Hey, Ed Paget here
And today I want to talk to you about these things
foam rollers.
The word foam roller seems to give the
impression that you're gonna be rolling
back and forth on it
but actually I found that
it isn't the best way of doing it
but I'll show you what I mean.
So most people would take one of these foam rollers
and they would say "I've gotta work on a certain muscle"
And I'll put it here and I'll go up and down like this, right?
But then it turns out, that what does does is actually cause a lot of pain.
It doesn't change the muscle in the way that we're trying to change it,
which will be to increase mobility.
So I am going to propose a different way of doing it.
If you actually work a little bit slower,
you can push the blood through the muscles into different areas
and flush out what we call "waste products", which cause the pain.
Things like lactic acid,
and then that,
well those waste products come out of the muscle and the muscle can start to relax.
New blood rushes in
and you can actually start to change the tone
or the tension in muscles that way.
Alright, I got three foam rollers here.
This is the original gangster,
the old one, now this one has a little bit of a give to it
and it is softer and this is less painful.
Then we go to a travel roller.
Essentially, this is a bit of plastic,
with a covering on it, the covering is like a yoga mat.
Inside this comes with a bunch of balls,
which we will talk about as well shortly.
Thirdly,
for those of you on a budget, or
without access to these things,
I've literally got a piece of piping.
In fact, I found this just on a run.
On a building site, or near a building site
and this is perfect.
So, when I started foam rolling,
this thing was painful
and the athletes that I used to work with
would use this, and I couldn't understand
how could they do this without being in serious pain.
But it turns out, overtime
your sensitivity to the pressure rapidly decreases
and you could end up using something like this, which I use occasionally.
Alright, so
what I am gonna do is gonna pick a few muscles.
and I'm gonna show you how I
would recommend my clients foam rolling.
The classic muscles to work with
are gonna be the quads,
the lateral quads
and the calves.
And also I'm gonna show you how to get in here
onto the abductors.
So let's go for the lateral side here.
What we have here is the thing called the
IT band, right?
and this is a thing that gets tight when you run
run a lot anyway.
Now working directly on the IT band is just gonna cause a lot of discomfort
and it's probably not gonna change the IT band tone massively.
However, working slightly to the front of it,
slightly behind it,
and up onto its attachments up here
into the glutes and the tensor fascia lata
will actually make a difference.
So what we are going to do is take the foam roller,
place it 90 degrees to the IT band
and now I'm directly on the side of it
and that's painful
But I'm gonna roll slightly foward
So, I come off the IT band slightly.
Now, you would actually...
you do move up and down until you find a point
where things get really tight.
So for example I started here, I'm gonna move this way a little bit.
Now I'm onto a tight area.
Once I'm on the tight area,
I'm not going to go up and down anymore
I'm actually going to go forwards
and backwards. So I'm rotating
and pushing the muscles
around the bone in my thigh, my femur.
and these muscles are actually attached
to the femur and this is stretching them right down
to that attachment.
And where I feel like...
a changed in my muscle,
I would then, simply move it up a bit further
until I get the next tight area.
And again, rocking backwards and forwards.
Need this nice and slowly
and in your mind's eye, I want you to think about
fluid being pushed through the muscle.
And as you roll back off it,
fluid rushing you back into the muscle.
So it's actually a fluid pump
that we're thinking about here...
rather than stretching the fibres.
Ok, so, you would do the whole side
in a similar manner.
Now, when you get up
above... your hip... bone here,
this thing here, is called the greater trochanter,
the bit that sticks out.
You're gonna go above that
into the pocket area,
obviously on my downside,
now that is the.... TFL: tensor fascia lata,
which is the muscle that tenses the IT band.
Now, I actually don't feel anything
with this thing now, now this is too soft for me.
So this is where I would just simply
grab one that is a little bit harder.
And work into there, so now I can start to feel it
So again we are not going up and down,
I'm simply just rocking backwards and forwards.
Now you can actually use this bottom leg as well
actively... so I can move this
forwards and backwards
if I wanted to. So I'm pinning
the fibres of the tensor fascia lata,
but now I'm stretching them
in a running motion and this
is actually fantastic
for people who struggle
with IT band syndrome,
which is something I have struggled with
in the past.
Ok, so working up
either side of the IT band,
working in Tensor fascia Lata,
next place to go to is the glute muscles.
So... this one again will be too soft for me in this situation,
might be fine for you,
you're going to essentially sit
on the foam roller
and cross the... I guess the left leg
or is the leg you want to work on
and then...
you're looking for an area of tightness, and when you find that,
you're simply going to rock backwards and forwards.
Again it's tempting to do this, cause it feels nice
in this situation but it's not as effective
as slowly...
working the fibres of...
of the glute max,
and in some of the deeper fibres here as well.
And so....
most of the muscles actually come from
the sort of sacrum area
and spread out like fingers, the deeper muscles
like this.
So... I can actually turn
the foam roller
through 90 degrees
and now have it,
so it's crossing the muscle, so it's going to be like,
imagine that this is the muscle here
It's like crossing the muscle here, as opposed to being this way.
Now from here I can move my pelvis fowards and backwards,
and just get a different motion here.
Or I can do very gentle rocking left and right.
So you're gonna play with it,
you know the muscles in different fibre directions
some of them will respond better to this,
some will respond better to
having the foam roller
at pointing the same direction as the muscle fibres.
Ok, so...
that is a... good introduction to
lateral leg and to the butt,
but, how do we get these pesky muscles on the inside?
So there's a few ways of doing it,
depending on your flexibility levels.
So I'm gonna use
the bigger roller here
because these muscles can be very tender.
First thing we're gonna do
is take the leg
and put it up onto the... foam roller
Then you roll until you find a sticky spot,
a painful spot
and then from here, you simply lift your leg
up and down, so that's how you get
that....
sort of circular motion around the actual bone
onto the foam roller.
And then you will go a little bit closer to your pelvis
and you keep going,
about 10-15 of these
or until you find a change.
Now some of you,
won't have the flexibility to do that
and so you can just use a little stool or a chair.
You put the foam roller up on the chair
and then you can actually get your leg
onto the foam roller.
Now this also helps the foam roller get right up into your groin
and so you can actually get
the whole length of those adductor muscles.
So from here
I'm right up on the attachment,
where it goes close to my pelvis
and I'm getting a nice stretch
and
release through that muscle
by using my leg. And you can see I've actually just did 3 or 4,
then I've moved just a little bit.
get to the next tight area
and I would simply work my way down through there.
So once I have released off... these muscles
and pumped the blood through using these foam rollers
that wouldn't be it for me.
Then I would move into a more dynamic
stretching routine
so similar to yoga or the fast class which I have
elsewhere... on my channel here
to then give the muscles
and the nervous system a full range of stretch
a full range of contract
to tell them exactly how they should be functioning
in every joint in all three dimensions.
So go on, give that one a go
foam rolling
plus... a little bit of...
full body functional movement at the end
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