Science Friday: Why You Should Foam Roll Prior to Exercise

Over the last decade foam rolling has gained popularity as a self-myofascial release technique that works on the same principle as massage. Namely that it reduces any restrictions and adhesions between fascial layers (the connective tissue that surrounds muscles, tendons, bones, etc), but instead of a therapist providing the external pressure to the soft tissue, the user simply places their body weight onto a foam roller to exert pressure on their own soft tissue.

Despite the growing popularity there is limited research into the effectiveness of foam rolling. Proponents chiefly use this technique as a way of increasing range of motion (ROM) prior to exercise and/or to improve post-exercise recovery. Increasing ROM prior to exercise is important for athletes as they must be able to attain an optimal position to maximize their ability to safely produce force. After all, if an athlete can’t raise their arms above their head without compensating through hyperextension of the lower back, or internally rotating the shoulder, then how would they expect to safely press maximal weights overhead?

Traditionally static stretching has been used to increase ROM prior to exercise but several studies have shown that static stretching actually reduces the amount of force that an athlete can produce immediately after stretching. The study I want to discuss today entitled, “An acute bout of self-myofascial release increases range of motion without a subsequent decrease in muscle activation or force“, looked at the immediate effects of foam rolling on ROM and force production.

In this study the subjects were split into one group that foam rolled their quads for two 1 minute sessions with 30 seconds between sessions and another control group that performed no foam rolling. Knee joint ROM was measured before and after (2min and 10min) foam rolling and a number of methods were used to measure quad activation and force production. On average the subjects improved their knee ROM by 11 degrees and 9 degrees when measured 2 minutes and 10 minutes after foam rolling respectively. Obviously there was no similar improvement in the control group.

However, the most interesting part of this study was that there was not a significant reduction in quad force production or activation after foam rolling. In other words, subjects got the benefits of static stretching – increased ROM – without the negative side effect of reduced force production. The authors of the study postulate that this is attributed to the physiological differences between how the ROM is improved for static stretching versus foam rolling. The former places pressure at the insertion points of the muscle and may cause tissue damage while the latter reduces the fascial viscosity to a more gel-like state through mechanical stress of the tissue.

Conclusion: Foam rolling is an effective method for increasing joint range of motion prior to exercise without reducing your muscle’s ability to generate force. You should do it more often…

Originally posted by Jeff Pruitt of CrossFit 316

Power is the Path to Fitness by Jeff Pruitt

Written by Jeff Pruitt of CrossFit 316

How many of you try and use the prescribed weight for a workout just to prove to yourself that you can do it? Let me be the first to tell you that prescribed weights suck. They’re fine for competition, or benchmark workouts to see where you rank among thousands of other CrossFitters, but they are definitely sub-optimal for improving your general level of fitness.

How do you pick what weight to use during a workout? For too many people it’s just a random decision and that’s unfortunate because while it may not be rocket science, there is a certain amount of science involved in getting more fit. I’m going to explain how and why to choose the appropriate weight in order to maximize the efficiency of any given workout.

In CrossFit we define fitness as increased work capacity across broad time and modal domains. In plain English that means improving your ability to do more work using different movements in workouts of varying times. And as anyone that has done a CrossFit workout will attest, increased work capacity comes via intensity.

Now the beauty of intensity is that we can measure it. Intensity, as we define it, is just the average power you produce during a given workout. We don’t need to make this overly complicated but just know that in physics average power equals the amount of work done divided by the time taken to do the work.

That means there are two paths to increasing the average power of your workout – the first would be to increase the weight used and the second would be to do the workout faster. Many people choose the first approach because it seems harder or because of some bogus notion of prescribed weights but this is often counterproductive. Many times dropping the weight and doing the workout faster will actually increase your average power and thus improve your fitness faster. The reason is because there is no work being done while you are resting and staring at the bar.

There are formulas that attempt to map the number of reps in a workout to some percentage of your one rep max and that is exactly why you’ll see those percentages show up on the whiteboard for certain workouts. But practically speaking, the weight (or scaling for gymnastics movements) you should use is one that allows you to do the workout unbroken but right on the edge of having to rest.

Now when we do strength work we are looking for a different stimulus and thus we increase the rest periods between lifts, but for metabolic conditioning there is simply no arguing with physics and physics says you need to pick a weight that makes sense in order to maximize your fitness level. So don’t just think about finishing a workout with a prescribed weight; think about maximizing average power by doing the workouts unbroken or with very minimal rest…

This post was originally written for Guerrilla CrossFit by Jeff Pruitt