Yep, foam rolls are great. Most folks, though, will find that the black foam rolls are a bit too firm to start with. If your muscles and fascia are particularly tight, you might start off with a white foam roll or even a blue one.
Lacrosse balls work great for rolling your feet and working around your shoulder blades. For the back, you can work either with the ball between your back and the floor, or standing against a wall (I prefer the latter).
looks like you can buy them in bulk from $5-$15 with a 500 piece minimum purchase. So $20 does not seem that bad.
I really have no idea on the realities of Alibaba prices I have just found it an interesting site to look at a different perspective on products; since accidentally ending up there when my daughter wanted a charm for a charm bracelet that we could not find locally. (she did not see much humour when i told her I had found what she was looking for but we would have to buy 1000)
“Tenderloin.”
– Hannibal Lechter
Just sit on one of these bad boys…
Go get those lacrosse balls today. For less than $20, you can pick up athletic tape and 3-4 lacrosse balls. Two taped lacrosse balls against the wall are so good for working out t-spine issues.
Another recommendation: It may be a bit crossfit oriented, but Kelly Starrett’s “Becoming A Supple Leopard” is the best book I’ve read on sorting out joint and muscle pain issues. The book was $40, and a minimal set of gear (lacrosse balls, resistance band, old bike tubes) was another $40. Best $80 I’ve ever spent. Even if you don’t use the middle section on exercise form (he goes over barbell work, burpees, pull-ups and what-not), the first section on general movement and last section on mobility fixes are worth it alone.
and @xeni
Also check out, and this isn’t a plug, I do this religgiously, www.totalsurfingfitness.com - obviously, it’s surfing oriented, but it’s a great program (that builds and evolves, for around $40 for bunch of pdfs) of all round core strength with some half-decent stretching (I have to do additional due to a couple of fouled up discs - but where the docs say I should be hobbling, I’m surfing, running, swimming, all the good stuff).
I’ve got an amazing physio here in London who I see once every 3-6 months, but given the condition I was in 5/6 years ago, he’s more than happy, and so am I.
check out joe defranco’s limber 11 on youtube:
he hits all the points that have been mentioned here. super useful.
I was just diagnosed (after about 20 years of recurring bouts of throwing out my lower back) with what appears to be spondylolysis, so this is one of the things that has popped up in my search for things to help improve my back health. Thanks for the review, I likely would have gone with the cheapest roller I could find. Good to know that it’s possible to go TOO cheap, though 
Is this “body-hacking” or is this using a common product for its intended purpose?
I think the women who wrote Skinny Bitch had the perfect rejoinder to comments like “gak organic food is more expensive!” and “gak $20 is too much to spend on forever pain relief!”: “Don’t be a cheap ass.”
The price of everything, the value of nothing, etc.
Here’s an even better standing desk to use a couple of hours a day…
(had this image in my head, but couldn’t find it…)
It’s a hack in that it re-purposes a dysfunctional pain-generating tuchus and makes it into a more functional cushion/housing for muscles of ambulation/dancing and dalliance accessory. The product is commonly (even intimately) known to many, but utterly unknown to many others. For $20, it’s a cheap tool that can greatly improve the lives of some, so I think it’s a worthwhile topic.
Two tennis or lacrosse balls in a sock or nylons also work.
Many people have pain in the butt and upper thigh from “piriformis syndrome.” The piriformis is one of several hip rotators under the glutes.
Before the 20th century, most people had massive glutes from daily walking, climbing stairs, and toting around heavy loads. The glutes stabilized the hip joints and pelvis. Also the bulk of the glutes protected the smaller muscles and sciatic nerve from pressure. Without strong glutes to help attach the legs to the pelvis, mechanical stress gets put on the much small hip rotator muscles, and they are likely to respond by having painful spasms. These spasms are deep in the pelvis and hard to pinpoint because they under the glutes. Modern office chairs and car seats wrap around the hips and press directly in the sciatic nerve and piriformis muscle. “Ergonomic” chairs are torture for many people.
Glutes:
Other muscles:
The cost of access to a pool and the far from negligible costs of ice packs, heat wraps, nutritional costs, canes, specialized cushions/braces/tools like bands, taped tennis balls and exercise balls, the roller, shoes, and ergonomic furniture eat up a large part of what remains of my budget after paying for my health insurance (which, thank FSM, I still have). When your budget is another casualty of your injury or your condition, a roller that significantly helps to manage pain and strengthen the body is cheap at $20.
For several years I’ve used the roller that Xeni recommends, and it has been one of the most valuable tools (in $ and function) my physical therapist has recommended. It is an immense help in managing the chronic pain I live in after several sports injuries and the surgeries they’ve required. Managing pain 24/7 and working to achieve a better quality of life changes one’s priorities drastically: $20 for a simple tool that I use multiple times a day every day of the year seems like a steal from my perspective.
Re-reading what I’ve written, it sounds overly strident, but here I stand, lightning bolts shooting down my left leg to my foot, 70% of which has been numb for 6 years. Time for the roller.
Ok, that’s creepy. That woman looks just like one of my ex’s. Fricken spooky.
What’s your alternative? There’s this thing called constructive criticism. Please look into it.
That roller was an integral part of my daughter’s physical therapy for her knee and highly recommended by the therapist for ongoing treatment. Absolutely worth the money, no question. There is such a thing as too cheap. I say this as someone who saves rubber bands and paper clips (etc.) thanks to growing up with two parents who had lived through the Depression.
I used to use tennis balls or, even better, a rolled up/balled up dish towel to dig into my glutes and rub them. But then the tumors spread or damaged more nerves and it doesn’t feel good to do that any more. :o/
Foam rollers R great. Learning a few techniques can make their use easier and the outcomes immeasurably better.
In addition to roller use, may I suggest the following:
The Knobber, a massage tool that’s cheap, easy and wonderfully savage.
The tool can be used to “hit” those deep spots that elude the blunt surface of rollers. At times, I’ve taken advantage of body weight by placing the tool beneath my leg at the bottom/insertion point of the G. Max/Min zone to get long lasting relief that softens one’s back as well as back-side.
These tools have become components within my standard workout, now that I’m 3+ post-hip reconstruction surgery and rehab.
PS - the acrylic Knobber is highly portable, fitting into any back-pack or like bag’s side-pocket.
