Foam Roller or Massage Gun: Which one is perfect for you?

Foam rolling or Massage guns therapy, both are feel-good practices to relieve muscular stress, break up adhesions and knots, enhance recovery and performance and release stress-relieving hormones while or not exercising.

Both the tools are handy and can prove to be your best gym companions. Prefacing both, one is a cylindrical bar constructed of a solid plastic cylinder with a dense foam outer covering and non-battery operated you roll over for longer muscle groups like quads (front thigh muscles), glutes (Buttocks muscles), and hamstrings (back thigh muscles) and the other is percussive battery-operated massage therapy with multiple attachments that delivers a sense of vibration to the targeted muscles.

Foam rollers facilitate self-induced massage that operates with the pressure of your body weight on the soft tissues during the rolling motion. This motion exerts both direct and sweeping pressure on the soft tissue, stretching it and generating friction between it and the roller.

Whether choose a foam roller or a massage gun depends on the type of your workout and the demand of the body after the workout.

When to choose a foam roller?

Foam rollers are recommended to be used while (before or after) dynamic stretching i.e. before your exercise routine to give an active warm-up to your body for 5-10 mins.

The Dynamic stretches involve the following moves:

• Hip Circles
• Lunge with a twist
• Arm Circles
• Leg Pendulum
• Spinal Rotations
• Jog to quad stretch

This combination will improve your flexibility, and sprint performance and alleviates your muscle fatigue and soreness post-workout.

Even if you are not indulged in any workout in your routine, you may use a foam roller to simply relax after a long day to release tight muscles before getting into bed, or in the morning to prep your body before starting your day. This is the potential therapy to lower back pain.

Foam rollers are known to release the stiffness of “Myofascia”.

Myofascia is a fine tissue that wraps our muscles and connects them to support a good body posture. It prevents friction between tissues and also transfers force generated by muscle fibers to the bone.

Myofascia can get stiff and fixed due to our sedentary lifestyle, post-injury, post-surgery, or due to repetitive movements that overburden the particular part of the body. This restricts muscle and joint movements, which contributes to widespread muscle pain. These factors altogether reduce your body’s flexibility.

The regular use of foam rollers recreates the friction by raising the intramuscular temperature, myofascial stretching, accelerating blood flow, and thereby reducing muscle soreness and muscle inflammations.

When to use a Massage Gun?

Massage guns are also recommended as part of a daily warm-up to promote increased muscle temperature and activation for an intense workout session. These provide a greater degree of usability and precision when administering self-myofascial release.

Massage guns work effectively for lower limb range of motion in comparison to the foam roller. These can’t replace a manual massage but they can be very functional in the absence of a physical therapist.

Unlike foam rollers, massage guns don’t demand space or any specific posture to maintain. It can be used anywhere even while relaxing on a couch after that intense bout of exercise. You just need to hold the massager and point the tip with the requisite attachment against the targeted points to distress the sore muscles and regulate the blood flow.

The massage guns are specifically designed to target specific areas, pain points, smaller joints, and muscle soreness post-workout. Muscle soreness is the micro damage caused in muscles after hard muscle training and it depends on the intensity of your training. Simultaneously, we experience muscle fatigue due to the accumulation of certain chemicals within the cells while muscle training.

Depending on the targeted tissue i.e. soft or bony, several attachment heads and speed adjustments can be made so that local points can receive a required massage to soothe muscle soreness and muscle fatigue.

The regular use of massage guns on the hamstrings and lower back increases hip flexor and thoracic range of motion in the spine even for 5 minutes can improve lower back flexibility and even delay the onset of muscle soreness.

Due to their ability to increase range of motion and reduce perceived pain and muscle soreness, this handheld percussive massage therapy can also be incorporated as part of a rehabilitation program post-injury as well as during exercise, between reps during resistance and strength training.

Takeaway

Whether a foam roller or a massage gun, both the gadgets can stimulate blood flow, increase your muscle reflexes, improve your mind-body coordination, reduce inflammation and alleviate your pain by relieving the stiff muscles.

Massage guns are comparatively smaller than foam rollers, and they're more portable. The massage guns with a tip are specifically designed to melt away the pain in the areas where it’s hard for other massagers to act, while foam rollers are best for dynamic stretches and self-massage to reduce myofascial pain.

If you are opting for massage guns, make sure to use them correctly and avoid pressing them too hard against the targeted areas as it can call for an injury. Also avoid using massage guns on bony areas, injuries, bruises, and joints.

It’s always better to take medical advice if you are suffering from arthritis, osteoporosis, fibromyalgia, or another musculoskeletal condition.

If you are a gym fanatic, the combination of both massagers before and after a workout can make your workouts exhaustion-free.

Get the Quality Foam Roller and Massage Gun for yourself according to your fitness routine, budget, and level of activities with DrTrust Fitness and DrPhysio Electric Massagers Range.