Foam Rolling

Bradbury-Squires et al. (2014), Mohr et al. (2016), and Markovic (2015) found that foam rolling or rolling massage significantly increased range of motion of joints and increased flexibility of muscles in comparison to the control groups for all the interventions tested. However foam rolling wasn’t always the intervention that increased joint range of motion the most. For Mohr et al. (2016) static stretching alone increased range of motion more than foam rolling alone. Additionally, they also found that foam rolling was more effective if done in conjunction with a second method than just foam rolling alone. Markovic (2015) found that foam rolling increased range of motion but not as much as the other intervention, Fascial Abrasion Technique. Junker & Stoggl (2015) and Roylance et al. …show more content…
Review of the literature also found that longer durations of treatment had greater, but not always significant, increases in range of motion when compared to the control groups and the shorter treatment duration. Bradbury-Squires et al. (2015) found that 60 seconds of foam rolling had a greater increase in range of motion from the baseline values than a 20 second duration. Couture et al. (2014) found that a long duration of 120 seconds total had a greater but insignificant increase in range of motion than a short duration of 20 seconds total. Couture et al., (2014) was the only study that didn’t find a significant increase in muscle flexibility and joint range of motion for foam rolling. They suggested that it was potentially due to roller, rolling method, or range of motion measurement differences from other comparable