Be Well: Your Frenemy, the Foam Roller

MSP Mag | April 17, 2019

NWHSU fitness expert gives a user’s guide to foam rolling with Minneapolis.St.Paul Magazine.

Who feels the burn harder than the eye-scrunching, grunt-with-every-rep iron benders of the gym? Just cast your eyes on the perimeter of the room and you’re bound to find a body or two splayed out on an innocuous piece of cylinder foam, aggressively jamming it into every bump and ridge of their body, faces twisted up in pain.

Cold sweat should never be mistaken for a post-workout cool down. In fact, when you apply that kind of force to your joints, “the body will start going into fight-or-flight mode, where everything is going to shut down just to protect you,” says Dr. Gregory DeNunzio, chief-of-staff and clinical coordinator at Northwestern Health Sciences University. Here, he extols its proven benefits, cautions against its hurt-so-good reputation, and takes us through a couple of the most popular foam rolling moves.

Read the full Be Well article at Minnepolis.St.Paul Magazine here.