Foam rolling can have many benefits. Often, we talk about it helping with your movement and mobility to loosen up muscles and help restore more motion to the joints. In this Study Spotlight, we take a look at some other areas that foam rolling can help with, mainly muscle strength and fatigue.
What They Did:
Forty-five healthy adults (men & women) were broken up into three groups.
- Foam roll the lower limb muscles prior to the induction of fatigue
- Foam Roll after induction of fatigue
- No treatment; control
These participants were put through a neuromuscular exhaustion protocol that was meant to elicit functional agility and short-term fatigue. The measurements they were looking at was max isometric (not moving) voluntary force of the knee extensors (quads). They also looked at pain perception and reactive strength (RSI).
The foam rolling protocol they used was the following: Muscles focused on were the quads, hamstrings, adductors, calf muscles, and the IT band tract. Each group was treated for 30 seconds each with slow and constant movements at constant pressure between the origin and insertion of the muscle. A metronome was used to keep a consistent pace, and a goal of 7 of 10 on a pain scale (mild to moderate discomfort) was used to try to standardize intensity.
What They Found:
When it came to decreasing the loss of strength, both the preventative and regenerative foam rolling sessions showed significant results. Upon further analysis, there was a trend toward regenerative foam rolling as the best time to restore strength, but this was not statistically significant.
What It All Means:
The researchers do a great job in the discussion and conclusion, stating how nothing in this study was perfectly definitive and that more research will be needed in order to know for absolutely certain how foam rolling can affect these things. That being said, the data they did find is interesting. The use of foam rolling and when to use it can be confusing, and depending on your application, it can be very helpful and may be harmful. We recommend reading Dr. John Rusin’s article, ‘Stop Mindlessly Foam Rolling Like a Jackass‘ for more information.
What this study tells us is that you should be doing some form of self soft tissue mobilization can be very beneficial for you when it comes to restoring strength and minimizing fatigue as much as possible. Now, whether you do that before or after is up to you but the data seems to be trending in focusing on doing it as a form of regeneration. This can be useful after workouts and/or competition. The other area this can open up to is potentially using a foam roller at breaks in your competition to help reduce fatigue and enhance performance for the second part of the competition or workout.
Bottom Line: You should probably become friends with a foam roller.