roll anymore. So I'll just give you a little background. So I used to foam roll all the time to do what everybody wants to do. I want to, you know, prevent stuff. I want to make myself loose. I want to keep the faster change nice and open. But then I found out once I started studying human anatomy and biomechanics that foam rolling is super detrimental to your body. Now, I used to. I started with those white foam ones, which I don't have here, but I progressed onto the denser ones. But that was enough for me. I progressed onto PVC piping. I used to roll this on my body, and it felt great, right? I was in pain. Oh, yeah. Oh, my God. I'm doing something good to my body. But I never just thought about the basic fact that, like, I was never getting better. I was foam rolling before a workout. But, you know, I still had the same issues over and over and over again. In fact, I was getting a little bit worse. So what I came to learn was that when you foam roll, you're trying to affect the fascial chain. Well, the fascial chain, which connects everything in my body, is a living organism. It needs to hold you in place. It needs to communicate back to your body. It needs to, you know, shock absorb and move you around and coordinate your movements. So if I take a blunt instrument, which doesn't know where it's foam rolling, and I just kind of smoosh it down, well, now I'm causing trauma to that body. I'm causing trauma to my fascia system. If I cause trauma to my fascia system, I develop inflammation in my body. If I develop inflammation, it's like I'm sick in quotations in that area. So if I'm constantly making that area sick, like in my IT band, or if I'm rolling up and down, well, now I'm telling my body to, you know, to try and fight that area with, you know, antibodies and stuff like that. That's not healthy for your tissue. I come to find out that foam rolling also is counterproductive for people with diabetes or osteoporosis because the weight that you put on for foam rolling is too much for the body. So I encourage you not to foam roll. The best thing to do is to myofascial stretch to balance your body and to perform eldoas to give space in your body and then to allow go to a good manual therapist that can slide the fascial chains and tissue on each other. That's what it needs to do. If I foam roll, it doesn't slide, it smushes. So pumping, I found, is the best exercise for that type of activity. But please don't foam roll anymore. Thank you so much.
