LEAN WITH IT, ROLL WITH IT  

After a sweaty workout at Vie Athletics, your coach tells you to grab a lacrosse ball and “roll out”. You, sore and desperate for relief, walk on over and start going to town, finding all those pressure points. Why? Well, because we care about your recovery! While we appreciate your trust, we would love for you, Vie Girls, to have a better understanding of what is actually going down between you and that lacrosse ball!

^{Let’s start with Fascia- what is it?}

Fascia is a sheet of connective tissue, primarily collagen, beneath your skin that attaches, stabilizes, encloses, and separates muscles and other internal organs. Imagine an orange. The peel would be your skin, and the white thready material beneath would be your fascia. When your fascia tightens up, it becomes much harder to move properly. Similar to when there is too much thready material on your orange and you can’t separate your slices. By “releasing” this tight fascia, you will see improvements in not only your workouts, but also your activities of daily living. Need more convincing? Here are three ways Myofascial Release will change your life.

Mobility

Myofascial release is when you apply a slow and gentle pressure to specific parts of your body to elongate your fascia (hence the lacrosse balls we hand out in class). Let us explain some more… Working out puts your muscles through a necessary stress to get stronger. After undergoing this stress, your muscles tighten. Bonus- the surrounding fascia tightens with it. We can all relate this to a fresh pair of jeans that just came out of the dryer. They’re always a little snug at first and require some wiggling around and air squats to be comfortable. By “rolling out” and applying slow, gentle pressure, you release the wound up fascia, allowing your body to move the way it was born to. While stretching is great, it simply is not enough! Grab a ball and get to work.  You can do this before and after your workouts.  Heck, you can buy one off of Amazon and do it before your runs or going to bed.

Injury Prevention

Our bodies are made up of different groups. We have muscles, joints, bones, ligaments, and much more. All of these segments help make up the kinetic chain and assist in producing movement. If one component fails to perform, then there will be dysfunction in your biomechanics, which increases your risk of injury. Before your workouts, you have to make sure that your entire body is ready to put in work. Myofascial release allows your body to achieve fluidity and functionality. You don’t want your body to be “tight” before attempting a box jump. You want your body to be prepped and ready to produce the right amount of power and range of motion to safely stick your landing-and avoid any gnarly scars on your shins! Take advantage of your class time and roll out while your coach goes through the workout of the day!  

Recovery

It is fun to imagine that our bodies will perform at peak levels until the end of time. However, like any piece of machinery, our bodies need regular maintenance to operate properly. We can not stress this enough; a cool-down after your workout is just as important as the workout itself! Myofascial release is one of the best ways to do this! Rolling out, post-workout, will help your fascia return to its normal state and relax your muscles. In other words, you are avoiding that “tight” feeling and stiff-legged-wobble after a tough workout!  

Moral of the Story 

Here’s the thing: rolling out needs to be a part of your everyday fitness routine. We promise that you will see improvements in your workouts and everyday life. So come on in! Ask a coach at any of our Vie Locations for guidance and rolllllll on!  

With love, vie