If you’ve given your muscles a good foam rolling session, but afterward find yourself with an incredibly sore spot, this article will teach you what you’re doing wrong. Stick with us for a minute and we’ll show you how to avoid getting caught in these painful traps that cause your roll to push out further than expected. Being too sore after foam rolling is not normal!
Don’t give up on foam rolling though, in the next section we’ll give you reasons why you should continue foam rolling.
Benefits of Foam Rolling
Foam rolling is a great way to get the blood moving and reduce tension in muscles, but it can also provide tons of other benefits such as:
- Relieves muscle soreness and pain.
- Helps increase the range of motion. May reduce the risk of injury while improving flexibility and coordination.
- Provides deep-tissue massage on the surface of the skin, which typically has pressure receptors that help improve circulation and lymphatic drainage (and possibly collagen production).
- May lower the risk of injury by increasing elasticity in tendons, ligaments, cartilage, fascia, etc.
- Improves flexibility and flexibility of joints and muscles.
- Reduces the risk of injury during push-ups, squats, and other dynamic movements.
- Increases oxygenation to muscles and helps repair severely overused muscles/limbs.
- Makes joints more stable by increasing proprioception.
- Conditions connective tissue and increases its integrity, which is great for healing injuries.
- Aids in recovery from a strenuous workout or a key match/race/game.
- Relaxes sore and overworked muscles to help you sleep better at night.
- Prevents unnecessary tension from accumulating throughout the body, which helps you stay loose during workouts/races/games / etc.
- Helps improve motor control to help maintain proper body position (such as an optimal running form) during various activities to prevent injury and reduce stress on your joints/tendons/ligaments (i.e. helps you squat deeper).
Is It Normal to Be Sore After Foam Rolling?
If you’ve ever tried foam rolling, you may have experienced some discomfort. But can foam rolling make your soreness worse?
The short answer is yes. You see, any time you are experiencing pain or soreness in a certain area of your body it’s usually due to either inflammation or breakdown of the underlying tissue. This is often caused by poor muscle mechanics and trying to compensate for an injury, chronic tight areas that become irritated from repetitive motions, or just simply being generally inactive for an extended period of time.
When foam rolling tight areas, it can cause the tissue to become irritated and inflamed which can ultimately lead to breakdown and pain.
You see, we spend most of our life sedentary and we’ve adapted our bodies so that we don’t work hard enough to stimulate the healing mechanisms in our bodies naturally. We drive to work, sit in meetings or on planes for 8 hours at a time, sit at our desks all day, don’t go for walks, etc.
When you are rolling you are moving around an area of your body that is trying to heal. You are making it work harder to heal and that can delay the recovery process by irritating the tissue more.
Does that mean you shouldn’t foam roll?
No. It’s a great tool to have in your arsenal, especially if you do a lot of training or exercise on a regular basis. However, it is important to know your limits and roll only those muscles that are tight or sore from overuse. We would also recommend doing a self-myofascial release on those muscles as part of your warmup instead of as a standalone activity at the end of training.
Look out for tutorials and videos showing how to foam roll. It’s just like a deep tissue massage.
Check the article below to learn the best foam roller exercises:
21 Foam Roller Exercises for Back, Hip and Neck Pain – Foam Roller Guide
Don’t rush. Take a deep breath if you hit a tender spot, do not move the roller, and slow down.
Also, be sure to drink a good deal of water afterward. You’ll feel as sore as before you rolled if you don’t drink water afterward.
Here Is What You Should Do If You Feel Too Sore After Foam Rolling!
You might be surprised at what can happen if you don’t know when to pull away from the massage roller when it’s too uncomfortable…
We love these things, but the truth is that the foam roller can often have too much pressure on it. And when we push back into it, we’re giving up our ability to use the muscle at all and risk injuring it even further! The key is knowing when to stop and back off if you find yourself needing a massage.
We know how tempting it is to keep rolling and rolling (most people do this because they think it’s right!) but eventually, if you don’t ease up on the pressure, you’ll end up in too deep. Try pulling away from the foam roller when you feel like your muscles are getting extremely tight or sore – usually after 4-6 moves.
Find where the pain starts and pull back – The area where the pain starts is usually indicated by a “pinching” sensation. You should feel parts of your muscle that are tight or which you can “rustle around” under your skin. This likely means that the roller is too deep and causing you to push really hard into it while leaving your muscles unable to use them at all.
Easy: Pull Back and Ease Up on the Roller – If you’re feeling pain and tightness in a certain area, try pulling back and easing up on the ball or roller using your hands. This method works incredibly well – maybe even better than free-standing rolling!
Conclusion
If you’re going to foam roll, it’s important that you know when to stop – being too sore after foam rolling is not normal at all!
Here is one of the best foam rollers you can find online:
Well, even if you tried our method and are still too sore after foam rolling, maybe you should try to use a massage gun. Check the article below to learn more:
11 Reasons Why You Should Use a Massage Gun After Workout
Thank you for reading.
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