Yesterday I visited our local gym and noticed how many people are using foam rollers, it seems most people know how to use a foam roller but they may not know the reason for foam rolling. What is the actual science behind the agony of foam rolling your ITB? It all stems from what we call Myofascial release.
Have you ever woken up in the mornings feeling a little stiff. And as you move your stiffness seems to disappear. What do you think causes that stiffness and why does it diminish with movement. Fascia is the reason for your stiffness and foam rolling or myofascial balls are used to release fascial stiffness throughout your body.
So what is fascia? Fascia envelops all oragans and tissues in the body, it is that slipper surface that allows one muscle to glid past another to create movement. The fascia holds the muscle together and keeps it in the correct place; it also separates the muscles so they can work independently of each other. Fascia is an interconnected connective tissue that weaves throughout the body right from our heads down to our toes.
Fascia is all about movement, and in order to move efficiently we need to have good flexibility. Flexibility is the ability to move. The maintenance of a flexibility has been recognized as an essential component of athletic fitness. Flexibility is important for both successful physical performance and for the prevention of injury. An effective flexibility program improves the ROM at a given joint.
All muscle stretching is stretching of the fascia and the muscle, which is known as the myofacial unit. When muscle fibers are injured, the fibers and the fascia which surrounds it becomes short and tight. This uneven stress can be transmitted through the fascia to other parts of the body, causing pain and a variety of other symptoms in areas you often would not expect. Unequal muscle tension can compress nerves and muscles causing pain.
Here is where you call your physiotherapist, chiropractor or biokineticist/rehabilitation therapist/physical therapist.
In a nut shell, the stiffness that you feel in the mornings, if not due to some sort of arthritis, is due to our friend the fascia. We as humans, are movers, we need movement from a day to day basis to maintain our ability to move. Whilst doing a little reading and touching up on my knowledge of fascia I came across a brilliant little movie on www.thestretchinghandbook.com where they refer to the fascia as the ‘fuzz’. I recommend you have a look at it, as fascia is summed up very well on the video clip. But for now I will give you a little sneak preview of that video clip…each night when you go to sleep, the interfaces between your muscles grow fuzz potentially and in the morning when you wake up and you stretch, the fuzz melts. We melt the fuzz. That stiff feeling you have is the solidifying of your tissues, the sliding surfaces aren’t sliding anymore, there is fuzz growing in-between them. You need to stretch, every cat in the world gets up in the morning and stretches its body and melts the fuzz. When you are moving its as if you are passing your finger through the fuzz. So, you stretch and move and use your body in order to melt that fuzz that’s building up between the sliding surfaces of your musculature. The sliding surface, the shining white surfaces, are all over your body and the fuzz is all over your body: and as you move you melt the fuzz.
Now, what happens if you get an injury? Ouch my shoulder, my shoulder is stiff now. I’m holding my shoulder. I go to bed. I wake up in the morning. I don’t stretch my shoulder, I’m afraid it hurts. So, I’m wondering around like this. Last night’s fuzz doesn’t get melted. I go to bed. I sleep some more. Now I have two nights fuzz built up. Now two nights fuzz is more than one nights fuzz. Now what if I have a week’s fuzz or a month’s fuzz? Now those fuzz fibres start lining up and intertwining and intertwining and all of a sudden you have thicker fibres forming. You start to have an inhibition of any kind of shoulder movement. And as you keep not moving your shoulder your fuzz builds and builds. The shoulder is literally solidifying and now we need help. Your best bet would be your physio to reduce pain and break the fuzz down. After you have more painfree movement you need physical therapy from your bio who will show you how to use a foam roller or fascial ball as home therapy.
Fuzz represents time and you can actually see time in fuzz depending on how restricted the movement is.
I often use a foam roller but find the myofascial ball a very effective way to decrease all sorts of muscular tension. By just rolling a ball under your feet you are releasing tensions right the way through your body… thankfully fascia extends from our heads to our toes so that we can release it with a simple maneuver such as rolling a ball under our feet.