Hi,
just watched your recent podcast (pain, soft tissue, and nocebo). As always great content, so thank you very much for this. In this podcast, and also from many other statements you made in the past, I know that you are strict non-believers in Foam Rolling. I am just curious whether there is actual literature about Foam Rolling not being useful or is it that there is no literature to confirm the effectiveness?
I am just asking because right know mobility and Foam Rolling are the biggest hype in my weightlifting club and everybody is reporting on how great they are feeling since stretching and rolling after each workout (I guess placebo at its best ).
Yes there is literature on the lack of clinically significant efficacy with respect to many outcomes for foam rolling. Of course, this doesn’t actually matter because the advocates of foam rolling and soft tissue manipulation do not (in general) base their practice on evidence, nor do they place significant weight in science. So, the people asking for studies aren’t equipped to read them and even if forced, wouldn’t care anyway.
Torten, for what it is worth, prior to following Starting Strength, I would foam roll daily. In addition, to the foam roller, I would also get a monthly 90 minute deep tissue massage (won a membership to Massage Envy). In September, I started to follow SS and do to time restraints I had to stop foam rolling, at the same time my Massage Envy membership expired. I have to say I actually feel better, without the foam rolling and massages. My back is not tight, my calves feel better, and most importantly my shoulders are finally healthy again (years of poor form and contact sports caused severe shoulder pain). Now, I am sure I will get a massage again, only because they are enjoyable, but before I thought I needed them. Good luck.
Haven’t read the studies on form rolling so i’m just curious how do you test for it’s efficacy. Since many of the claimed benefits can be seen as subjective and its hard to find a relevant control group to test for the placebo.
Is it possible that it is desensitizing yourself to the aches and pains? The reason I bring this up is that fact that I have felt significant improvement from sitting on a lacrosse ball when I have low back, butt and leg pain. This hasn’t happened since I first started lifting. But seemed like it was really helping. I haven’t done it or felt the need in over a year though.
Yesterday, i watched a video by Quinn Henoch on the JTS youtube channel, talking about mobility myths. I had not read the specific litterature on myofascial release before, but he mentions that the initial studies have been conducted on unconscious rats with human sized metal scrapers. Apparently, they did observe some type of collagen remodeling with this specific experimental setup and some people drew conclusions that this should work the same in humans.
Interesting how they omitted the fact that you would probably need to get run over by a truck to get the same results on human sized tissues… Sounds like a totally reasonable recovery activity.
Yes. Any observed effects are likely neurologically mediated, and not likely to be due to any local effects at the tissue level.
Exactly. This is just one issue we have with “fascia” and “adhesion” gurus who claim they can actually do anything about these issues (…despite the fact that the problems they diagnose haven’t even been shown to exist at all, much less correlate with pain).
Of course you are 100% right with your statement Jordan. Nevertheless, do you mind giving me the titles of any of the relevant research papers, so that I can try to obtain them? If it is too much trouble for you please don’t bother.
Just want to thank you, Jordan and Austin, again for distributing so much valuable info through the forums, your webpage, youtube and the newsletter.