After a tough workout, some of you may have a nice massage on your mind. Even if you don’t have a partner to help you out, there is a way to get a great massage out there that will also help you with your fitness and training goals.
You may have heard of a myofascial release massage, which is a type of soft tissue massage that focuses on releasing tension points in the fascia of your muscle. The fascial tissue is a network of interwoven fibers (kind of like a spider web or yarn sweater), which covers every organ in your body (including every muscle and bone), with the purpose of supporting and protecting each structure. When your body experiences trauma or inflammation (which you see when breaking your muscles down with heavy lifting), tension points are created in the fascial tissue in order to restrict the motion of the inflamed body part. By applying gentle, constant pressure to the built up tension points in the soft tissue, you can release these tension points and allow for greater range of motion. You can pay good money to have a professional do this for you, or you can pay $10 and do a self myofascial release (SMR) massage with a foam roller. When done regularly, SMR can help to not only release the painful tension points, but can also help to elongate muscle fibers and eliminate scar tissues and adhesions in your muscles. This can help to increase blood flow and circulation, which in turn will result in better nutrient delivery and also faster recovery times.
Foam rolling is great for your general muscle health, but it also can improve your workouts when incorporated into a warm-up routine. Your Golgi Tendon Organ or GTO (a receptor found at the junction between your muscles and your tendons), works to relax muscles when they experience a high amount of tension in order to prevent injury. This occurs through a process called autogenic inhibition, and when performed before a workout can really help to increase your flexibility and range of motion. You simulate extreme tension in your muscles by rolling them, and the GTO will relax them.
You should try to foam roll a few times a week and integrate it into your warm-ups for best results. The method is simple: you sandwich the foam roller between the floor and the muscles you are rolling and use your body weight to control the amount of pressure that you are exerting. You can increase the pressure by applying more weight, such as stacking both legs on top of each other, or crossing one foot over the other. Staying as relaxed as possible, foam roll from one end of the muscle to the other (pausing to work on the sensitive spots by applying more pressure). When the pain subsides you move on.
Check out this foam roller video series for explanations on various positions to target different muscles:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SF0OP8_PHmo
SMR isn’t limited to just foam rolling. There are other tools like “The Stick” that can be useful for hard to reach spots. If you are really hardcore and can handle the pressure, you can use a PVC pipe instead of the foam roller, but it’s going to hurt! SMR is cheap, effective and can help take your training to the next level.
With this type of massage you can pretty much guarantee that there’s going to be a happy ending!