 Question is from delicious and nutritious Does foam rolling actually work? What's the science behind it? Is it better to have a hard or a soft foam roller? I like this question because go hard As trainers for many years, I think I I know I explained this incorrectly We explained it incorrectly when we started this pop my pop. Yeah. Yeah early on remember We talked about foam rolling as mile fascia release was explained Yeah, it was explained, you know wrong to us to begin with so yeah foam foam rolling is not Releasing the fascia as a lot of us thought it wasn't it's not, you know Breaking down, you know knots and tissue and adhesions like a lot of us thoughts probably not what's happening But it does have some value it really does It's not gonna fix a problem, but foam rolling allows you to move in ways that allow you to fix the problem This is where the value is so let's say you're you're you have issues getting into a good Proper squat because your knees hurt and your hips feel sore So you foam roll for 15 minutes beforehand now you can get into a proper squat So does that mean the foam roller fixed you? No It allowed you to get into that proper squat to train in a way now right gives you a temporary relief Yes, it's very temporary and if you don't fix the root cause of the of your pain or your mobility issues You'll have to foam roll every single time you work out and over time You'll can you'll start to get worse if you don't correct those problems Correct me if this is kind of how I explain it in layman's like what happens to us when we when we get these you know Quote-unquote knots or tightness feeling is this is your your CNS overactive It's a protective mechanism And if you think that every time you move a muscle or you activate a muscle all these these neurons from your brain Are fired there and let's just say for argument's sake It's a hundred of those get fired there when it's super overactive instead of firing a hundred there It's firing five hundred there And so it's just it's getting over overworked and it gets tense and tight because of that and it's more CNS related than it is Something going on with our fascia or our muscle It's just overly stressed and then when you we roll like that you get just like when you get a nice good deep-tissue massage It relaxes that and releases it sort of dampens the signal I think that I mean the the pain signal is beneficial to identify potential problems And I think that like we forget the fact that pain is it you know, that's feedback That's that's something to pay attention to and you know for for you to like now foam roll and apply pressure in that area to be able to kind of You know, maybe damper down that signal So now it can allow for you to keep on like thinking that you know, you're supported in that area and everything can You know function properly and that helps to kind of then promote these better patterns to occur as a result of that but I think it is it's just it's just a way to kind of Release a lot of the the the immediate tension in the the alarm system if you will of like hey Something's wrong here, and we need to like really like tighten and protect. I still there's still a ton of value to it Oh, I still use foam rollers here and there. Yeah, I like them exactly for what we're how we're explaining them I mean what we know is when you apply pressure to a part of your body. There are localized, you know Natural anesthesia anesthetics that get released. There's natural You know chemicals that are released in that area that kind of start to alleviate pain So that's number one, but number two. Here's the big thing that's happening So if you've ever had a muscle cramp, you ever woke up in the middle night where your calf is real tight You instinctually push on it you instinctively try to smash on it with your hand or Stretch it out and the reason why you're doing that instinctually is because when you're pressing on a muscle Your brain receives a signal that'll say relax relax that area relax that muscle And and so that's what ends up happening. It helps calm it down when you have tight muscles Those muscles are tight because they're probably tight because they feel like they need to protect you because of poor movement patterns Well, and using that example Let's say somebody you cramped up all the time because you have some sort of a nutritional deficiency You you you putting that pressure on for release. You're not fixing it because you're not addressing the root cause Right, you'd have to dive into that dating it So the same thing goes with mobility, right? If you are goes with this, you know Let's say you have you know IT a real common, right? So you causes neither knee pain or hip pain normally for people they roll it They feel relief from it. The foam roll is not fixing it. It's giving you temporary relief So then you could go into doing the either strength training exercises that are necessary or the mobility work That is necessary to help work towards it If you don't do that and you just foam roll to relieve it and then you go about your movements kind of the same way You always have you're just going to keep having to do that all the time. It wasn't it wasn't until we got into Mobility training did I was I able to eliminate using the foam roll like I went from the guy who used to foam roll for? 15 sometimes 20 minutes before a good strength training session because I felt it was necessary But to get me relieved enough just so I could go after get after a good lift to someone who doesn't have to do it at all anymore, but that's be also because I've implemented mobility into Mobility workdays into my training now and now I don't have to do any well Yeah, it tripped me out even just going through FRC and things where we're just focused more on the isometric part of that Like not even necessarily movement But more just like the squeeze and the tension that that actually has that same effect of like localized pressure But now, you know me just squeezing and connecting more to the muscle actually alleviated a lot of the pain almost Instantaneously, right? Yeah, it's not it's not that different from getting deep tissue massage Although a good massage therapist, obviously is gonna be you know targeted and individualized and far more effective But it's not that different the same kind of relief that you'll get from deep tissue massage is very similar To what you'll get from a foam roller, but even with like same thing like let's say you have Pain and so you go see a massage therapist and when you're done. Oh my god It feels so much better You're probably gonna have to keep going if you don't solve the reason why you're getting tight like that in the first place And so that's what so foam rolling is a very valuable tool, but it is not a solution Yeah, it's part of a solution I look at it as almost like active versus like passive therapy So this is like probably one of your passive even though you're the one instituting it It's more passive than actively controlling it. I would agree