Foam rolling - separating the facts from the myths
Foam rolling has seen a massive increase in popularity in the last 10-15 years, with many claims that it 'broke up' muscle fascia, scar tissue and adhesions, or lengthened the muscle, and we all believed it. But is that actually the case?
Well, to put it into perspective, it requires roughly 925kg of direct force and a 460kg of tangential force required to produce just 1% change in length of the Iliotibial band (or ITB - the thick band that runs from your hip to your knee on the side that everyone likes to roll on). This is far outside the physiological capabilities of the human body (Chaudhry et al, 2008). So, this is likely not what's happening when we lie on a foam roller.
So how does foam rolling actually work?
Rolling, much like massage, is just a form of pressure. This pressure stimulates the mechanoreceptors in the body to signal to the central nervous system (CNS) to alter the activity of the muscle - this helps create a change in the tone of the connected muscle fibres. This is what is responsible for the feeling of reducing "tightness" (2015, Cheatham et al).
Foam rolling can also improve blood circulation, which can aid in the removal of waste products such as metabolic by-product build up. There is also research that it can be used as an effective method for improving flexibility, subjective markers of recovery (aka DOMS), and even possibly athletic performance (Wiewelhove et al, 2019). Despite more evidence being required for the latter, it has at least been shown to have no negative impact on performance. This is in comparison with the popular static stretching, which has shown reductions in subsequent power, running speed and strength endurance (Mohr et al, 2014). Moreover, foam rolling has also shown brief improvements in range of motion for up to 15 mins (Konrad et al, 2022).
As a result, it seems that perhaps foam rolling makes a worthwhile addition to general warm-up routines.
Research shows that even 20 seconds of foam rolling appears to be as effective as 60 seconds, with no significant further improvement the longer you do it. So there's probably no point spending 30 minutes on it prior to training/game.
Our advice is, if it feels good, do it! Your performance likely won't decrease. Some players have particular routines before games that make them feel better to perform, which is an important part of psychological prep that we don't want to alter too much. However, we advise you don't spend too long on it though, as the benefit doesn't seem to be greater the more you do it, so you may end up sacrificing time for other important aspects of preparation like dynamic movements to warm up.
In spite of all of this, if you're always feeling like you're tight and sore and have to constantly foam roll in the first place, there may be other questions that need to be asked.
For example, are there other variables you can change or lower hanging fruit that can be picked?
Such as:
Sleep quality
Training load management
Better programming (eg strength training through full ranges of motion and inclusion of dynamic mobility exercises)
Stress levels and management
More overall movement throughout the day (step count and moving the body)
Nail the above better and you might not feel like you have to roll for an hour before every session!