Best Muscles to Foam Roll for Runners | Foam Rolling

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So I'm going to demonstrate what muscles to foam roll if you're a runner. So if you're a runner, you're moving in mostly sagittal plane, you have a lot of hip flexion going on, your quads are going to be tight. So let's start out with the quads. So you're going to take the roller, place it on the very top of the knee, get down to your forearms here and foam roll to the middle of the thigh, or the quad, all the way back to the top of the knee. I would stay here for about a minute focusing on the areas that are the tightest. So wherever you feel the most tender spots, the points of the most pain, that's where you want to focus on and stay on. Once you're done there, you'll take it from the middle all the way up to the hips. I'm doing two at once; you can also do one leg at a time that would look like this. We bend one leg, focus on the left and then the right. This I actually feel more pressure with.

So if you want a deeper penetration I would definitely recommend you roll one leg at a time. Focusing on each muscle for about two minutes. So after you're done with the quad, as a runner, your hips are going to be tight. So definitely foam roll the ITB. So you're going to start out on the side, like you're going to get into a side plane. You're going start on the very top of the knee. You can bend one leg and you're going to roll to the middle of your IT band all the way back down to the side of the knee. This is an intense muscle, so you want to take your time and by bending this leg you're taking some pressure off of the muscle or of the band by applying your body weight much more. You're kind of splitting your body weight. If you want more pressure, you could always just stack your legs like that and that will be pretty intense. But again, this is a pretty painful one to roll, so just take your time and break it up. So after you're done rolling the bottom portion, you're going to take it from the middle and roll to the top of the hip. Spending about one minute, or two minutes, on each portion. I'm breaking the band and the quads up because the femur is usually pretty long. So you want to break it up. That will also insure that your alignment stays right.

So as a runner, you also want to make sure you're going to roll your abductors. So you're going to place the roller just like this, you're externally going to rotate your leg and you're going to lie down on the roller, if you could come down to your forearms and you're just going to roll to the middle of the thigh back to the bottom or the top of the knee. Just like that. And again, I'm splitting it up. I'm only rolling to the middle and to the top of the knee. One minute there, you're going to take the roller start in the middle and then you're going to roll all the way to the top of the groin. The abductor isn't often neglected muscle to foam roll but it's very tight on most runners so you definitely want to make sure you get it. So the last important muscle I would say for most of my runners to roll are your glutes. So you want to make sure you start out rolling the glute medius which is the outer portion of your butt. You could lean to one side. Go toward the middle, focusing more on your glute max, and then you would switch sides completely. And roll the right side, glute med. And then the middle which is the glute max. Spending again, one to two minutes on each muscle group. I would spend one to two minutes on the left and one to two minutes on the right. And those are the most effective muscles to roll if you're a runner.