The Foam and Rumble Rollers

Musculoskeletal Tools for your Exercise Kit

Homo Sapiens have evolved into beings that can outlast any other land animal because we can move so well - it’s one of the reasons we have thrived on planet earth. We can source food. We can escape from danger. We can move to a more temperate environment. Hundreds of thousands of years of development has now hit an evolutionary brick wall. The most successful of us outsource everything – cooking, cleaning,gardenening and even washing their pets! And we focus on (often-sedentary) specialty skills. Real movement is optional for many in the twenty first century.

This extends to many people’s current exercise programs - training within limited ranges of motion, unbalanced movements (excessive upper body or more flexion than extension exercises) or even exercising when sitting down. What is the deal with Spinning classes?

Adapt or Perish
The other ace card the good old Homo Sapien has (and maybe another reason we outlasted the Neanderthals) is our ability to adapt to changing environments.

Again, the exercise programs many of us follow involve the same old routines, in the same old location, week-in week-out, recycling the same dozen exercises, year after year. Training plans shouldn’t be based on the film ‘Groundhog Day’.

The fact is
In today’s society most people have become specialised in one type of work and their vocation requires little physical activity. Additionally, recreation time is increasingly sedentary – virtual worlds for shopping, socialising, or networking are replacing real ones.

So whilst we have bodies that require movement to work – most people barely move at all.

The human body is a mind-boggling piece of hardware. It’s been millions of years in the making. Human movement is our operating software. Hardware needs software to function. We’ve inherited the body – and it’s only going to work if we run the programs of squatting, lunging, balancing, twisting, extending, climbing and bending.

Poor or minimal movement will lead to sickness
Many of my patients suffer from the effects of “Western life”. That is, too much sitting whether it is in the car, at a desk or on a couch. Sitting is actually the foetal position upright – and the foetal position is the posture we automatically adopt when we are under unbearable stress!

Prolonged chair and couch sitting causes tightening of the hip flexors, weakening of the gluteal muscles and kyphotic bending of the spine.

Poor structure invariably leads to poor function and poor health. The chest cavity, and the lungs inside, are squashed. Oxygenation of the body is reduced. The neck bends backwards to compensate for the curved middle back. The small muscles at the back of the skull that are designed for delicate head movement become overworked.

Over time, these changes become permanent and common physical complaints are aches and pains, difficulty in taking a deep breath, weak and tight legs, a back that gives out, lumbar disc injuries and pain between the shoulder blades. This is musculoskeletal illness. It is my clinical experience that feeling poorly affects you psychologically also and you are more likely to be sad, depressed or anxious. Your thoughts are not as clear and coherent, concentrating is more difficult and there is an overall fatigue.

Worse still is when you are unfit and become unwell you might not have the physical fitness to recover quickly or fully.

Use the Foam Roller to Move and Adapt
At the heart of all good exercise programs is moving and adapting and this is what I use the foam roller for.

Improving posture: I prescribe foam roller exercises to my patients to get back down on the ground and start stretching out their tightened muscles and joints. You can use it as a myofascial massage tool to knead away trigger points. Lie on the foam roller lengthwise and treat kyphotic postures. The spine relaxes into the neutral position and posture improves.

Improving athletic performance: foam rollers expand your exercise repertoire and classic exercises such as push ups and squats are given novel twists to create sensory motor challenges. I use foam rollers for training proprioceptive abilities – balancing on them whilst doing regular exercises like kettlebell floor presses or squatting whilst standing on one or two rollers. Foam Rollers are unstable – but not too unstable – and your technique isn’t compromised. With a foam roller your exercise form will be challenged but not overpowered.

What is the Rumble Roller?
Rumble rollers take the foam roller concept to the next level. The Rumble Roller’s surface is indented with bumps – roughly the same size as a massage therapist’s thumbs. The bumps are firm, but not so firm they will hurt bony tissue if you roll onto it.

When massaging with the Rumble Roller you use it much the same way as you would with the Foam Roller, but the bumps allow you to “dig in” and provide trigger point therapy to tight muscles, tendons, fascia and ligaments. The protruding bumps also flex and bend side-to-side and front-to-back, allowing you to customise your soft-tissue treatment to the desired pressure and assertion required.

How do I know if I am doing the exercises correctly?
I made the Body Ease DVD to demonstrate the foam roller exercises I prescribe most commonly to my patients and athletes. I recommend people become proficient in these exercises to improve their health and wellbeing.

Don’t do the same boring old programs again and again and again. Introduce a foam roller to your routines to add challenge and variety.