I see some videos of people continuously rolling the foam roller back and forth on themselves, and I was taught by a personal trainer (the only one Ive met who seemed to know his stuff) to roll slowly to a point where you find a knot, then apply pressure there for 30 seconds and move on. Something about the golgi body releasing after 15 secs of sustained pressure or something.
I usually do it his way, and with great results. I was just curious if there was any difference in the benefits between the two styles of rolling.
Do both. I prefer to roll it, back and forth slightly but will leave it on a spot that is knotted up as well.
The proper way to do it is to “hover” from point to point.
You don’t sweep back and forth. You don’t jump from point to point either.
You kind of float with constant short movements until you’ve found another spot you want to work on.
The more experienced you are the faster you can identify and move to troubled spots with less intermittent movement.
It might take me 30 minutes or more to accomplish the same quality of MF release as my chiropractor accomplishes in 15-20 minutes or less.