The foam roller is still a fantastic tool to help release tension and soreness from muscles you never knew were tight or sore. It is a must pre and post-workout recovery tool. It comes in all shapes and sizes to improve mobility and movement and reduce muscle soreness, particularly if you are an experienced lifter.
The first time I used a foam roller on my quads, I both smiled and cried. It hurt, sure, but the relief my body felt when it all over was even greater.
At the same time, while it makes an essential tool for pre workout warmup, creative coaches to come up with alternative uses for the foam roller. Some are worth giving a try.
Here are four foam roller strength exercises you may have never performed—or even knew were available to add your workouts. This may change the way you use and think of foam rollers in the future because they’re for so much more than just rolling your quads.
WHY USE IT FOR STRENGTH?
Not everyone has the benefit of a personal trainer hovering over them to ensure they are lifting with good form. With two of the exercises below, the foam roller acts as a great tool to groove good technique before hitting the barbell. If you lose balance or use other parts of your body to get the lift done, the foam roller will tell you so.
4 Foam Roller Strength Exercises
You may get some strange looks for using the foam roller in an unusual way, but they will not be getting better like you, so brush it off and get on with it.
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Foam Roller Side Plank
You do love side planks, right? Side planks are one of those exercises that coaches program but hardly do themselves, which is a real shame. Because side planks are an excellent exercise to improve your lateral strength, upper and lower back, and shoulders. Adding the foam roller to the mix increases external perturbations and further strengthens your rotator cuffs for the gym and unexpected movements.
Benefits: Adding the foam roller to the side plank further strengthens your rotator cuff.
How to Do Itt:
Lie on one side, keeping your body in a straight line with your left elbow directly underneath your shoulder on top of a horizontal foam roller.
Use your right hand to prop yourself up, raise your right hand until it’s perpendicular to your torso.
Hold for 10 to 20 seconds. Switch sides.
Programming Suggestions: You’re living dangerously with this side plank variation, so be careful. Doing 10 to 20 seconds per side and the sets on the high side, around three to four sets. Do this exercise when you’re fresh as part of your warmup or core routine.
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Foam Roller Dumbbell Pullover
The foam roll pullover takes this great old-school bodybuilding exercise up a notch by providing a slight instability to give you feedback on good technique. A standard error with the pullover is overarching the lower back, but by doing this on the foam roller, you and the floor could become one.
Muscles Trained: Lats, upper back, and chest.
Benefits: Performing the pullover on the foam roller increases core strength and improves technique.
How to Do It:
Hold underneath a dumbbell and carefully sit on one end of the foam roller.
Lie back on the foam roller with your head down one end and lower back on the other, ensuring your entire spine is on the roller.
Press the dumbbell above your chest and lower it behind you—be careful not to over-arch your lower back.
Pull it back over your chest and reset and repeat for reps.
Programming Suggestions: Use a light to moderate weight and perform slowly for extra time under tension. Two to four sets of eight to 12 reps work well here.
Seeing you’re on the floor, pairing this with a single arm floor press or a side/front plank variation works well. For example,
1A. Dumbbell Pullover: Eight to 12 reps
1B. Single-arm Floor Press: Six to eight reps per side
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Foam Roller Rollout
The regular ab rollout has you either grip a barbell loaded with plates, an ab wheel, or an exercise ball. But if you have none of these things the foam roller is a great substitute. This is a mix between a rollout and walkout, strengthening your core and shoulder stability. The ab rollout strengthens you in an extended position to help improve core stability and recruits muscle fibers that would otherwise be untouched.
Muscles Trained: The Benefits of the Foam Roller Walkout · More abdominal muscle (or hypertrophy) control and stability. · More strength in a lengthened (or eccentric) position is essential for a good overhead press.
Strengthens shoulder stability due to walking out the foam roller one hand at a time.
How to Do It
Get on your knees and place your hand shoulder width apart on the foam roller.
“Walk” the foam roller out hand at a time while extending your hips toward the floor and let your chest sink forward toward the ground without overarching your lower back.
The longer range of motion, the harder the exercise, so shorten your ROM if you’re new to the exercise.
Squeeze the lat muscles and slowly walk back to the starting position.
Programming Suggestions: Due to the more intense nature of this variation keeping the reps (there and back is one rep) low is advisable, around four to eight reps as part of your warmup routine.
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Foam Roller Single-leg Deadlift
By pressing the foam roller down into your foot helps groove probably the most difficult hip hinge in the book, the single-leg hinge. The foam roller single-leg deadlift is a regression to the single-leg deadlift and helps dial in your form to get the best out of this difficult movement.
Muscles Trained: Calves, hamstrings, glutes, upper back
Benefits: This move acts as a nice regression from the weighted single-leg deadlift and helps to improve single-leg balance.
How to Do It:
Press the foam roller on top of your right foot with your right hand.
With a slight bend in your left knee, push the foam roller and perform a hinge with the left hip until your upper body is slightly above parallel.
Return to the starting position with your right foot slightly off the ground. Reset, then repeat.
Programming Suggestions: This is a great warmup exercise if you have any single-leg exercises in your routine. Anywhere from six to 10 reps on each side works well.
