Foam Roller Routine

This article is guest blogged by Ryan Banta, an assistant coach at the Ladue/St. Louis Lightning Track; Feld club.

He previously wrote Sprint Drills and Cues and Acceleration and Maximum Velocity

To view all his articles on this Blog click here .

This routine comes from Olympic Training Center Coach and owner of website http://www.maximumvelocityathletics.com/ Coach Jeremy Fischer. On his website, he has a lot of information to share, and he has always been very open to help aspiring coaches. Jeremy currently works with a number of the world best jumpers at the Olympic Training Center. His pupils include the names of Will Claye and Brittney Reese. His progressions, routines, drills, and overall planning can be a lesson to other coaches about how you set up training even for the world’s greatest athletes.

The foam rolling routine provided above is just a small sample of some of his modules he has put together. Foam rolling has been a topic on a number of blogs for track and field. More often than not Sprinters tend to be extremely tight in the legs. As coaches, we want our sprinters to have optimal suppleness. Foam rolling can help sprinters achieve optimal suppleness by using the athlete’s weight and foam roll to put pressure on tissues they might have difficulty stretching or massaging on their own. Specifically, I have yet to find something that helps stretch the IT Band like a foam roller. If you have problems along your IT Band, this routine must be a part of your daily plan. Amorphically each athlete is slightly different and needs monitoring while doing this routine, so it is done correctly for their body type. Pay attention to your sprinters and do not allow kids to do this module on autopilot. Position of the roll is crucial along with the speed of the movement. Through my experience, I have found keeping the action slower has helped me smash out my trouble spots. Your sprinters may try to balk at rolling slowly because the pain can be intense. As their coach, it is your job to make sure they perform the movement at the correct speed.

If the workout is not set up to take advantage of the module, I don’t like foam rolling at the beginning of practice. I don’t believe foam rolling brings the athlete up to the optimal arousal or suppleness for the beginning of practices that require large amplitudes of movement at high speeds. Therefore, I would use this module as a warm up on a low-intensity day like tempo pace workouts in a bi-polar program, on active recovery days, or on shakeout days after traveling a great distance. Foam rolling helps with rest and recovery. Sprinter’s legs can get very tight after a long trip in a bus or on a plane. As a coach, I would instruct my runners to do some of these routines during layovers or rest stops just to keep the legs from locking up. I don’t like static stretching on cold muscles and dynamic warm up might be odd to do in the middle of the airport terminal. A foam roll routine can be a good “in between” to help protect your sprinters muscle tone over long trips.

As a coach, I like to see this module done as part of your athlete’s cool down routine. By its very nature, it meant to massage your athletes. I think foam rolling is great at the end of practice when your athletes want to relax and chat. Routines like Coach Fischer’s works out the kinks that have developed during practice and helped speed up the removal of any waste products built up while training. Most of us will not have the ability to get therapeutic massage for all of our athletes during training. I believe foam rolling can be a “poor man’s” massage. Foam rolls are very cheap, and if you get the long rolls, you can cut them in half. By cutting the longer rolls, you double your number for a lower cost. You could even provide each of your athletes with a roll, assign their roll number, and share with a partner further reducing the cost. Only having two people on a roll improves the hygiene of your practice. You can never be too careful with staph and other nasty skin to skin issues.

About the Author

Ryan Banta is an assistant coach at the Ladue/St. Louis Lightning Track & Feld club, where the club has assisted athletes in achieving 6 national titles, 31 All American performances, and 61 national qualifiers. He has earned a USATF level II certification in sprints, hurdles, relays, and endurance as well as a USTFCCCA track and field technical coaching certification.

He has a new book coming out titled Sprinter’s Compendium, a “one stop shop” for theory and practical information for any coach looking for real world strategies to improve sprint training for any type of athlete. Look for it soon!