The 8 BEST Foam Rolling Exercises (10-Minute Full Body Foam Roll Routine)

Hi, I'm Lindsey Baumgren of Nourish Move Love, and today I'm sharing eight of my favorite foam rolling exercises with you. I'm really excited about this because I have actually started foam rolling every day. Something we all should do, right, but actually don't do. I actually have, and I found such a huge difference in my mobility and how my body feels. So I'm going to walk you through the eight foam rolling exercises I personally do every morning. And it's just been a game changer for me, so I want to share them with you. Okay, so. So there's a difference between foam rolling before a workout and foam rolling after a workout. We'll talk about that along the way. Basically, I just have a good old foam roller here. There's fancy ones that have, like, trigger points in them, but this is just a pretty basic foam roller. And if you have a longer foam roller, you won't need the assisted yoga block. But the first move I'm going to show you, I use the yoga block for. So every morning I go down to my basement and this is the first thing I do. I foam roll. So I take this yoga block. I'm going to set it at the top because I want to make sure my neck and head are supported for this first move. Basically, I'm going to take my tailbone. This is a chest expansion. So this is for my chest opener to the bottom of the foam roller. And as you can see, my head would normally fall off, but I use this yoga block because I want to make sure my. So it's just an extension of the foam roller here. I'm just basically putting the foam roller between my two shoulder blades. And then I'm gonna bring my arms up overhead, inhale, exhale. I just open my arms and let them fall down to the side. This feels really good. Just a great way to open up the chest in the morning and kind of find those little funky spots that you can maybe wobble back and forth a little bit that might be sore on your back, between your shoulders, along your spine. If you want to intensify this, you're gonna bring your arms to a goal posted position. Ooh, that intensifies it a lot. And it's just gonna open up and show you your range of mobility that you have in your chest. So what I love about foam rolling is my range of mobility has changed. So when I started this, I was maybe like, here. And now I'm slowly getting more. And the longer I sit here, right. The more it'll Open. So like I said, there's a difference between foam rolling before a workout and after a workout. I'm gonna just show you the moves that I do. You ideally would hold these exercises for longer. Up to you this. Okay, so this is exercise number one right here, a chest expansion. If you are foam rolling before a workout, you want to keep your foam rolling session a little bit shorter. We're going to progress up. Coming up, exercise number two, I'm going to move my yoga block out of the way. So if I'm foam rolling pre workout, I'm foam rolling for about holding each exercise for around 30 seconds. I really don't want to go longer than 30 seconds. We're going to do an upper back roll. So I'm going to place my upper back right here on the foam roller. Okay. I can take my hands across my chest right here and I'm simply just going to roll back. So as I roll back, my neck and shoulders can roll back. And as I roll up, I'm coming into an almost crunch like position, keeping my core tight. So roll back and roll up, just keeping it on the upper back. Finding any of those little trigger points again, if you find a trigger point, you can hold it like, like I said pre workout, I'm not going to want to hold that for longer than 30 seconds. If I'm post workout or I do my morning foam roll maybe and I'm going to work out several hours later, you can hold it at a trigger point for maybe 30 seconds, 60 seconds, 90 seconds, up to two minutes really, if you have the time for it. But anytime I hold an exercise, we're going to move on. So you could hold that for longer. Obviously we're going to go into a hip roll. So single sided, I going to turn to face you. But if you hold an exercise for over 30 seconds or a foam roll trigger point over 30 seconds, you're telling your body and your muscles to relax. Okay. So it's really telling the muscle to relax and lengthen versus pre workout, I want my muscles to be ready to fire. Right? Okay. So hip, we're going to go right here, single sided, placing the foam roller right on my hip, come down to the forearms and I can just wobble back and forth right here getting that hip grab. This is where I personally spend the most amount of time. My hips are super tight, so this is personally where I spend the most amount of time going single sided now so I can really get body weight on this one side and roll into that again pre workout I'm doing this for 30 seconds. Post workout, I'm finding that trigger point and I'm just sitting on it. I'm sitting on it for 60 seconds, maybe 90 seconds. Telling that muscle. So your brain starts to tell that muscle to really relax. Okay. That's what I want to do before bed, maybe early morning and before I start my day. But pre workout I'm just sitting here and kind of rolling back and forth to loosen up the hips. And then again you would go ahead and do that on the other side. So if you find a trigger point that really hits for you, you can go ahead, hit pause on this video or you're going to hold it longer. Okay. We're just going to walk through kind of the exercises. This feels so, so stinking. Good. I love a good hip foam roll. Right here. Nice. And then from here I move on to a quad roll. Ok. So I could actually take the foam roller, I'll show you from the side and put both hips on the foam roller and then simply walk out. And I'm going to get the quads, the upper quads. Ok. Right there. I could do it with both or I could take this back to that single sided. Ok. So I prefer single sided. I think you just get into the muscles a little bit more. Right. I prefer doing it single sided just like this. And again you want to stay towards the top of the muscles. So when I'm in the hip, I stay towards the top. When you find a trigger point, go to the top of that trigger point and that's where you hold, hold at the top of the trigger point. Nice. And then again I would do that same quad roll on the other side which I will show you briefly. And then I'll transition right into my, my next move. So I really get the top of the quad that connects to the hip, hips and quads. I spend a lot of time there, probably the most time. And then from here I can roll over onto my side, which I'll face you guys. Right. Roll over onto my side. And this is where I really just want to stay at the top. Could do a little right here, just at the top of my hip to get into my side glute. Right. My gluteus medius. Or if I really want to attack the glute and paraphoris. Right. It's a deep muscle. What I'm going to do is come sitting on. So my glutes are sitting on the foam roller. Finding a seated figure four right here already feel this. And then going to slowly shift onto that Side hip and roll into this glutes and paraformoris right here. I spend a lot of time here too. Okay. Whew. That is fire. This one right here gets me every second. Single time right here, this roll. Okay. So you find that Figure 4 position and then you really get into that hip and piriformoris. That is a tender one. You can spend a lot of time there. Remember, before workouts, I'm just going to give it a quick 30 second shakeout. After workout you could sit there for two minutes. That is fiery. OK. And then from there you can roll back onto the foam roller again. You can do your hamstring roll. Double leg, double. Ok. So I can just roll my hamstrings right here. I prefer again, a single sided hamstring roll. I think you just have more control. You really get into it. So I'm just hitting the hamstring, the back of the leg. I would roll it on both sides and then you can take it down to the calf. If you've done any of my barre workouts, if you're a runner, a little calf foam roll, that feels good too. If you've been jumping some plyometrics, get into those calves. That feels really good. Single sided calf roll right there. Again, quick little shake out. Or you can sit at a trigger point and really hold it and dive into the trigger point and then I'm going to show you the way. I like to finish every foam rolling session because this is probably one of my favorite stretches right now. So I'm going to find child's pose. Opening my hips, big toes to touch. And I'm going to put my hands, thumbs up on the foam roller and roll out away from my body. I and then you can roll back so you can do this as like a rock to kind of open up the hips. So if I'm pre workout, I sit here and I rock back and forth, get my hips loose. And this right here, this extension, thumbs up, opens up all of my lat extensors, opens up my arms. Really good for preparing the body to do any overhead movements. So an overhead shoulder press, anything like that post workout or early in the morning, I will just hang out right here, forehead to the mat, opening up my hips. This feels so good. And this extension. So this extension, I like to think about getting long, really extending through my fingertips. Especially if you sit at a desk all day, think of extension exercises. So the first exercise we did, the chest opener and this one are so good for you. If you sit at a desk all day, I could sit here all day but those are just eight of my favorite foam rolling exercises in my personal morning foam roll routine and that I wanted to share with you guys. I hope that you can find some time in your day to foam roll it out today. It's so good for your muscles especially if you're hiit training and doing my intense full body workouts. You should definitely be foam rolling. It doesn't have to be a long 30 minute session. It can be a simple 5 minute or 10 minute foam roll and it'll definitely help with your recovery and it'll keep you injury free. If you are an athlete you gotta train like one and you gotta recover like one. So if you found this video helpful go ahead hit subscribe so we can keep bringing you guys more free content and I hope to catch you with a workout soon at nourishmovelove. Com. Have a great day.