Chris Beardsley's Garage Gym

A while back, I had a project where I worked really hard on my hip mobility and lumbar stability.

Since I have a desk job and have had a desk job for around 10 years, I had found that my hip mobility was poor and that my body had worked around it by increasing my lower back mobility.  I did plenty of stretching, soft tissue work, activation drills and strengthening exercises to improve. 

Ultimately, the programme worked well and I was able to go back to squatting again recently.  My squat depth is now good (around 12″) and I feel a lot better when doing most of my other exercises too.

Ongoing soft tissue work

However, I have found that if I don’t do soft tissue work regularly, I start to slip back into old patterns and find myself growing uncomfortable under the bar in the squat rack.

I never want to get to the point where I can’t squat again, so I have started doing a programme of soft tissue maintenance daily.

What you need

For this programme, I use a hard ball, (I have a baseball and a hockey ball, which I use for slightly different purposes) and a foam roller.  These are my tools of torture:

The key areas

My key areas to roll are (in order):

• Plantar fascia – hockey ball
• Tensor fascia lata (TFL) – foam roller
• Quadriceps (mainly rectus femoris) – foam roller
• Adductors, sartorius and pectineus – foam roller
• Calves – foam roller
• Glutes – hockey ball
• Psoas – hockey ball
• Rhomboids – baseball
• Rotator cuff – baseball
• Front deltoid and shoulder capsule – baseball

Choose the order carefully

I like to use the above order because it works well for moving from one exercise to the next.  I walk into the spare room and tread straight onto the hockey ball to hit my plantar fascia.  Then, I grab the foam roller and lie down on it to roll my right TFL.  Switching sides, I usually roll my quadriceps before doing the left TFL and my adductors.  Sitting up, I roll my calves and then chuck the foam roller away.

All that take me about 5 minutes.  It’s not a 5 minutes out of my day that I would willingly give up.

After that, I grab the hockey ball and roll my glutes (actually, I usually just do the right one) and my psoas.  At this point, I’ve finished the lower body part of my rolling programme.  Doing the lower body first is a guarantee that it gets done.  Then I move onto my upper body.

My upper body trigger points are very swimming specific but I suspect that sitting at a desk typing all day aggravates them something awful.  I find that I get knotted up in my rhomboids, my rotator cuff and my (left) front deltoid.  Using the baseball (because it doesn’t slip like the smoother hockey ball) I get around here in as long as I need to.  Some days, that takes 10 minutes, other days I take 20 minutes.  I usually let the ball settle onto a knot and then apply pressure until I feel the knot yield slightly.  Then I move the ball around a bit.

It hurts but I wouldn’t stop doing it if you paid me.

I think, overall, the key is finding the trigger points that are where the knots have developed and attacking them mercilessly.

Plantar fascia

This is a great place to roll and I am evangelical about getting all and sundry to do it.  It’s a pretty essential technique for when you’ve been doing a lot of walking.  I take a ball with me on walking holidays and when I remember to use it, it pays dividends.  I use a hockey ball nowadays, but when I started out I just used a tennis ball.

Tensor fascia lata (TFL)

Rolling this part of my leg used to be the most horrible experience in the world for me.  However, I found that if I rolled it every day for a couple of days, it slowly got less and less painful.  Now, rolling it every day, it’s usually pain-free.  If I leave it a couple of days, it starts to make me wince again and if I leave it a week, it really makes me grunt.  It’s great motivation for rolling regularly!

Quadriceps (mainly rectus femoris)

The trick to rolling your quadriceps is to roll each leg separately.  I have found that if I roll both legs together then I get off quite easily and it doesn’t really hurt that much.  Rolling each leg separately makes the experience a lot more “effective”. 

  

Sartorius, pectineus and adductors

This is an area that I have always rolled but have never really managed to improve significantly.  I can feel that there is some tightness here, which improves a little with rolling but not much.  If anyone has any tips on these, I’d be interested to hear them.

  

Calves

Like for the quadriceps, the trick to getting value for money out of rolling the calves is to roll each leg separately.  I have found that if I roll both legs together then I get off quite easily and it doesn’t really hurt that much.  Rolling each leg separately makes the experience a lot more “effective”.  When I first started a programme of rolling, I didn’t bother with my calves.  Recent walking holidays have revealed to me that the slight pain I get behind my right knee after a week’s hard mountain walking is entirely due to knots in my calf.  A hard rolling session later and I am pain-free.

Glutes

I never used to roll my glutes at all until I felt that my squat pattern wasn’t quite level.  I monitored how my hips felt as I descended into the hole and realised that my right glute felt tight.  I rolled it using a hockey ball and the change in the way my glutes, lower back and groin area felt was quite remarkable.  Needless to say, I always include some rolling time in for my glutes now.

Psoas major

This is a great little trigger point that really makes a difference to my squat pattern.  If I find a knot here, my squat immediately improves the moment I get rid of it.  It’s a bit hit-and-miss, though, whether it gets knotted up.

 

Rhomboids

I suspect that my history with these is swimming related but I would be intrigued if other people also have trouble with them.  My knots are pretty substantial when they develop.  They kind of feel crab apple-sized…

  

Rotator cuff

These feel like steel ropes most of the time until I apply some heavy doses of baseball to them (poetic, given that baseball pitchers often have rotator cuff trouble).  They take some punishment before they start to soften up but when they do my whole shoulder girdle settles down.

  

Front deltoid

This may be another area that is particularly bad for me, as it’s only my left shoulder that is troubled.  Again, however, it’s a pretty substantial knot that I tend to have to deal with if it flares up.

  

And that’s it at the moment.  If I find somewhere else starts getting tight and uncomfortable then I’ll start rolling that…

Please subscribe, follow me on Twitter and like my Facebook page.

Tags:   rolling · soft tissue3 Comments