Playing Whack-A-Mole With The Body

Categories: Blog Apr 01, 2015

Every play that game when you were a kid?

You go to the carnival and that little mole pops up from one of many holes, and you try to hit it with a hammer?

It seems like some of what we do with the body is like that.

Take the foam roller for example.

Everyone loves the foam roller.

In case you’re not aware, the foam roller is used for what’s called self-myofascial release. That’s where you find the tight spots - adhesions - and do a form of self-massage - to increase “tissue extensibility.” That is, flexibility. Often coaches call it “working on tissue quality.” These adhesions reduce the muscle’s natural range of motion and therefore contribute to movement compensation and poor joint mechanics.

Now, I’m all for the idea of “tissue quality” and having high quality tissue along with restoring proper joint mechanics and reducing/eliminating movement compensations. Those are very good and necessary things for the maintenance of our bodies.

The problem is, addressing those things with the foam roller just doesn’t work.

Not in the long run. And barely in the short run.

It’s like playing “Whack-A-Mole.” You roll a knot/trigger point/adhesion/tight spot/whatever on one day and it goes away. Next day if it’s not back in the same place, it shows up somewhere else.

Lest you think I have no idea what I’m talking about, I lived on the foam roller, and it’s big brother, the PVC pipe, from 2002 to 2006, back before the Rumble Roller was popular. And I was faithful, boy, let me tell you. I’d find those tight spots/adhesions/trigger points, put the pressure on them, let it “melt away,” and then move on to the next one. After my foam roller, I’d do my active and dynamic stretching. And none of those things kept me from tearing the labrum in both hips.

Intuitively I stopped using the foam roller because experientially I knew it didn’t work or I couldn’t work it. Yet, it makes you wonder what the science says about the efficacy of the the foam roller for fixing, or shoot, making any impact at all on movement dysfunctions and compensations, which is the major benefit it’s touted for helping with.

Thankfully, Chris Beardsley and Bret Contreras over at StrengthAndConditioningResearch.com did a research review on the benefits of the foam roller and self-myofascial release.

Here’s a summary:

The jury is still out about how EXACTLY self-myofascial release (SMR) on the foam roller works - its mechanisms of action are uncertain.

• SMR causes an increase in short-term flexibility that lasts for >10 minutes, but doesn’t make any immediate difference on athletic performance.


• SMR may be able to increase flexibility long-term, in programs greater than 2 weeks in duration.


• SMR may reduce perceived soreness and increase pressure pain threshold (decrease that sore-to-the-touch feeling) as a result of DOMS (Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness) during the 48 hours following damaging exercise.


• SMR may potentially improve recovery by modulating parasympathetic nervous system activity

(Source: https://www.strengthandconditioningresearch.com/foam-rolling-self-myofascial-release/)

The interesting thing here is that there are a lot of “may’s” and “maybe’s” associated with the foam roller and SMR.

Here’s my hypothesis as to why the foam roller and SMR doesn’t work long term:

Because you’re treating localized symptoms of [much] larger systemic problem.

In other words, the reasons your muscles are tight and you have trigger points is related to something else, something much bigger that affects your entire body.

And that explains why I was rolling around on that son-of-a-gun for 4 years with no improvement. Trigger points weren’t my problem.

What was?

I had injured my left SI joint in mid-1998. I felt a distinct “pop” while squatting. I had another lower back injury deadlifting in early 2002.

Something else was awry.

Muscles respond to what the nervous system tell them to do. Yes, they send feedback to the CNS allowing to make corrections in movements using those muscles, but those muscles ultimately do the bidding of the CNS. If you don’t think this is the case, feel free to sever your spinal cord anywhere and get back to me about how much muscle control you have below that severance. So any dysfunction in a muscle must be due to a faulty signal from the brain or spinal cord or loss of localized control of that muscle’s proper functioning due to a joint dysfunction.

And what causes that?

Poor posture for one.

I’ve written about what happens when the head moves out of its proper alignment over the shoulders before.

So how do you fix your posture?

Simple.

Regain your reflexive stability.

Reflexive stability is your body’s subconscious ability to anticipate movement before it happens using the right muscles at the right joints at the right times.

How do you regain your reflexive stability?

Three ways:

1. Practice diaphragmatic breathing


2. Re-establish control of your head


3. Engage in crossing midline and contra-lateral movements

At our Original Strength Foundations Level 1 workshops, we often see people who increase their localized mobility and tissue quality without any specific tissue work or isolated mobility work. One common example is increasing ankle mobility.

What then should you do with your foam roller?

I use one of mine as a drink stand in the corner of my garage gym (when I remember that it’s there)…

Or, you could use it as one of the scientific studies suggested, as a post-workout device to reduce DOMS and increase your recovery ability.

Or you could just use it as you would a general (not deep tissue) massage - roll your “tense” spots and decrease your stress levels, increasing your recovery ability by increasing the activity of your parasympathetic nervous system (the part of your autonomic nervous system responsible for resting and digesting).

Sure, rolling around on the foam roller can feel good. Just use it for what it’s really good for because I can tell you from first hand experience that it does not feel good to spend four years of your life on it only to end up worse off than you were before you started.

Learn more about quickly and easily regaining your reflexive stability in our book, Original Strength: Regaining The Body You Were Meant To Have.

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