Well: Ask Well: Do Foam Rollers Aid Workouts?

Q

At the gym, instead of traditional "stretching" I see tons of people rolling around on foam rollers. The foam rollers are in high demand and constantly in use. I now have one at home that I roll around on too. What does the research say about the benefits of foam rolling?

A

"Foam rolling is great, although it can hurt like heck," said Duane C. Button, an assistant professor of exercise science at Memorial University of Newfoundland in Canada.

A dense cylinder of foam usually about two feet long, this low-tech tool is very effective at improving range of motion during an exercise warm-up, Dr. Button said. In experiments that he oversaw with his colleague David Behm, volunteers who rolled back and forth with one of the devices under their leg muscles from five seconds to one minute showed a significant increase in those muscles' range of motion immediately afterward. More surprising, unlike stretching, which blunts muscles' ability to generate force, foam rolling did not affect volunteers' subsequent ability to jump or exert themselves otherwise.

Undulating over foam can be beneficial after exercise also, Dr. Button said. Additional experiments at his lab found that even after a "devastating workout" consisting of multiple sets of squats, volunteers who used a foam roller on their leg muscles were far less sore and better able to leap and perform other physical tasks 72 hours later than volunteers who didn't use the device.

But foam rollers are not for weenies. "You're pressing as much as half of your body weight" onto muscles while rolling, Dr. Button said, which can be excruciating.

If the discomfort is too much, he said, consider a roller massager, a smaller, hand-held foam device that you use like a rolling pin to knead tight or sore muscles. "They're more tolerable for many people, because you supply only as much pressure as you want," he said. The benefits for joint range of motion and muscle recovery are not quite as pronounced as from the larger rollers, he said, but remain measurable, while the pleasures are not inconsiderable. At the lab, he said, you can hear happy "ahhh's" as people roll.