You sit at your desk for 8 - 12 hours and feel tight, sore and tense everywhere. Eating right and working out for 30 minutes a day doesn't seem to help.
Your neck hurts, your wrists ache and you’re beginning to slouch like a fictitious cartoon character.
Your problem is the sitting-for-long-periods-a-day is causing deformity to your natural structure.
An upright structure.
This is why I use a stand-up desk but a foam roller will help you roll out the tense knots causing all sort of nasty issues.
Your body is adapting to your sedentary lifestyle
Our bodies are a remarkable machine.
It’ll try to adapt to whatever you throw at it.
So if you sit at your desk all day your hip muscles will begin to shorten and your shoulders will begin to round.
Short/tight muscles and ligaments are the cause of joint regions becoming dysfunctional and producing pain and stiffness.
This is where trigger points come into play.
A trigger point is specific “knot” that forms in your muscles. They are unique and can be identified because they will refer pain.
If you foam roll and feel no pain, and over time you will, you have no trigger points.
I have a nasty trigger point around my teres minor/major and deltoid muscles.
Anytime I foam roll this area I get a pain sensation that shoots down to my little finger.
These trigger points / knots create issues with my ulnar nerve and neck so I use a foam roller and lacrosse ball to roll out these problem areas.
It relieves my neck pain and ulnar nerve restriction.
Amazing, yet so simple.
The benefits of foam rolling
The benefits for me is it relieves neck and shoulder tension but for you it may vary.
You could have neck pain, knee aches or low back issues.
Whatever it is, there is key benefits to self-myofascial release and the use of foam rollers and lacrosse balls to target problem areas.
Here are the primary benefits:
- Improved blood circulation throughout your skin, fascia, muscles, and even tendons and ligaments.
- As a result of improved blood circulation you’ll create a more efficient exchange of nutrients and waste products at a cellular level. This leads to a better overall cellular function and inter-cellular communication.
- As with my shoulder issues it’ll lengthen short (tight) muscles, tendons, and ligaments. A key benefit to many sedentary created issues.
- Muscles, like hip flexors and ligaments, like iliotibial band are prone to shortening, and are difficult to effectively stretch and apply therapeutic pressure to using standard massage and trigger point therapy techniques. With a foam roller you’ll be able to apply deep pressure to such areas and lengthen shortened tissues, preventing physical imbalances that can predispose you to injury.
- Promotion of optimal spinal range of motion. You can accomplish this by slowly rolling your spine against a foam roller and pausing whenever you feel restrictions to allow your joints and surrounding tissues to stretch.
The key to relieving pain in a sedentary lifestyle is to not be sedentary.
I know, no breathtaking scientific research there.
Unfortunately as an office working professional you’ll have to incorporate other key strategies like foam rolling to release tension and pain.
You may think you're injured when in fact it’s just shortened muscles and tight joints that are telling you to ease up on what you’re doing.
Using a foam roller and lacrosse ball can save you many painful night. [CLICK TO TWEET]
I use the Rumble Roller. It’s a little pricey but totally worth it.