Treatment & self-care
Foam rolling and ball work without making things worse
Self-pressure tools are excellent for large accessible muscles and a bad idea over nerves, vessels and bony prominences.
Published:
Where tools beat hands
Glutes, quadriceps, calves, thoracic paraspinals, lateral hip and the plantar surface of the foot are all easier to load with a ball or roller than with fingers, and they tolerate body-weight pressure well.
Use a tennis or lacrosse ball against a wall for the shoulder blade region and the glutes; a roller for long muscles; a small ball for the sole of the foot.
Technique that changes something
Rolling quickly up and down a whole limb is a warm-up, not a release. To affect a specific point, find it, then stop and hold for 30 to 60 seconds, or make small slow movements of the joint while the pressure stays on the same spot.
Keep total time modest: five to eight minutes for a region is plenty, and more usually just buys next-day soreness.
Places not to roll
Avoid the front and side of the neck, the armpit, the inner thigh close to the groin, the back of the knee, and directly over the spine's bony ridge, ribs or a recent injury. Numbness, tingling or radiating pain means move off immediately.
Some muscles listed on this site — pelvic floor, scalenes, pterygoids, subclavius — are simply not self-treatment territory, and their pages say so.
Studies cited
Every claim in this article traces back to one of the sources below.
- Charles 2019 — A systematic review of manual therapy techniques, dry cupping and dry needling in the reduction of myofascial pain and myofascial trigger points. J Bodyw Mov Ther 2019;23(3):539-46 ↗
- Moraska 2017 — Responsiveness of myofascial trigger points to single and multiple trigger point release massages: a randomized, placebo-controlled trial. Am J Phys Med Rehabil 2017;96(9):639-45 ↗
- Simons & Travell — Myofascial Pain and Dysfunction: The Trigger Point Manual (2nd ed.). Williams & Wilkins, Baltimore ↗
