“Hi Dr. Josh, So I’ve started doing foam rolling at home, which helps a little, but I still feel like it’s not really helping my knee. What am I doing wrong?”
One of our favorite mobility exercises to prescribe is foam rolling. It’s a great way to engage tight, tender areas of the body, and is very easy to do on your own once instructed properly. And if done correctly and consistently, it can be very beneficial. But what happens when rolling and mobilizing tight muscles isn’t doing the trick?
Many people may just keep rolling away, hoping that the tight area will eventually release. In many cases, the muscle that is the perceived culprit, is a muscle that is trying to help stabilize or ‘compensate’ for dysfunction taking place elsewhere. These muscles are already in adequate stretch, and rolling them till kingdom come will not amount to much.
Take medial knee pain for example. The strategy might be to roll the inside of the knee and the inside of the thigh, attempting to ‘mobilize’ the area. But all along it is a weakness of a hip flexor muscle, causing motor control and stability dysfunction. The taut and tender muscles on the inside of the leg were trying to make up for the dysfunction of the weak hip flexor muscle, and bring stability to the area, and in turn making the inside of the knee feel painful. Rolling may relieve for a little while, but the pain will keep coming back.
If you ever find yourself at a dead end with mobility work, and in particular foamrolling, consider that it may take an objective pair of hands and eyes to help get to the bottom of the real problem. We at Arlington Pain & Rehab can be that objective viewpoint to help you become pain free and back to your normal exercise, training or simple activities of daily living.
-Dr. Josh
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