Should I Buy A Foam Roller?

I have some muscles of the legs that are tight which are my hip flexors + ankles although I can squat to parallel with a barbell on my back but my hip flexors tighten up at the parallel position, i read somewhere that if i loosen the hip flexors it will allow me to gain more muscle. So I have two questions:

Should I buy a foam roller to increase the flexibility of my hip flexors to gain more muscle?

Will Squatting itself loosen the hip flexors overtime?

Yes.

Get one. Also get a baseball to dig in areas the roller cant hit

Your scream name makes me smile. I feel warm and smell cookies when you post. I wanna eat you all up with strawberry milk while wearing pajamas with feet in them…maybe bunny ears

I love you.

Mmmmm

Look up “hip mobility” on this site. Lots of excellent info.

And yes, get the roller.

I have foam rolled and used “The Stick” and honestly neither of them ever did shit for me, here is what I would do.

  • Warm up: My new favorite thing is just to walk on the treadmill on an incline for 10 minutes prior to lifting. Among other things, This serves to get blood flowing into the legs. I “squeeze the glutes” while walking

  • Stretch the Piriformis OFTEN… Like once an hour for 20-30 seconds in you can. Essential Piriformis Stretches - I use the chair stretch at the start of every hour, and alternate between the “Lying piriformis stretch” and “Pigeon Pose” before I go to bed. Since starting this my legs and lower back are basically back to “normal” in that I have NO lingering pain or ROM issues, and it only took a week or so.

  • When doing the squat, DONT move up to the next weight until the current one feels “good” - So if you are going to squat 315 legs say, a “typical” warm up might look like this

  • 135x10

  • 185x5

  • 225x5

  • 275x3

But try this instead

  • 135x5 (feels a little tight still)
  • 135x5 (good)
  • 185 x 3,3,3 (last set finally felt good)
  • 225 x 3,3
  • 275 x 1,1,1

Takes a bit longer and it might not be how you warm up, but its the idea I’m trying to get across.

ok thanks guys especially you rockula :>

and i have two questions which may seem extremely dumb and they are:

how would i use a foam roller?
should i buy a long foam roller or a short foam roller or both?

i could find the information on the web but there is so many broscience articles and videos i dont know who to trust I have seen people pressing down with bodyweight using foam rollers and people just casually rolling.

Start here

[quote]Lonnie123 wrote:

Start here[/quote]

Good for you, helping him out with a link (which he should have found by himself), while he completely ignored your advice. ha

While I haven’t done the “foam-rolling” thing consistently, I never felt all that good afterwards. Also, I actually learned that most of the times pain during an exercise and/or lack of mobility (depth) can disappear with the right setup/execution. Similar to what Dan John says in one of his vids where he tries to teach a group of people how to squat properly. There he “magically” solves some people’s lower back rounding with the right cues.

Lonnie really hits on everything. The last few years, my gym bag that used to be simply for wraps and my belt, now houses a roller, a ‘stick’, and a lacrosse ball. All not only can improve mobility, but can in the long run affect hypertrophy as well.

Lots of reading to do it you choose, and all worth it. Good Luck!

S

infinite shore. dont be an idiot i read his post and I am going to do that along with foam rolling keep your stupid comments to yourself

dont buy a foam roller, buy a plastic drain pipe instead, about 5" diameter. will last you forever while the foam roller will only last about 6 months

OP: Foam roll and then mobilise/dynamic stretch.

Thank me later.

tweet

[quote]caveman101 wrote:
dont buy a foam roller, buy a plastic drain pipe instead, about 5" diameter. will last you forever while the foam roller will only last about 6 months[/quote]
this is a great idea, I got my pipe for < $1 and it’ll last forever. I got a small diameter one that’s good for digging into my IT bands and glutes, but I think a larger one like you suggested would be better

[quote]browndisaster wrote:

[quote]caveman101 wrote:
dont buy a foam roller, buy a plastic drain pipe instead, about 5" diameter. will last you forever while the foam roller will only last about 6 months[/quote]
this is a great idea, I got my pipe for < $1 and it’ll last forever. I got a small diameter one that’s good for digging into my IT bands and glutes, but I think a larger one like you suggested would be better[/quote]

Finally your user name makes sense,duh!

A lot of good advice here Chips. Once again you should try the search bar. Most questions/topics have already been discussed to great lengths.

foamrolling: http://www.T-Nation.com/searchResults.jsp?cx=016420786931182441572%3Akswwmllusns&cof=FORID%3A10&ie=UTF-8&q=foam+rolling&siteurl=www.T-Nation.com%2F&ref=&ss=2088j418772j12

This keeps down tons of new post from peeps asking repetitive questions or abusing the boards as there own personal “ask jeeves”, should I have bacon or sausage? With that said, I find foam rolling very useful. Especially for leg training. I feel it helps with mobility and I require less warm up then before I started.

Before you ask “how to”, check out a little site called YOUTUBE. There are thousand of videos to show you how.

P.S. Beware of Count, he’s really only interested in eating your soul!

I personally just use a basketball to roll on. Takes some coordination but it does an incredibly good job at loosening up tight areas.

A yoga mat rolled, a camping tiny foam mattress (to protect from humidity) rolled might do. If a pipe just roll a towel over to a correct firmness. Tennis ball, you will find by searching.

Remember my advice in your other thread about using the search function?

thanks for the advice guys caveman im going to get the pipe sounds like it will do a good job and a coincidence because my dad has dozens of them in the garage,

thanks for the advice ectomorphisis the search bar never came to mind for me before, @ gregron sorry i must have missed it,

Before you ask “how to”, check out a little site called YOUTUBE. There are thousand of videos to show you how.

i have checked some videos but they are confusing like i said before lots of foam rolling using bodyweight to push down and lots of foam rolling that just looks like plain rolling which seems useless, its sometimes hard to find good advice on youtube

If you are looking for some good warm ups or something to help loosen you up I would check out DeFranco’s Agile 8. He also has an upper body warm up that’s awesome. Google agile 8 and agile 8 upper body (something like that)

Also google mobility wod… That blog is amazing for ideas on fixing or heading off potential issues.

[quote]gregron wrote:
If you are looking for some good warm ups or something to help loosen you up I would check out DeFranco’s Agile 8. He also has an upper body warm up that’s awesome. Google agile 8 and agile 8 upper body (something like that)

Also google mobility wod… That blog is amazing for ideas on fixing or heading off potential issues. [/quote]

Its called simple 6 you hillbilly

ill checkout mobility wod