The Benefits of Using a Foam Roller Pre/Post Workout

Foam rollers are effective for increasing flexibility, but when are they best utilized? The answer to that question isn’t necessarily limited to when it’s most beneficial to use a foam roller. It’s rather a matter of how. According to National Academy of Sports Medicine CEO and founder Mike Clark (h/t OutsideOnline.com), practically everyone fails to properly utilize foam rollers. Correctly using a foam roller before strenuous exercise can decrease your chances of contracting an injury and improve your workout.

Tension release from problem areas
Your basic instinct to gently roll back-and-forth consistently won’t yield optimal results from using a foam roller. Instead, it’s important to apply pressure on problem areas of your body, such as the hip flexors and glutes. Hip flexor strain is a common outcome of daily physical activity, like sitting upright in a desk chair during an eight-hour workday. It’s also a primary point of concentration for mild lower back pain. You can effectively release the tension in your hip flexors, and other problem areas of the body, by rolling your hips on a foam roller for approximately one to two minutes before a workout.

Optimized range of motion
Stretching is widely conceived as an important element of pre-workout activity, but conventional stretching technique does not directly target muscle receptors and tendons. While it’s entirely possible to warm-up each major muscle group through stretching, using a foam roller can help prepare tendons for strenuous activity and also decrease muscular-tension imbalances. Foam rolling can help increase your body’s overall range of motion and enable you to perform explosive weightlifting exercises with greater authority.

 

Decreased muscular imbalance
Muscular imbalances refer to certain muscle groups within the body being stronger than others. Over time, it’s likely that you’ve noticed peculiar variations in how your body reacts to strenuous exercise. For example, it’s possible you’ve realized your quadriceps are able to handle more weight in the squat rack than your chest can tolerate on the bench press. While this is relatively common among active gym-goers, it could be an outcome of muscular imbalance. Clark emphasizes that foam rollers activate the Golgi tendon organ, which effectively allows conventional stretching to activate muscle receptors. This process helps create balance within the body, thus enabling you to exercise at optimal capacity.

Increased strength and flexibility
According to research published in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, a dynamic warm-up model will increase strength in the quadriceps and flexibility in the hamstrings. A conventional warm-up period typically consists of moderate stretching activity and low-intensity exercise. However, combining the use of a foam roller with a regular stretching regimen, and performing five minutes of moderately intense cardiovascular activity, such as spinning, has the potential to enhance your body’s ability to execute strenuous exercises. Although research regarding foam rolling and its correlative effect on exercise remains limited, experts like Clark tout foam rollers ability to stimulate muscle receptors, which aid the process of lengthening muscle fibers.

 

Enhanced effectiveness of stretching
The ultimate benefit of utilizing a foam roller both before and after a workout is that it enhances the effectiveness of conventional stretching methods. Foam rollers apply deep pressure to problem areas, especially those in the pelvic region. This consequently activates muscle receptors, which increases your overall range of motion, decreases muscular imbalance, and helps maximize your strength and flexibility.

John Shea is a team sports fanatic and fitness aficionado. His work has been published across a wide platform of online audiences in the realm of health and fitness. His passion for fitness is exemplified in his writing, as he aims to help readers improve their overall well-being.

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Pilates-inspired Moves That Sculpt, Strengthen and Tone

Pilates is a method of exercise to inspire graceful movements by enhancing core strength. Mat Pilates incorporates body-weight movements to develop core strength, flexibility, awareness and breath control. In addition, Pilates instructs awareness of spinal alignment as well as deep core muscle recruitment to execute efficiency, strength and stability.
The main six Pilates principles are: centering, concentration, control, precision, breath and flow. Therefore, Pilate exercises balance muscular contraction, movement and deep breathing. The Pilates breath is essential for movement execution and core contraction. The style of breathing varies among every Pilates philosophy, but typically the inhalation is taken through the nose and the exhalation is released through pursed lips. It is ideal to inflate the diaphragm, which shifts the breath into a “three dimensional” movement into the ribs. Thus, the ribs move up and down, laterally, and front and back, similar to expanding a balloon.  
This Pilates mat routine combines traditional and Pilates-inspired movements to strengthen and tone lower, upper and core musculature. Complete one to three sets of each exercise.    

Side Plank Rotation With Leg Lift

 

 This movement combines a traditional side plank and side leg lift exercise to increase shoulder blade stability, core strength, thoracic mobility and hip strength.
How to Perform: Lie on your side and assume a side plank on your forearm with your bottom knee bent at 90-degrees. (To increase the challenge, position the body into a full side plank.) Reach the top arm above the shoulder. Exhale, rotate the chest and sweep the top arm under the rib cage. Inhale and return to center. Exhale and lift the top leg off the floor to where the foot is level with the hip. Inhale and return the leg to center. Repeat for six to 10 reps and switch to the other side.

Plié Squat to Yoga Tree Pose

 This movement integrates a traditional plié squat that moves into the common yoga tree pose. The plié strengthens the lower body and the transition to tree pose challenges balance, while the inner and outer thigh of the stance leg helps stabilize the pelvis.
How to Perform: Stand tall with feet hip-distance apart and arms extended in front of the shoulders. Slightly externally rotate the hips to where the feet move away from facing forward approximately one inch. Step your right foot away and lower the legs into a plié squat while opening the arms wide away from the body’s center. Exhale and lift your body upward while lifting the arms overhead and placing the right foot on the left calf. Hold for one to three seconds and continue the squat to tree motion. Complete six to 10 repetitions on the right side and then switch to the left leg.  

Plank With Leg Lift

This pose increases upper-body strength, shoulder blade stability, hip mobility and core and gluteal strength.
How to Perform: Position the body into a full plank on the hands and with the feet together. Draw in the core and imagine the hands are pushing away from the floor. Point the right toe and lift the leg upward toward hip height, contracting the gluteals. Return the leg to center and repeat for six to eight repetitions. Repeat on the left leg.

Supine Crescent Moons

This movement increases hip mobility and core strength.
How to Perform: Lie on your back and lift the legs over the hips. Maintain a neutral spine as the core musculature is engaged and “drawn in.” Lower your right leg about one to two feet (this is your starting position). With each leg, draw a crescent moon shape (the right leg draws from the bottom up, and the left leg draws from the top down to start). Continue to draw the moon shape; thus, if imagining a clock around the legs, the right leg continues to glide from 6, 3 to 12 o’clock and then 12, 3 and 6 o’clock. The left draws from 12, 9 to 6 o’clock and then 6, 9 to 12 o’clock, respectively. Exhale the breath when drawing the curve of the moon.
Complete six to 10 crescent moon shapes. *Note the farther the legs are from the hips, the more challenging the pose, especially for core stabilization. Keeping the toes directly over the hips decreases the challenge.

Double Legged Helicopters

This core exercise increases core and hip strength while focusing on the simultaneous movement of the legs and hips.
How to Perform: Lie on your back and bring the legs straight above the hips with the feet together. Bring the toes to level with your head, or eyes, (to make the move more challenging, lift the pelvis off the ground as if you were doing a reverse hip curl). Start to split the legs apart to draw what seems like the curve of a capital D (roll the pelvis back on the floor here if you have lifted it). Bring the toes back together and continue drawing this “Capital D” movement with your feet. Exhale as you split the legs to draw the curved motion. Complete six to 10 repetitions. *Note the farther the legs meet away from the hips, the more challenging for the core, but the goal is to execute strength rather than try to make as big a range of motion as possible.

Moving Cobras

Moving cobras help tone the triceps while increasing the strength of the back extensor muscles.
How to Perform: Lie on your stomach and place both hands underneath (or several inches in front of) the shoulders. Keep the top of the feet flat on the ground and elbows tucked into the side body. Inhale and lift and extend the spine off the ground while pulling the shoulder blades down the spine. Keep your eye gaze forward. Exhale and lower the torso onto the ground. Continue to use the triceps to assist the lifting and lowering motion. Complete six to 10 repetitions.

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The Incredible Healing Power of Hot Yoga

Any Yoga practice is potent when it impulses you to new instincts, when it allows you to go deep within yourself and find your own hidden powers. Hot yoga, also known as Bikram Yoga, is one such, which help you unleash your strengths and harness the power of your mind and body; teach you to appreciate even flaws, within yourself and within others. And there comes the incredible healing power!!
Because beyond the mental benefits, yoga -- and hot yoga in particular -- brings a lot of amazing physical benefits that are especially vital for active people who regularly run, cycle, swim and lift weights.
In Bikram or hot yoga, the room is heated to between 98 and 105 degrees give or take, and as the humidity rises the sweat comes, in large quantities. More than any other body parts, hot yoga makes use of your skin, the largest organ of our body, to flush out the toxins through sweat. By using the skin, you take pressure off the organs that usually detoxify us -- the liver, the kidneys, even the lungs.
The heat also warms the muscles, allowing us to stretch and move more deeply into poses. Hot yoga helps to have better flexibility to our body, the yoga poses are designed to get a complete massage to your organs, and it also help you to tone your muscles in well shape.
Studies have proven that the regular practice of any yoga practice can really help you to increase the flexibility of your body up to 40% in ten weeks of practice. By shifting from one pose to another, with a sequence that comprises mat poses and standing poses, hot yoga also offers very strong cardiovascular exercises. All the postures of Bikram yoga are totally dynamic in their own way.

Bikram Yoga also has been proven to balance blood pressure, pulse rate and respiratory rates. This kind of yoga also helps to boost energy levels and helps us to get a very sound sleep; as the name indicates, the hot yoga leaves you detoxified and feeling physically cleansed.

Bikram Yoga is a good choice for people in Dubai, who spends long hours in Gyms and for other workouts to keep their health. Rawr Yoga Dubai offers Bikram yoga classes in Dubai Marina; the classes are guaranteed with great results and literally help you to detoxify and tone your body.

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