You Must Do This Before You Start Your Workout

I hope you enjoyed your weekend. Mine wasn't bad. I went to a high school graduation party on Saturday, and then my family celebrated Father's day with me, getting me a couple nice shirts and some new boxers. I guess the holes in my underwear were becoming a little too revealing for the likes of my family.

Anyways, in this newsletter I talk about an activity that you need to start doing right away. More and more professionals are using this tool for their clients, no matter if they are an athlete or a wellness client. This activity is the use of the foam roller.

Maybe you have seen it at the gym but it is a 2 or 3 foot tube made of dense foam. I originally purchased this foam roller as a balance tool for my clients. It has progressed into basically a self massage tool.

Before you start your workout, you take the foam roller and then lay on it in various positions to hit your legs, lower back, and some of your upper body. Lie on it for the desired limb you want to hit. Balance yourself accordingly with your arms and try to put all your weight on the foam roller. Slide up and down on the foam roller for about 10 repetitions. You should be hitting some tender/tight areas that are pretty deep down. Some areas will really hurt, some will feel good to just move on it.

Once you hit your body, you will hopefully have broken up some of the tight muscle tissue you have. Maybe you will have worked out some kinks or soreness from an earlier session. Either way you should now be ready to put your body through a more thorough warm-up and then begin your training session. If you want, you can perform this after your workout as well.

The foam roller has become a big part of my own personal workouts. I do it as often as I can, but especially before lower body workouts because that is where I have some tightness. I will soon start incorporating it into some of my athlete's workouts as well. If you want to see a few demonstrations of the foam roller, I just placed a video on Youtube showing this. Click here to watch the video.