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Month: March 2024

5 Best Foam Roller Exercises For Your Back

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Incorporating foam rolling exercises for your back into your self-care routine can greatly enhance your ability to heal after exercise. This self-myofascial release method is proven to alleviate tension, tightness, and discomfort in your back safely and effectively. These foam rolling exercises for your back complement other healing modalities like massage, acupuncture, or hot and cold therapy. Read on to discover more about foam rollers and five exercises that can help alleviate post-workout soreness, morning stiffness, or daily stress. What Is A Foam Roller? A foam roller is a foam cylinder that you can use to roll your muscles over. It massages the muscles, at different degrees depending on whether you use a harder or softer foam roller. The benefits foam rolling offers include alleviating delayed onset muscle soreness after a workout, morning stiffness, and it can also reduce stress. You can foam roll almost all the muscles in your body, but this article will focus on exercises to roll your back. Particularly helpful if you suffer with common lower back pain. Foam Roller Exercises For Your Back To ease back pain and tightness, perform these foam roller exercises for you back three to four times weekly, even if symptoms lessen. The aim is to ward off chronic discomfort. If you’re in severe pain, wait until you’ve healed before foam rolling. These exercises can be done solo or as part of a pre or post-workout routine. Ensure proper body alignment on the foam roller and use an exercise mat for cushioning. Be cautious when dismounting the foam roller and allow up to 1 minute for relaxation before repeating or moving on to the next exercise. Upper Back Exercise This foam roller exercise for your back can alleviate upper back pain and relieve tension. It can also help improve your posture. Lats This stretch relieves tension in the area beneath your underarms, enhancing posture and upper body mobility. Thoracic Rotation This is another exercise which can help relieve tension from the upper back and enhance spine mobility. Lower Back – Lumbar Extension This exercise can alleviate lower back pain. It help maintain your back’s lumbar curve and can improve mobility in your lower back. Gluteus maximus This foam roller exercise can help enhance the flexibility of your legs and reinforce the strength and stability of your lower back, target tension relief in your gluteus maximus. Conclusion It’s important to stay consistent with these exercises. It’s also important to note that if you feel any pain which is too intense for you while performing the exercise, you should stop and wait for the pain to alleviate before trying the exercise again. The routine can aid in aligning your body and promoting smoother movements. Enhance your relief by applying a menthol muscle rub or essential oils before or after your session, followed by a hot shower or bath. Listen to your body and address symptoms promptly, identifying triggering activities. If pain persists or worsens, consult a doctor, physiotherapist, or osteopath. They can advise on targeted muscle work and exercises, possibly suggesting a particular type of foam roller.

Hard Foam Roller Vs Soft Foam Roller: Which Is Best For You?

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Man using a foam roller

After a good workout, you’ll often experience DOMS (delayed onset muscle soreness). However, foam rolling can help to prevent or elevate this. Using a foam roller can pinpoint the areas of your body that you’ve trained to leave you feeling a little less sore the next day. This is one of the many advantages of using a foam roller as part of your workout routine. However, there are plenty of foam rollers to choose from. From hard, bumpy foam rollers, to softer, spongier ones. It can be hard to know which is best to use. In this article we will discuss hard vs soft foam rollers to give you a good starting point and knowledge base for when you decide to purchase one. Hard Foam Rollers Vs Soft Foam Rollers It’s recommended to start out with a soft foam roller. These are less intense on your body and cause less pain. When you are just starting out foam rolling, you’re likely to have a low tolerance to the pain it causes. However, the more you do it, the more you become used to the pain. You can then start to work your way up to more firm foam rollers. Firm foam rollers are able to dig deeper into the muscle so can be more effective than soft ones when used properly. However, the pain level increases, as you might imagine. Therefore, the foam roller you should use depends on your pain tolerance. How To Progress To A Harder Foam Roller After a few weeks on a soft foam roller, you should start getting used to the pain a little. You can then start your foam rolling session with the soft roller that you’re used to and finish off the session with a more firm roller. As you become more comfortable with the pain, you can gradually work it longer into your session. You won’t do damage to your muscles by using a foam roller that is too firm for you. It is merely a matter of preference. If your current roller isn’t delivering the relief you need and you’re still experiencing discomfort from tight muscles, it might be time to consider stepping up. Remember, your pain threshold matters. If you believe you can manage a firmer roller that offers deeper pressure, it’s worth experimenting. Start cautiously and dial back if it becomes too much to handle. When Should You Use Your Foam Roller? Now you know which type of foam roller is best for you, you might be wondering when you should use your foam roller. A good starting point is after every work out. Just after your workout, muscle soreness may not have kicked in yet. Therefore, it’s likely more comfortable to get your foam roller session in then. Smaller, travel sized foam rollers can be taken to the gym with you as they’ll easily fit in your gym bag. You can also fit sessions in on rest days. Be sure to choose days where your muscle soreness is at a minimum so you’re not in too much pain during your foam rolling session. Conclusion When looking at hard foam rollers vs soft foam rollers, its important to take into consideration your pain threshold. The more pain threshold you have, the harder foam roller you can use. Start off with a soft foam roller, and work your way up with more firm foam rollers as you become more experiences and more tolerant to the pain.

Are Skipping Ropes Good For Weight-Loss?

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Person holding a skipping rope

Skipping is a high intensity exercise which makes it a great activity for weight loss. It can be done at home, in the gym, on your travels, or basically anywhere. Skipping ropes are easy to transport around. Therefore, no matter how busy your schedule is, it can be an easy activity to fit into your day and get your daily exercise in. In this article, we will discuss whether skipping ropes are good for weight-loss by analysing: Which Muscles Does Skipping Work? Skipping is pretty much a full body work out. However, there is extra focus on the legs, glutes and core. For the legs, you mostly use your calves to perform the small jumps when you jump over the rope. This is the main muscle used when skipping. Therefore, skipping is a great way to tone and even slim down your calves. Your quadriceps are also used a lot when skipping. These muscles help extend the knee which supports your jump. You quads will get slightly toned when skipping consistently, however for more focus on these muscles, its more effective to do other exercises such as squats or leg extensions. Your core is working to maintain balance and control when skipping. Your abs and obliques will be contracted the whole time. Your arms are obviously used to move the skipping rope over and under your body. The muscle usage here is minimal. Why Is Skipping So Good For Weight-loss? To lose weight, you must consume less calories that your body needs. Skipping is a great calorie burner. When you burn calories, you increase the amount of calories your body needs, therefore, you’d have to consume more calories for your body to maintain it’s weight. That’s why any form of exercise can help you lose weight. Skipping is a high intensity exercise like sprinting. It gets your heart rate up really quickly and to a high BPM (beats per minute) which results in significant caloric burn. Skipping can burn around 15-20 calories per minute so compared to a low intensity exercise like walking that burns around 5-8 calories per minute, you can burn approximately double the amount of calories from skipping. Skipping does, of course, require lots of breaks, between exercises, but a short 15 minute session can burn around 300 calories. This makes it one of the most efficient calorie burning activities you can do. Other Benefits Of Skipping Skipping, among other high intensity exercises, is an excellent cardiovascular exercise that challenges the heart and lungs, improving overall cardiovascular health. By elevating the heart rate during the workout, skipping strengthens the heart muscle and improves its efficiency in pumping blood throughout the body. Over time, regular skipping can lead to a lower resting heart rate, improved blood circulation, and reduced risk of cardiovascular diseases. How To Add Skipping Into Your Exercise Routine Now you know that skipping is good for weight loss, you may be wondering how much of it to do. Skipping is a high intensity exercise, which means you won’t be able to do it for long periods of time. Therefore, it must be worked into your routine, which could be in a number of ways. As A Warmup Skipping gets your heart rate up really quickly, so a 3-5 minute session would be a good way to get your blood pumping and warming your body up for a gym session. HIIT Workout HIIT stands for high intensity interval training. It is short burst of high intensity activities and a great way to improve your fitness level, especially if you’re training for stop-start sports such as football or tennis. Incorporating skipping as one of the exercises in a circuit training session or a general HIIT workout can be beneficial. Ending Burst Conclude your workout with an intense finish by engaging in a rapid jump rope session to elevate your heart rate. After your main workout, propel yourself into a quick-paced jumping routine aiming for a total of 100 jumps. Following a brief pause, repeat this sequence in sets of 100 jumps, extending your cumulative count to 500 or beyond. Alternatively, if time is limited, this routine stands alone as a comprehensive workout. Challenge yourself to complete as many sets as possible within a 10 to 15-minute time frame. Conclusion Skipping is a great exercise that can help you to lose weight. However, you can only lose weight if you consume less calories than your body needs to maintain it’s weight. Therefore, skipping, or exercise, must be part of a healthy lifestyle for you to effectively lost weight. The calories burnt from skipping will increase the amount of calories the body needs to maintain it’s weight and therefore, if you eat your normal diet, you will lose weight. It’s important to stay consistent over time with eating nutritious food throughout your weight loss journey and not to be in too much of a calorie deficit. A small deficit each day, little by little is the safest, and most sustainable way to lose weight.