Foam Rolling is best described as a way to “self-massage”. Massage has been an essential component to professional athletes for decades, but not everyone has access or financial surplus to pay for someone to massage your muscles, so the foam roll is a great way to massage your muscles daily.

Below you can see in the video how foam rolling tight “knotted-up” muscles is vitally important over choosing to just stretch your muscles. You can see how the knot tightens even more with stretching, but foam rolling can roll out the knot and allow for way better flexibility results.

T-Spine Foam Rolling
This clip shows the recommended way to roll the thoracic spine. The key is to get the elbows together. This moves the shoulder blades away from the t-spine.

Knot Demo
This is a great visual to explain why we foam roll. I tie the band in a knot and then say “what happens if stretch now”? I explain that rolling is like uniting the knot. Roll first, stretch second.