How & Why to Use Foam Rolling For Pain & Recovery | Dr. Kelly Starrett & Dr. Andrew Huberman

00:00:00.000 | - Somehow, we could talk about how, it's not a coincidence,

00:00:05.000 | you became synonymous with foam rolling.

00:00:09.760 | - Worst part of my life.

00:00:11.000 | - It became synonymous with you.

00:00:12.080 | That's okay.

00:00:12.920 | I mean, it's not okay, but it's okay with me.

00:00:15.920 | They weren't saying about me,

00:00:16.760 | but I was about to say it's okay.

00:00:18.040 | You know, anytime somebody goes public facing

00:00:20.880 | and starts to try and educate people, you know,

00:00:24.000 | there's certain things that are sticky.

00:00:25.160 | They have like high salience.

00:00:26.320 | Like, yes, I like to get into a cold plunge,

00:00:28.480 | but how I, how Andrew Huberman became associated

00:00:31.320 | with cold plunging or buying a cold plunge is wild.

00:00:34.280 | I mean, sure, I own one and, you know, this sort of thing.

00:00:36.720 | And I think they're great for shifting your state,

00:00:39.440 | but it's hardly the cornerstone of my life or my existence,

00:00:44.400 | but I love it.

00:00:45.240 | I use it, but I think foam rolling,

00:00:47.880 | I think looked different enough

00:00:49.840 | from what people had not seen before.

00:00:52.680 | And it, you know, these things just,

00:00:55.440 | they have a stickiness to them.

00:00:56.960 | Who knows why?

00:00:58.640 | What is the deal with foam rolling?

00:01:00.400 | Is there a utility to foam rolling?

00:01:02.680 | - Absolutely.

00:01:04.080 | - Is there a wrong way to do it?

00:01:05.720 | - No, but there's a way that's not a great use of your time.

00:01:09.160 | - Okay. - Right?

00:01:10.000 | So what we're all looking at is,

00:01:11.600 | we have a finite amount of time.

00:01:13.120 | And what's my goal?

00:01:14.200 | To quickly touch my whole body?

00:01:17.520 | You know, what are we trying to do?

00:01:18.680 | So if I was using soft tissue mobilization

00:01:22.600 | and or using a roller or a ball or something,

00:01:26.800 | what's my goal here?

00:01:28.400 | Well, I think, and the research is very clear,

00:01:30.640 | it can help with pain, it can restore range of motion.

00:01:32.400 | Again, very clear.

00:01:33.440 | And I want to point out sort of one of my research friends,

00:01:37.600 | Brent Brookbush,

00:01:38.720 | the Brookbush Institute has incredible summaries

00:01:41.960 | of musculoskeletal care.

00:01:43.120 | Brent is a genius.

00:01:44.320 | And if you go on his site, there's a little hourglass

00:01:47.200 | and you can search like sugar points

00:01:48.920 | and you'll see all of the deep dive research,

00:01:51.840 | analysis of the meta research.

00:01:53.360 | Like you'll be like, okay, this is really excellent.

00:01:56.080 | And it is tricky because, you know,

00:01:58.720 | what doesn't work for my body

00:02:00.000 | or wasn't a good use for time now is useless

00:02:02.080 | and it's easy to shout on the internet.

00:02:03.640 | So what's our goal?

00:02:04.800 | If I was in pain and I was about to exercise,

00:02:08.760 | a quick two or three minute intervention working on,

00:02:12.720 | let's call it desensitization of the tissues,

00:02:15.600 | let's be mechanism agnostic for a second

00:02:18.600 | and say that's a really low level to entry safe,

00:02:23.440 | highly effective way for you to suddenly feel better.

00:02:26.480 | So we create a window of opportunity to move.

00:02:28.480 | That's really cool.

00:02:29.360 | I love that.

00:02:30.200 | No physical therapists in the room.

00:02:31.800 | No one went blind.

00:02:32.960 | You didn't dislocate, right?

00:02:35.000 | So that could be a really excellent use

00:02:37.800 | of some soft tissue work.

00:02:38.840 | The same way a boxer would go or an MMA fighter

00:02:41.040 | or the Olympic lifters in China,

00:02:43.000 | they have people who are giving non-threatening input

00:02:45.960 | to the body to tell the brain it's safe

00:02:48.000 | or to rehydrate something or get some,

00:02:51.360 | again, is it just stimulus

00:02:53.320 | so that the brain says it's safe?

00:02:54.800 | Sure.

00:02:55.760 | Are we restoring how the tissues slide and glide?

00:02:58.400 | Sure.

00:02:59.800 | A lot of times I think if you look at

00:03:01.560 | any of the mobility work, I'll just put writ large,

00:03:04.840 | really comes down to just doing a couple things.

00:03:07.040 | Most of them are just isometrics.

00:03:09.120 | So we have a lot of isometrics,

00:03:11.040 | which everyone can agree is good stuff.

00:03:13.120 | And we do a lot of tempo work.

00:03:14.840 | That's really just moving slowly through range.

00:03:17.600 | It just may be that I'm using a different tool

00:03:20.560 | to have that isometric stimulus

00:03:22.920 | or that tempo moving slowly stimulus.

00:03:26.560 | So we like to say, hey, let's use mobilizations,

00:03:31.120 | mobilizing the tissues.

00:03:32.400 | Why are we doing it?

00:03:33.240 | What are we trying to do?

00:03:34.080 | Well, pain is a good reason.

00:03:35.560 | And again, multifactorial, highly subjective.

00:03:39.200 | Why do I have pain?

00:03:40.040 | Well, I got in a fight with my wife and I didn't eat

00:03:42.560 | and I twisted my knee back in Vietnam.

00:03:45.280 | And who knows, right?

00:03:47.200 | But what are the inputs that I have

00:03:49.360 | to self-soothe and desensitize?

00:03:50.800 | And it turns out a ball and a roller is a really good one.

00:03:53.040 | So I can use those to help myself feel better.

00:03:55.920 | Did that solve the problem?

00:03:57.120 | Did that solve two weeks of shitty sleep?

00:03:59.480 | Did that solve my poor nutrition and lack of fiber?

00:04:01.840 | Did that solve the fact that I don't feel safe

00:04:03.680 | in this environment?

00:04:04.520 | No, but it got me a window of opportunity

00:04:06.720 | where I can go feel better in my body.

00:04:08.680 | Is anyone against that?

00:04:09.640 | No, okay.

00:04:10.800 | So what we can also say is, hey,

00:04:12.560 | this would be a great way to do what?

00:04:14.280 | Restore your range of motion.

00:04:15.600 | A one tool in a system of tools to get you to do what?

00:04:20.000 | Have normative range again, right?

00:04:22.040 | For whatever reason, your lats are super stiff.

00:04:24.360 | Your doesn't, again, it's more complicated than that,

00:04:27.320 | but sometimes it's not more complicated than that.

00:04:29.000 | And if I just get you getting some input into there,

00:04:31.920 | maybe we can restore that range of motion

00:04:33.760 | or create a window where you can go use it again.

00:04:36.160 | Lastly, I would say is that it's a wonderful tool

00:04:39.600 | to decrease DOMS, delayed onset muscle soreness.

00:04:42.720 | So in the evening, you blow out your quads,

00:04:45.240 | do a little soft tissue work.

00:04:46.360 | And what you'll see is maybe that's blood flow.

00:04:49.120 | Maybe it's non-threatening input.

00:04:51.400 | Maybe it's just massage.

00:04:53.360 | Maybe it's just the parasympathetic input

00:04:55.560 | that massage has.

00:04:56.640 | Touch, right, just down regulates.

00:04:58.680 | Maybe those are the reasons I feel better.

00:05:00.520 | But the bottom line is, is that a good use of your time?

00:05:02.680 | Yes.

00:05:03.640 | Are all techniques on the road the same?

00:05:06.400 | No, right?

00:05:07.880 | And I think that's where we've lost our minds

00:05:09.880 | is that if you just rolled up and down on your calf,

00:05:12.360 | didn't do anything.

00:05:13.200 | It's like, yeah, well, you just, what are you doing, right?

00:05:15.880 | What if I rolled side to side?

00:05:18.360 | And so suddenly we can start to layer

00:05:19.720 | in some really complex thinking around this.

00:05:22.480 | How about this?

00:05:23.320 | You have a roller out and I put my calf on there

00:05:26.920 | and I start rolling side to side.

00:05:28.800 | Should that be uncomfortable?

00:05:30.360 | I'm guessing you're going to say no,

00:05:33.960 | but anytime I've used a roller,

00:05:38.840 | anytime I've used a roller, I'm like, man, that hurts.

00:05:42.840 | I don't like it, that sucks.

00:05:44.360 | Well, I mean, I don't mind it.

00:05:45.640 | Like, it's not like the kind of,

00:05:46.560 | it's not like level eight pain or anything.

00:05:49.200 | It's just, it's sort of like, it feels very localized.

00:05:52.760 | Even if the roller is a big fat Costello

00:05:55.240 | the Bulldog size roller,

00:05:56.960 | it feels like someone's kind of kneading down

00:05:58.880 | in between my muscle fibers.

00:06:00.240 | And then I started to think

00:06:01.080 | maybe I just have like low fiber density.

00:06:03.280 | And if I were Mark Bell or something,

00:06:05.000 | then this would feel comfortable.

00:06:06.560 | But, you know, I always feel like the roller

00:06:08.520 | is going down to the bone.

00:06:09.640 | - The base of LFD, low fiber density.

00:06:12.880 | So, you know, what I think we can do

00:06:15.240 | is let's establish some guidelines for people.

00:06:18.600 | 'Cause this is one of the ways

00:06:20.200 | that we can feel better in our home,

00:06:21.360 | without bourbon, without ibuprofen, without THC.

00:06:24.960 | Like we need to give people some tools

00:06:27.240 | that don't, like that aren't just--

00:06:28.960 | - Without having to buy a sauna.

00:06:29.960 | If you can afford one, great, but not every--

00:06:31.960 | I mean, this whole thing with sauna, love saunas, but--

00:06:34.600 | - Doesn't scare you.

00:06:35.440 | - Well, until very recently in my life,

00:06:37.240 | I couldn't afford a sauna, until very recently.

00:06:40.000 | You know, even as a tenured professor at Stanford,

00:06:41.760 | I'll just say that, right?

00:06:42.640 | - You can actually be angry at your parents

00:06:44.200 | for not giving you a sauna.

00:06:45.680 | - No, you know, when I was a kid,

00:06:46.760 | my dad and I used to go to the Y in the evening sometimes,

00:06:49.720 | or I was little, and I'd shoot baskets,

00:06:51.320 | or he would lift weights, Nautilus machines back then.

00:06:54.200 | - Yeah.

00:06:55.040 | - And then--

00:06:55.860 | - Get brutally big on us.

00:06:56.700 | - And then we'd sit in the sauna,

00:06:57.880 | or there was a hot tub or something.

00:06:58.720 | - And you had a different set of trauma,

00:07:00.160 | traumatic experience of sitting in the sauna at the Y.

00:07:02.240 | - No, actually, I learned how--

00:07:04.800 | I learned how--

00:07:05.640 | - How to make eye contact.

00:07:06.480 | - I learned how men over 40 spoke in 1985.

00:07:11.480 | - There you go.

00:07:17.060 | - There you go.

00:07:17.900 | - There you go.

00:07:18.880 | If everyone had a roller and a ball,

00:07:21.520 | there's a lot of dysfunction and discomfort we can manage.

00:07:25.360 | If you push on a tissue,

00:07:26.680 | we expect that tissue to be painless to compression,

00:07:30.240 | or not uncomfortable to compression.

00:07:32.120 | Again, pain is a weird word, I don't want to set that up,

00:07:35.660 | but you shouldn't be uncomfortable to compression.

00:07:37.640 | What's nice is that if I push on something,

00:07:39.800 | all I'm doing is just creating an isometric.

00:07:41.720 | It's just a vector isometric.

00:07:43.080 | Instead of pulling an isometric

00:07:44.360 | through the length of the tissue,

00:07:46.280 | I'm putting it at a different vector and angle.

00:07:48.840 | So that would just be one.

00:07:49.800 | I could start there, and if it was uncomfortable,

00:07:51.840 | well, guess what?

00:07:52.680 | Now I can get my nervous system involved.

00:07:55.040 | So I can teach my brain

00:07:56.800 | that it's safe to create a contraction here.

00:07:58.700 | So what do I do?

00:07:59.540 | Just flex, flex it, hold it for four seconds.

00:08:01.920 | - This is very basic, I realize,

00:08:03.240 | but for many people, they're either already foam rolling

00:08:05.900 | and doing it incorrectly, or they're not foam rolling,

00:08:08.140 | and we want them to do it correctly.

00:08:09.500 | So if I understand correctly,

00:08:11.700 | it's "okay" to flex the muscle

00:08:14.580 | that you have in contact with the foam roller

00:08:16.660 | while you're rolling.

00:08:17.500 | - If I find something that's uncomfortable, or stiff,

00:08:20.820 | or doesn't feel like my other side,

00:08:22.620 | I'm going to stop.

00:08:23.580 | I found a place to work.

00:08:25.380 | I'm going to build, take a big inhale.

00:08:27.900 | So I take a four second inhale.

00:08:31.520 | I want to teach myself

00:08:32.720 | that I need to be able to breathe in this position.

00:08:35.000 | One of my friends, Greg Cook, is like,

00:08:38.080 | "If you can't breathe in a position,

00:08:39.280 | "you don't own a position."

00:08:40.600 | You know, that sounds very Iyengar, too.

00:08:42.880 | But what we're going to do is we're going to say,

00:08:43.900 | "It's okay to breathe here, and I'm going to contract here."

00:08:47.280 | And then I'm going to slowly relax and soften.

00:08:50.720 | That's tempo that's moving slowly,

00:08:52.960 | and I can handle higher loads.

00:08:54.560 | And what'll end up happening

00:08:55.920 | is if I repeat that cycle two or three times, guess what?

00:08:59.080 | My brain desensitizes that.

00:09:00.720 | Changes range of motion.

00:09:01.800 | My brain suddenly is like, "That's not a problem anymore."

00:09:04.600 | So we just move on.

00:09:05.960 | And in two or three cycles of that contraction,

00:09:09.120 | breath hold, long exhale that starts to sound familiar,

00:09:12.760 | right, how do I calm down, long exhales?

00:09:16.360 | I'm not trying to spin up.

00:09:17.800 | I'm trying to say, "This is safe."

00:09:20.480 | I've done that with my breath.

00:09:21.720 | I've done that with contraction.

00:09:23.240 | I'm just getting input in, just touch to my body,

00:09:27.120 | especially on parts that maybe don't bark at me very often.

00:09:30.880 | People are shocked to learn

00:09:32.760 | that sometimes when they have knee pain,

00:09:34.360 | how stiff their quads are.

00:09:36.080 | And then we can test it, load it, feel it, palpate it.

00:09:39.400 | And I'm like, "Those things are just stiff."

00:09:41.040 | And when we un-stiffen them,

00:09:42.800 | whatever technique you want to use,

00:09:44.280 | restore sliding surfaces, get neural input in there.

00:09:48.640 | We create range of motion.

00:09:50.000 | Suddenly we change a motion dynamic, improve deficiency.

00:09:54.400 | The brain says, "Hey, that's no longer a threat,"

00:09:56.280 | or we're experiencing that as a new pattern or position,

00:09:59.160 | that'd be enough to reduce your pain.

00:10:01.560 | But pain isn't the only reason we're mobilizing.

00:10:04.000 | We're mobilizing so that we can reduce session costs,

00:10:07.280 | so we can work out harder the next day

00:10:09.720 | and keep an eye on our minimums of our range of motion.

00:10:14.320 | - Love this.

00:10:15.160 | And another just very basic question,

00:10:17.720 | 'cause I'll be honest,

00:10:18.560 | I haven't foam rolled much in my life.

00:10:20.480 | - And it doesn't have to be a big foam roller, everyone.

00:10:24.000 | Sometimes those big white, those are pool noodles, right?

00:10:27.520 | That's what it was for.

00:10:28.360 | I think like made in Killeen, Texas

00:10:29.920 | as like a manufacturing by-product.

00:10:32.320 | And someone's like, "We could put these in the pool."

00:10:34.240 | And then some physical therapist was like, "Sweet."

00:10:36.240 | Like that thing's way too big and too hard

00:10:38.200 | and too square and too soft.

00:10:40.160 | Like there's a whole bunch of things.

00:10:41.920 | Like sometimes you need an elbow.

00:10:43.120 | Sometimes you need a forearm.

00:10:44.200 | Sometimes you need a thumb.

00:10:45.520 | So you can have much smaller diameter.

00:10:47.320 | I'm a much bigger fan of smaller diameter rollers.

00:10:50.520 | I just think they fit your body better.

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How & Why to Use Foam Rolling For Pain & Recovery | Dr. Kelly Starrett & Dr. Andrew Huberman

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