BEGINNER Foam Rolling Exercises

😩 Got knee pain / IT band pain? 

 What's the 1st thing you think of to help it?

 For most people, the answer might be...FOAM ROLL! 🎉 

 But have you ever been properly instructed on foam rolling techniques? If not, and you're a beginner to the magical world of "self-myofascial release"...let me enlighten you with this video (~300,000 views on YouTube).

 👉 Foam rolling is a form of "self-myofascial release" (SMFR), which is just a fancy-schmancy term for self-massage. 

Foam rolling (and other forms of self-massage or tissue work) release the tightness, knots and trigger points in muscles.

 🤔 What’s a trigger point? You can think of it as a knot or patch of dense tissue that causes pain and problems in your body. A trigger point can also lead to pain in other areas of the body. 

 For example, a trigger point in the TFL could be causing your lateral knee pain.

 👌 Foam rolling works to slowly decrease the tone (density) of these trigger points in your muscles. This increases blood circulation and even nerve conduction and helps speed up the muscle recovery process. 

 A side benefit of foam rolling (and tissue work in general) is that it will also help with flexibility – something that we could all use some more of!

 👎 The one downside of foam rolling is that it can NOT get to the deepest layers of tissue (because it is such a blunt/broad object compared to other mobility tools.) This is why I created another video about foam rolling called – "Why Foam Rolling Completely Sucks!"

 Sound like a paradox? It won't be, once you watch BOTH videos. 😃 

 So, in summary, try out this basic foam roller sequence below and when you are ready you can graduate to some slightly more targeted tissue exercises. 🎉 Happy rolling!

 P.S. Here is a SUMMARY (FREE INFOGRAPHIC) on this page. Use this PDF as a quick "cheat-sheat" to review the basic foam rolling techniques.