foam rollers - legit?

I used it to kick ITBS 2 years ago. I still use it every morning, and haven't had any further problems.

So legit it's not even funny.

I use my foam roller nearly every day.

Quads, hamstrings, hips, glutes, ITB, calves, shin, penis, lower back. Incredible.

Get one. It will break up scar tissue, curb stop injury, and roll your running pain away. It will change your life.

I spent all of $3 on mine and I LOVE the dang thing. yes.

They are great. Get one on line, or do what I did. I was at Kmart and they had these giant noodles.....for use in the pool. They were the size of a foam roller, and cost about $3 instead of upwards of $20....and very colorful. Keep one at home and use one at the gym if they don't have them there. You can find uses for them on Physical Therapy sites.....they are great.

Has anyone thought of moving to stiffer material? Like a PVC pipe? I've used a foam roller successfully for many years, but it feels kind of soft now (yes, I replace mine every six months to a year).

The first time, I used it on my ITB, it was excruciatingly painful. Not so much these days.

Does moving to harder material a benefit or potentially harmful?

yeah, they're brilliant! have to be a bit of a gymnast to get to some areas though.

not sure how much of a harder material you'd want to go to in terms of increased benefit versus risk of damage/bruising etc. you might want to ask a professional about it.

I've used nalgene bottles and pvc pipe wrapped in a towel before. The pipe was supplied by my athletic trainer so I suppose that's as professional as you can get. Works wonders. Use tennis balls for pin point massaging.

Are you using a white foam roller? They also make red and black. The red are harder than the white ones and the black are even harder than the red. If your white one compresses too easily and doesn't do much for you anymore, get a red or black one.

so after a quick google, I see that they are basically ppol noodles... how exactly do you use this?

rollinrollinrollin wrote:

They are great. Get one on line, or do what I did. I was at Kmart and they had these giant noodles.....for use in the pool. They were the size of a foam roller, and cost about $3 instead of upwards of $20....and very colorful. Keep one at home and use one at the gym if they don't have them there. You can find uses for them on Physical Therapy sites.....they are great.

I could only find the noodles that were about 4" in diameter at the local K-Mart/WalMart. Is that the size you are using? They also seem much softer than I expected.

FRs do work but will never replace the good work of a talented body worker, because you can never relax completely during the treatment. The question from the poster about how painful a treatment should be or are PVC type pins/tubes correct... Pain in the sense of "hurts so good" but you can relax into the treatmnt is the goal. Anytime you are pulling away or unable to stand the pain is WRONG! Wood or hard pastic is not smart, because of the bruising or damage done in the name of the cure.

this inquiring mind wrote:

So I used a foam roller for the first time today. There was one on the floor of the gym. I used it on my hamstrings and calves. Man, it felt great. Do these things provide a legitimate benefit or do they just feel good?

No...the ones I found were the same diameter as the ones you find in gyms. They are shorter than a standard noodle however....I have no clue what you would use them for in a pool...too short as far as I am concerned...but they are a great find considering those rollers go for $30 retail.

I agree with whats already been said

Using a foam roller for 10 mins/ day cured the ITBS that had been bothering me all summer in two weeks.

Traditional stretching is largely bullshit, foam rollers are great

Foam rolling is basically a way to give yourself a somewhat deep massage....it breaks up scar tissue which can contribute to shortened muscles and tightness which leads to injury.

Alan

You can take a pvc pipe, wrap it in a pool noodle(cut the pool noodle in half so it will fit around the pipe), and then use electrical tape to wrap the whole thing together. It costs about $5 and is just as firm as the real thing.

Use your Nalgene or the Sigg waterbottles with the ridges. It hurts like none other the first times, but it does the job.

Foam rollers work well if used properly and I'd recommend gradually building up to harder surfaces such as PVC pipes as your pressure tolerance will probably need to adapt. Your muscles need to be pretty relaxed to "receive" the pressure, not tensed up, so bodywork is better but also mroe expensive. Foam rollers are usually available at a major sporting goods store as well as back supply store (tend to be overpriced), or you might need to do a local search.

Stretching helps people on a case-by-case basis--don't rule it out.

Does it matter if you get the longer one vs the shorter.

we all want a harder black one, but sometimes i just say be happy with the one you got.

but seriously, in college we used a pvc pipe with a thin layer of stretchy fabric over it. worked wonders. i have been meaning to make my own