May 11
14
Hard Foam Roller
A hard foam roller is an excellent rejuvenator of the body. I have personally used this innocent looking piece of hard foam……6 inches in diameter [150mm] and 3 feet [900mm] in length. They also come in 300mm lengths.
Having not known about trigger points or muscle knots before…my right leg was literally smothered with them. I had played sport all of my life, including many years of squash, which I assume with my right handed play had impounded the muscles over and over. I wish, of course, that I could have used this ‘piece of magic’ after each game to maintain more body balance.
And it took 7 weeks of intense rolling on 6 sets of muscles to bring my leg back to e supple state.
The roller has been around for a few years now………and I learned about it in 2007 and bought one from a boat merchant who used them for deflecting the boats from the wharf. I then used it as I saw on the Google videos, but thought I was beyond healing as my muscles felt like concrete when I lay on it.
It was not until I found a therapist in November 2010, who had used it for 4-5 years in his practice, and advised me of what to expect, did I start using the roller with more confidence of expected progress. My ITB was the worst muscle….and it took 17 days of constant rolling to relax that area…the most tender of our body. I recall setting up on my side and rolling down from my hip to just above my knee [progressively over days], and the agony of the therapy. Having a strong upper body is essential to do this, to enable pulling upward when the pain gets too severe. The therapist’s advice here was invaluable, as his words of “every session you have will remove many knots despite taking your weight away when the full body weight is too much to bear”
His further encouraging words were…..’the more the rolling hurts the more you need to use the roller’
My latest advice is to use a hot water bottle prior to rolling…this will relax the muscles.