15 Self-Massage
although it is a popular and important tool for recovery, massage can quickly get prohibitively expensive. If you don’t have the luxury of regular massage, you can
bridge the gap between sessions with some self-massage. Self-massage helps you release adhesions, knots, and trigger points in the soft tissues and is an important part of injury prevention. It is also a way to give yourself some assistance in stretches, by anchoring one end of a muscle against the ground, your hand, or a device while you stretch in the other direction.
Ultrarunner Keith Straw recommends manipulating any area in the body that is bothering you. “I do a lot of poking around myself,” he says. “I prod my knees, rub my feet, pound my pecs.”
Since the body works as a kinetic chain, self-massage can target every link. The foam roller (described below) is popular among the members of the University of North Carolina cross-country team, coach Peter Watson reports. “Start at the bottom of your foot and work to your hip,” Watson suggests, and he advises athletes to experiment with props beyond the roller. “Use a golf ball for the foot, or a lacrosse ball for the legs.” He recommends paying special attention to iliotibial (IT) bands and hamstrings.
USA Cycling soigneur Bernard Condevaux advises self-massage as well. “There’s an economic reality, and a lot of teams can’t afford soigneurs or individual massage,” he says. To get the most from your self-massage on a foam roller, he suggests, “Be aware of what you’re doing. Keep it moving. Roll toward your heart. If you find a spot that’s tight or tender, sit on it for 10 seconds. If it doesn’t back off, change the pressure. Mashing the muscle is not always the best thing. The target is flushing out, getting the muscle to recover, not beating it.”
Tools
Your hands are the simplest tool for self-massage. Reach into areas of the body that are calling for your attention and see if you can feel what’s going on. Trace the muscle fibers to their origin and insertion points, along either end. Is there a particular sore spot or trigger point? How does it respond to pressure?
Applying cross-friction massage, against the grain of the muscle fibers, can help to release adhesions and scar tissue limiting your range of motion.
Devices include foam rollers, beaded sticks, balls, and branded devices, such as Trigger Point Therapy devices. Let’s examine what to look for in your tools.
Foam rollers come in various densities and durabilities. The simplest is a white Styrofoam roller, similar to a floating noodle pool toy (but thicker) and widely available. The foam has some give, keeping the massage a little lighter than a denser roller. They are inexpensive but may not last long. Also available are darker rollers made of high-density foam. Even more rigid are rollers with foam or a material with protuberant nubs wrapped around a hard core.
Beaded sticks include a device called “The Stick” and other implements that feature hard plastic or wooden beads on a stick. The shape and material of the beads will affect your experience; if possible, try the implement out before buying.
Balls from various sports make useful, inexpensive self-massage devices. Golf balls work well for the bottoms of the feet, as do small hard rubber balls (think Superball). Lacrosse balls or baseballs (even softballs or their rubber substitutes) work into the calves and deep hip rotators. Tennis balls can be good choices, depending on their firmness and the sensitivity of the area being worked. Two balls lashed together with athletic tape make a peanut shape that’s especially useful for working the muscles on either side of the spine.
Trigger Point Therapy makes a range of instruments to address most parts of an athlete’s body, with many of them in interesting shapes. You’ll see the company’s “Grid,” a hollow, hard-core, foam-wrapped roller, in the photos in this chapter. The “Quadballer” and “Footballer” are tapered, cigarshaped rollers (larger and smaller, respectively) with inline-skate wheels on either end. The material of these devices combines firmness with a little give, and they are pretty widely available at running and cycling shops, race expos, and online.
You can get creative as you choose your implements. Elite runner Marc Jeuland uses a wooden rolling pin for self-massage. Ultramarathoner Nikki Kimball uses an antler!
Technique and Time
The general technique for using any of these implements is similar. Put the device on the floor, place your leg or arm or back on it, and apply pressure (or place a ball between your body and the wall, if you’re working your chest and back muscles). Once the pressure feels right, slowly travel along the muscle fibers a few times, pausing as you feel particular points of tightness or frission. In general, you will move distally to centrally, in other words, making trips from the periphery of the body toward the center. If it feels productive to travel back and forth along the muscle from end to end, that is fine, too.
You can work the whole body or just problem areas such as the plantar fasciae on the bottom of the feet and the IT band. A few passes over each muscle or area should do. If your muscles are already inflamed or overtired, overdoing your self-massage will simply aggravate the condition and prevent your recovery—yielding a result opposite from what you intended. Bigger muscle groups can probably take more pressure than smaller groups. Let your body be your guide.
How often you do self-massage depends on your time, schedule, and needs. It might become a nightly habit, part of your downtime ritual. Or maybe you take care to do your self-massage on the days when you run long or hard—or just on the days when you run, if you are a multisport athlete.Experiment to find what works best for you.
Self-Massag e for Common Problems
Quads
The four large muscles of the quadriceps (Figure 15.1) are a good starting point for your foam rolling. Take a leg to one edge of your roller, with the other leg resting on the ground. You’ll be resting on your palms or elbows. Start with the roller positioned just above your knee and slowly push your hips back so that you roll in toward the center along the front of your thigh. After a few passes here, turn to the outer edge of your leg. (You can bend your supporting leg at the knee and have the sole of the foot on the ground.) Follow with some long strokes up the inner quadriceps muscles.
Hamstrings
Sit on the ground, with the back of one or both legs resting on the roller just above the back of the knee (Figure 15.2). Supporting weight in your hands, slowly roll your hips toward the roller. After a few trips, rotate to the outer and inner edges of the hamstrings.
Calves
You’ll work on your calves in much the same way as the hamstrings (Figure 15.3), rolling up and down slowly and taking care to get to both edges as well as the central musculature. You may find, however, that the weight of your lower leg and foot isn’t heavy enough to give the same massage. Add weight by crossing one ankle over the other and focusing your attention on the bottom leg.
IT Band
Working your IT band can be an excruciating experience. Check that you are not going too deep; if you are gasping, you may be forcing the issue, which can aggravate existing inflammation.
Sit one hip on the roller, with the other leg bent at the knee, sole of the foot on the floor (Figure 15.4). If you’re rolling your right leg, your right hand or elbow will rest on the floor. Start at the bottom of the thigh, just outside and above the knee, and slowly make your way toward the outer hip. You may have to pause to breathe deeply and collect yourself—again, be sure you aren’t working too hard. A few passes should suffice.
Outer Hip
Continuing upward from your IT band work, explore the muscles of the outer hip. Your gluteal muscles are prime targets, as is the piriformis muscle, which lies deep in the hip. If you can’t reach deep enough with the roller, use a tennis ball or a harder, rubber ball. You’ll sit on it, lean back into your hands, and explore until you find the right spot (Figure 15.5).
Soles of the Feet
The plantar fasciae that run along the bottoms of your feet are prime territory to explore with a smaller implement, be it a tennis ball, rubber ball, or a golf ball. If you’re using a softer device, you may be able to stand and carefully place your
body weight onto the ball (Figure 15.6). If it’s a harder device such as a golf ball, you’ll want to sit down so that the sensation doesn’t grow too intense. Roll over both the arch, from the heel to the ball of the foot, and the spaces between the metatarsals, running the ball into the four spaces at the base of the five toes.
Back
Use the roller to run up and down your back, finding spots that need extra attention (Figure 15.7). If certain areas are particularly sore, you may want to revisit them with a smaller implement, such as a tennis or rubber ball. Two balls taped together can work right along either edge of the spine. Go slowly and pay attention to your experience. Breathe deeply into the places where sensation is the strongest.
Chest
Depending on the size and shape of your chest (and the size and shape of your breasts), you may have success lying facedown on the roller (Figure 15.8). If that’s infeasible, use a smaller, handheld ball. Hold the ball against the pectoralis muscles as you roll, or if you need greater force, take the ball to the corner of a wall and work in from there.

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