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Self Massage and the Foam Roller

April 23, 2007 by Jimson Lee

GoFit 6-Inch by 36-Inch Foam Roller with Core Performance DVD
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It was reported that Michael Johnson, 4 time Olympic Gold medalist and World record holder in the 200 meters and 400 meters, had daily massages of 90 minutes!

90 minutes! Nice! As an athlete, my budget was usually 1 or 2 times per week of 60 minutes.

An alternative way to have a daily massage is with the use of a foam roller, or even tennis ball. They are beneficial for enhancing performance, preventing injuries, and speeding up recovery from injuries.

I was introduced to this concept at the Sports Medicine Institute International, or SMI, formerly known as the Stanford Myofacial Institute.

I found they worked really well on my glutes, hamstring, and the IT band (no, not your garage rock band of your computer department, but the Iliotibial band) They come in 2 sizes, 4 inches and 6 inches in diameter. I like the smaller one when traveling for track meets.

There was a rumour for a deeper pressure point massage, athletes used the tennis ball for the glutes, filled the ball with water, and froze it. In essence, they are massaging themselves with a hard frozen ball that ices the area too.

I won’t go in detail on how to use it, as it is well explained in the guide found at:

http://www.smiweb.org/massage/downloads/roller.pdf

Give it a try and send me your feedback.

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Written by Jimson Lee · Filed Under Health & Wellness, Injury Prevention, Recovery 

Comments

4 Responses to “Self Massage and the Foam Roller”

  1. Foam Roller Exercises | SpeedEndurance.com on February 7th, 2008 6:24 am

    […] wrote about foam rollers from my days at the Stanford Myofacial Institute (now called SMI). You can read the article here, or click here to download the PDF guide. Yes, that is Jason Lunn Michael Stember in the photos […]

  2. Ben on August 9th, 2009 4:21 am

    Thank you so much for this pdf, but the link is broken.

    Here is the updated link. The guide is listed on the right side with some other guides about injury prevention and whatnot. http://www.smiweb.org/omt/guides.html

    Anyway, thanks for the link to SMI. Didn’t know about this before but it’s definitely now a bookmark.

  3. Jimson Lee on August 10th, 2009 5:01 am

    @Ben - thanks for the update for the broken link!

    If you ever do visit SMI (in Palo Alto, CA) say hello to Mark F and Doug C for me.

  4. Massage, Recovery, and Massage Sticks | SpeedEndurance.com on October 26th, 2009 5:10 am

    […] Self Massage and the Foam Roller […]

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