You can do so many things with a foam roller besides rolling out your muscles!
You can use it to get a better stretch, assist with new range of motion, engage stability muscles, and relax at the end of the day. Foam rollers can be great for working out those knots that you have in your muscles, but I want to show yall three of my favorite exercises you can do on the foam roller, that don't involve rolling.
1. Thread the needle - You've probably seeing this before with reaching your bottom arm underneath you to get a good stretch. But the height of the foam roller and its ability to roll give you a better stretch on those muscles in between your shoulder blades. Great exercise to do after sitting at your desk all day!
2. Shoulder raises - This can be done for a couple of reasons, but my favorite use is to strengthen some of your stabilizing muscles along your spine, like the serratus anterior. This is all about controlling the range you can move, versus how high up you can roll the foam roller. For extra stabilization, you can put a theraband around your wrists, while keeping your forearms parallel the whole time.
3. Restorative pose - Let's face it, by the end of the day, many of our shoulders are rolled forward and it's nice to have a good restorative pose at the end of the day that we can sit and breathe in for 5-10 minutes to just relax those muscles. I like to stair-stack my pillows, put it behind my foam roller for an incline, and let my arms hang down to get a good stretch on the front of the shoulders.
What kind of exercises do y'all like to do on foam rollers? How do you like these?
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