In my previous article, I had outlined the benefits of warm-ups and suggested why you’d be better off paying more attention to them. This article deals with two components that have become a ubiquitous part of warm-ups.
For the sake of convention, I’ll stick to the general and specific warm-up dichotomy. Quite simply a general warm-up includes jogging, stretching, foam rolling and anything that increases core temperature and joint range of motion (ROM). A specific warm-up does, or tries very hard to mimic the activity about to be performed. In the gym a specific warm-up takes the shape of warm up sets done with progressively heavier weights. Whereas in tennis, a specific warm-up could include using a medicine ball to train shoulder-hip dissociation during the unit turn and/or subsequent hip rotation. Let me begin by analysing a general warm-up component - aerobic work.
1. Aerobic work:
Let me define “aerobic” first. An activity is aerobic if it requires oxygen to produce energy. As long as sufficient oxygen is available, your body burns its fuel stores to produce energy. When bros in tank tops and tights use the word cardio, they mean training the aerobic system. In the context of a warm-up, what purpose does this serve?
The objective of this stage is quite simply to increase muscle temperature. Read my previous post on why this helps. Not only does contracting your muscles produce heat, your muscles’ contractility is also dependent on how warm you are. Now, there are several ways to skin this cat. The first and simplest way is to work until you’ve achieved a light sweat. Usually this takes around 3-5 minutes but there’s a catch. People vary wildly in terms of how much they perspire and several factors seem to affect this; sex, fitness level, genetic predisposition, environmental factors and a whole lot more. Therefore, instead of timing your aerobic work, it makes more sense to go until you break a light sweat, whenever that may be. Warming up with friends might be fun, but given how dissimilar our individual responses are, we’re served better by warming up individually and intuitively.
Then we have Heart Rate Monitoring (HRM) which is used to measure your intensity zone. By definition, a warm-up has you working at a very low intensity (within zone 1), and if you can discuss your favourite American Pie movie while jogging, you’re doing it right. While HRM’s have a place, using them in your warm-up is overkill. Your warm ups shouldn’t leave you feeling like a glorified lab rat.
Finally, for the truly hardcore, there is sticking a thermometer up your ass to see if you are objectively hotter. Unless you’re really anal about it (pun intended), stick to sweat as your go-to measure.
This stage isn’t about channelizing your inner marathoner. Remember the shorter it takes to achieve the desired result, the better. You can bike, jog, skip, do an 80s style aerobics workout (only if you wear leotards though) or have someone dress up as Pennywise and chase you at a safe distance. Now, let’s move onto something more impression-able.
2. Foam Rolling:
Foam rolling falls under an alternative medicine technique called Self Myofascial Release (SMFR). This technique calls for massaging yourself using various tools in order to “release” tightness and restore motion. Google SFMR tools and you’d think they belong in Christian Grey’s red room. A foam roller is marketed as a tool that irons out the metaphorical wrinkles in your muscles which is somehow supposed to increase flexibility. Unfortunately this doesn’t seem to be the case. Our bodies aren’t made of Play Doh and it takes exponentially more than a hardy piece of foam to cause any physiological changes. What then does it do?
It forces your nervous system to take a small chill pill. By making your nervous system more compliant, albeit very transiently, you might see a small and short-lived increase in flexibility.
It increases your pain tolerance. This explains why you might feel temporary relief after rolling. This is not necessarily a good thing because you’re merely masking the symptom (pain) while not dealing with the underlying cause. This is important to understand because you can have pain without tissue injury and you can have tissue injury without pain. We all have probably foam rolled our pain away only for it to return in a day or two. Did foam rolling actually cause tissue repair or did it hit the snooze button on our pain? Most likely the latter. Rolling on…
Does foam rolling increase flexibility?
Yes, but transitorily and passively. Don’t expect improvements to last beyond a couple of minutes. Foam rolling is like static stretching in that both increase tolerance in the nervous system. There’s little to be gained from combining both. Even if there is, the effect it brings about is so infinitesimally small that it doesn’t justify wasting time on. Most studies find that any increase in flexibility returns to baseline levels after just 10 minutes. I don’t find it worthwhile to spend 5-10 minutes foam rolling if the effects are only going to last that long. Interestingly, doing multiple sets seems to be just as effective as doing a single set. I find that one set of 30-60 seconds per muscle group seems to get the job done but your mileage may vary.
What about long-term usage?
If foam rolling is quite similar to static stretching (SS) and if SS has been shown to improve flexibility, shouldn’t foam rolling do the same? In the sands of time, foam rolling is a relatively new tool and research on its long-term usage is still in its nascency. I only found this study which showed that foam rolling was AS effective as stretching over a four week period to increase hamstring flexibility. If the goal is to improve long term flexibility, I would stick to what has been proven by multiple studies - static stretching.
Next time someone tells you they foam roll to become more flexible, show them this image.
Does foam rolling improve performance?
In one word, NO. In multiple words, the effects of foam rolling on performance are minor and negligible. Most studies looking at the effects of foam rolling on sprint, strength and jump performance don’t draw promising conclusions. You may think that releasing trigger points is what makes foam rolling effective, but there is no evidence pointing to the same. The problem with performing studies on foam rolling is that they can’t be blinded. You know if you’re on a roller or not. As a result you can suffer from a placebo effect which means the mere expectation of a benefit could positively affect you. In conclusion, don’t expect foam rolling to do wonders for you on court or in the gym. Any objective improvement in performance is probably a placebo effect.
Does foam rolling improve recovery?
Let’s define recovery first. Recovery is the time is takes for our strength and by extension, performance, to return to pre-workout levels. Tennis given its physically demanding nature causes fatigue in your muscles and in your nervous system, as well as muscle and connective tissue damage. All these hamper our ability to recover and might explain why we experience DOMS (what now?!).
Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness or DOMS is the dull, achy stiffness that we sometimes mistake as injury. Well-conditioned athletes can also experience DOMS especially after training harder than usual or after exposing themselves to a new stimulus. DOMS is a complex phenomenon and we don’t know what causes it, but we do know that it’s not lactic acid.
In terms of athletic performance, muscle soreness, as previously described, can have negative consequences. It may result in altered muscle functions. These alterations may substantially reduce the performance or optimal training intensity of athletes (Pearcey et al., 2015).
It is only natural that you turn towards a foam roller in hopes of dealing with this annoying sensation. Some research supports that foam rolling helps attenuate soreness. The decreased soreness and the increased pain tolerance from foam rolling can be of psychological help to you. Foam rolling might reduce your perception of fatigue in this manner, allowing you to work longer.
A reduction in the sensation of muscle soreness is beneficial to athletes and may improve their readiness to participate in physical activity (Hill et al., 2014).
To conclude, if the feeling of having acutely taken part in the recovery process by foam rolling confers any mental benefit, keep doing it. Any reduction in pain from foam rolling is worth it and if you respond well, continue rolling.
How hard should you roll?
You might have heard this before- harder ain’t always better. The right intensity needs to be a goldilocks happy medium. I’d advise you to err on the gentler side first. I personally like the good pain (a paradoxical combination of relief and tenderness) that comes with releasing a trigger point and can tolerate harder pressures. Remember, it is not about testing your pain tolerance since lighter pressures seem to be as effective as harder pressures. Aim for a 4-7 on a pain scale of 10.
How long should you roll?
This is a tricky question that doesn’t have a straightforward answer. At the end of the day, soreness and tightness are sensations only you can feel. My advice would be to start with a small dosage of 30-60 seconds. On the other hand, if you haven’t any relief even after 5 minutes of rolling, any more is probably a waste of time. I’ve made the mistake of jamming some spots for longer bouts only to irritate it further and leave myself worse for wear. Finding out what works for you (if it does) is largely a process of trial and error.
Why do so many people do it?
Enter the bandwagon effect. This is a psychological phenomenon wherein people adopt certain ideas and beliefs the more they see other people doing it. An example would be the ill-conceived rationale behind anti-vaccination. As social beings, we like to conform to the masses. Foam rolling just because others do is like choosing a racquet much too heavy for you because that’s what pros use. Feel free to jump on the foam rolling bandwagon but make sure you know when to jump off.
Practical takeaways:
Foam rolling recommendations fall in the grey area between scientific trends and anecdotal experience. There are no absolutes. We don’t understand the nature of trigger points and we don’t know if foam rolling them is the way to go. What I can tell you is that foam rolling needs to have a purpose. Unless you have a certain flexibility limitation and could do with the acute improvements from rolling, don’t bother plonking yourself on one. As for recovery, there are far better modalities that improve actual physical recovery. If you’re looking to give yourself an edge by foam rolling, look elsewhere. At the end of the day, I leave the choice to the player, having informed them of the pros and cons. It might work for some people, sometimes, even if purely psychologically, and that might be reason enough to do it but for the love of God, please don’t spend 30 mins on one. Finally, not every point is a trigger point and rolling an area just because it hurts like a bitch isn’t doing you much good, unless you’re a masochist.
This article is packed with information and I understand if some of you find it overwhelming. The following flowchart hopes to untangle it.
In the next article, I take a deep dive into static stretching and explore what could go wrong with this seemingly harmless stretching modality.
References:
Wiewelhove T, Döweling A, Schneider C, et al. A Meta-Analysis of the Effects of Foam Rolling on Performance and Recovery. Front Physiol. 2019;10:376. Published 2019 Apr 9. doi:10.3389/fphys.2019.00376
Bushell JE, Dawson SM, Webster MM. Clinical Relevance of Foam Rolling on Hip Extension Angle in a Functional Lunge Position. J Strength Cond Res. 2015;29(9):2397-2403. doi:10.1519/JSC.0000000000000888
Škarabot J, Beardsley C, Štirn I. Comparing the effects of self-myofascial release with static stretching on ankle range-of-motion in adolescent athletes. Int J Sports Phys Ther. 2015;10(2):203-212.
Junker DH, Stöggl TL. The Foam Roll as a Tool to Improve Hamstring Flexibility. J Strength Cond Res. 2015;29(12):3480-3485. doi:10.1519/JSC.0000000000001007
Sullivan KM, Silvey DB, Button DC, Behm DG. Roller-massager application to the hamstrings increases sit-and-reach range of motion within five to ten seconds without performance impairments. Int J Sports Phys Ther. 2013;8(3):228-236.
Mikesky AE, Bahamonde RE, Stanton K, Alvey T, Fitton T. Acute effects of The Stick on strength, power, and flexibility. J Strength Cond Res. 2002;16(3):446-450.
Healey KC, Hatfield DL, Blanpied P, Dorfman LR, Riebe D. The effects of myofascial release with foam rolling on performance. J Strength Cond Res. 2014;28(1):61-68. doi:10.1519/JSC.0b013e3182956569
Pearcey GE, Bradbury-Squires DJ, Kawamoto JE, Drinkwater EJ, Behm DG, Button DC. Foam rolling for delayed-onset muscle soreness and recovery of dynamic performance measures. J Athl Train. 2015;50(1):5-13. doi:10.4085/1062-6050-50.1.01
MacDonald, Graham Z.1; Button, Duane C.1; Drinkwater, Eric J.1,2; Behm, David George1 Foam Rolling as a Recovery Tool after an Intense Bout of Physical Activity, Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise: January 2014 - Volume 46 - Issue 1 - p 131-142 doi: 10.1249/MSS.0b013e3182a123db
Good one, Naithrav!! Love the humour 😁