My experience with self foam rolling

I have 5 types of foam roller at home, 3 foam roller with different density and length, 1 foam rolling stick, 1 massage ball and 1 foot roller. I started foam rolling in 2016 after looking for ways to shorten recovery time and reduce muscle soreness. For the first few months i would usually spend about 30-45mins per session for whole body release. Nowadays i just foam roll a few minutes on target muscle or 20mins for the whole body. I find it there isn't much difference with the time spend on rolling, the effect of rolling 20times over your quads and 10times over is the same. I find the longer you spend the more likely you are going to make your muscle more sore and tired, i usually spend alot of time using massage ball to roll over my whole back and i always got the rolling marks/bruise at my back. I thought i should roll over and over again over the trigger point or point of tenderness until it gets better. But this is definitely not the case, no matter how much force or time you spend on rolling over the tender spot, it will always remain tender maybe the tenderness will drop a few point from 1-10 scale but it is very unlikely the soreness will go away.

Nowadays i spend an 1hour every Sunday doing foam rolling with stretching. I feel the effect is much better with stretching incorporated. Imagine foam rolling is only applying pressure to your underlying skin and trying to flatten out knots in your muscle, and when you stretches imagine theraband and rubber band  with cellophane tape (muscle tight knots) stick to it, once you pull apart the band the cellophane tape would fall off. Foam rolling on the other hand relieves tension in muscle tissue. If you have restriction in fascia it can help to release those adhesion and soften the tissue. Stretching and foam rolling function overlaps, stretching improve range of motion by addressing tissue extensibility, elongating the shorten muscle. Ever since i attended stretching course and witness the problems it can fix. I have used these two method together, after foam rolling if i do not stretch out the muscle if feel the work is only 50% done, same feeling like after a workout you miss your protein shake intake.

Foam rolling for me defintely soften my muscle tissue and improve my range of motion, i use it pre workout, post workout and recovery whenever i have the time. The targeted muscle part will feel light and i like this featherweight sensation. However, all this sensation only last less than a day, therefore sometimes i think foam rolling doesn't really work on your fascia but neurologically your central nervous system has different perception on the targeted muscle tissue and temporarily loosen up the area. Foam rolling definitely doesn't work for injured or really tight or sore muscle, because if it did work i wouldn't being going for dry needling therapy. On some occasion i find the foam rolling worsen the sore muscle. If you have a general soreness which could recover in a day or two, foam rolling would benefit. However, if you have a deeper problem which might require 5-7 days to recover, it is not going to work, just go straight for dry needling as it is able to target deeper muscle while foam rolling is more superficial.

Underlying , just don't rely too much on foam rolling or have high expectation that it could replace manual therapy (sport massage, deep tissue massage, dry needling etc) which i once thought so and have been proven wrong on many occasions. But foam roll did provide a feel good factor like after a session of massage, only lesser.