3 Reasons Why Foam Rolling Could Easily be your Only Movement Practice
Whenever I ask my clients if they foam roll at home for muscle maintenance between sessions, I am often met with “not really,” followed by excuses, provided by underlying guilt. Does this sound a little like you? Kind of like, you feel insecure drinking a soda in front of a nutritionist?
How we interact with our bodies is incredibly personal, and I hope someday we can collectively come to a place where we feel no shame about whether we exercise or not. What’s more important, is how our physical bodies actually feel. Do you have pain? Do you feel uncomfortable? Do you recover from injury slower than you’d like? Sometimes, dare I say often, my clients that exercise the most, have the most pain. The ones who relentlessly batter their bodies to “stay healthy” are the ones that are missing a really vital piece of the puzzle. How we live in our bodies isn’t about measuring our physical activity to the standards of some ambiguous societal force, it’s about how functional we feel.
Whether you’re not a mover at all but feel like you should start somewhere, or you’ve come to terms with the fact that you actually don’t like working out, or you’re an avid mover that is a little beat up, I want you to know that a foam rolling practice, if done well, can easily be enough activity to keep you strong, mobile and pain-free. Here’s why:
Rolling Keeps Your Functional
What is functionality? Well, this is relative to your lifestyle but often it’s not about running 26 miles or even burning out your thighs with barre (I love barre). It’s about having mobility; having enough blood flow in the tissues to recover from sitting too long or lifting something heavy. It’s about moving the joints regularly so that you don’t lose the ability to. A rolling practice moves and loads all your joints to keep them well-oiled.
2. Rolling Keeps You Strong
To be able to roll one part of the body, another part of the body needs to be supporting you on the roller. There are ways to do this that strike a really awesome balance between being easeful on the rolling part and strong with the supporting part, all while taking breaks to avoid burning out the parts that are stabilizing you. You are, infact, balancing on a rolling object, which requires a fair amount of muscle activation. A body that gets no muscle activation atrophies, and a body that gets too much can burn out. But, a body that activates just enough to support its own weight, or about an hour, is living in a really sweet spot.
3. Rolling Keeps You Soft
This one is easy. Rolling mimics massage therapy, the idea being if you compress tense tissues for a certain amount of time, you force them to soften. Rolling is a profound, rewarding experience of preventing your own injuries, troubleshooting your own tension and taking the action to soften your own tissues so that your body may be more functional and more comfortable.
And don’t even get me STARTED on the psychological benefits of rolling. Wait...yeah, get me started. Let’s talk about that next time. ;) Until then, join me on demand!