I’m totally guilty of following the old gym axiom of “no pain no gain”. And when it came to the foam rolling, I fully believed that if it did not hurt, then I was not doing anything productive. Of course, this theory was total bullsh#t! Let me explain why this concept is wrong, outdated, and can be potentially hazardous to your workout and training performance.
Pain tells us that something is wrong. It’s a signal to our brain that puts our body on alert. One of the goals of foam rolling is to deregulate or calm down oversensitive nerves and receptors in the muscles that may be leading to your pain, tightness, or micro spasms. We want those coked-out jackrabbits with machine guns to turn into tortoises smoking a bong while watching Bob Ross.
Increasing your pain foam rolling can limit your movement fluidity and your muscle’s ability to generate force; i.e. You might f#@k up your performance.
DON’Ts
DOs
Check out the rest of my fact-filled blogs in the Foam Rolling 101 series below.
Heal. Move. ROLL. Evolve.
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