On a roller

I have a close – you may even say intimate, though never inappropriate – relationship with my foam roller.

This cylindrical mass of slightly spongy foam serves as my personal massage therapist. Sure, it doesn't have the soothing mood enhancement as, say, incense and New Age music, but the self-propelled roller kneads my calves and pesky iliotibial band just as thoroughly as any pricey practitioner could.

Plus, you don't need to tip the thing 20 percent for doing its job.

Once used almost exclusively in physical therapy practices, foam rollers now are widely available at running and Pilates stores, as well as on the Internet for as little as $20. Many health club chains, too, are now starting to provide them. They have yet to find their way into chain sporting goods stores.

At Rhode Island-based sports retailer Perform Better (www.performbetter.com), sales of rollers have doubled in the past few years, according to sales representative Conrad Hibbert.

"We get a lot of regular people ordering them now, either as referrals from physical therapists or because they saw it at their gym," he says.

Rollers come in a variety of sizes and degrees of sponginess, depending on the desired use. The standard roller, though, is 6 inches in diameter and 24 to 36 inches in length.

Physical therapists recommend the roller to athletes both for preventing injuries and hastening recovery from various conditions. Many prescribe rollers as a way to warm up cold muscles, especially those with knots or trouble spots, before a daily run or bike ride. Duration for tissue rolling spans from 30 seconds to five minutes.

Mark Fadil, who heads the Sports Medicine Institute International in Palo Alto, has written a book on foam rollers as an aid to training and sells them via the Internet (www.smiweb.org).

"The roller helps as an early indicator of when muscles are beginning to tighten up even though you may not feel any tightness when performing an activity," Fadil has written.

But experts caution that, pre-workout, the devices should be used before stretching and should be rolled over soft tissue only – not joints or bone structures.

"We've been using them for 10 years, but they have been getting popular," says Billy Martinez, a physical therapist with practices in Elk Grove and Sacramento. "The way the economy is, people don't have that disposable income to throw $70 at a massage therapist. What we do is to try to figure out the problem and develop a treatment plan and have them use things like the roller to be proactive."

The goal for kneading and rolling the tissue like so much bread dough is to hasten the loosening of myofascial tissue, a densely woven web of tissue that covers muscles. "I often call (the myofascia) a second skin, and you want to lengthen and release it," Martinez says.

Rollers are particularly effective for the band syndrome, a common running injury. The iliotibial band is a fibrous fascia that starts near the pelvis, extends over the hip and outside the leg before connecting to the tibia at the knee.

"Runners use it like a big rolling pin," Martinez says. "They get on it and run it the length of the band, butt to knee. It lengthens the tissue out. They may have a spot or two along the continuum that is irritable,and they can stop and oscillate a bit on that.

"In layman's terms, it can help break up knots, trigger points."

Positioning is key for properly using the roller on different muscle groups, Martinez says.

For the IT band, for instance, you turn on your side with the roller starting at the pelvis of your right leg. The left leg is planted in front of the right and body weight is supported by outstretched hands in front of the torso. Then you slowly roll over the hip and outside of the thigh.

The roller can also be used for calves, hamstrings, quadriceps, shins, hip, gluteal and back muscles. But to isolate hard-to-reach tissue, Martinez occasionally will have patients use smaller, more solid objects.

"We have them roll a softball, baseball, even a croquet ball over it, if it's really localized," Martinez says. "If it's a really small area, like patella (knee) tendinitis, we have people use their thumb."

Another use for the roller – particularly a half-roller – is as an exercise tool. It can be used like a Pilates ball to stabilize core muscles. "It helps the lower abdominal muscles," Martinez says. "We put someone on an unstable surface to focus on (training) the muscle to stabilize."

One caution, though: Don't use the roller on an injury still in the acute stage; that might aggravate the condition. Martinez suggests waiting three to seven days after a muscle pull before starting to roll.

The foam rollers won't put physical therapists and masseuses out of business anytime soon.

"We want people to self-treat," Martinez says. "Even if I see someone twice a week, there are still five other days they need to work on. If they aren't using the roller we prescribe, their progress is slowed."

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