Foam Rolling Your Calves

By | August 8, 2013

I have very poor ankle flexibility and very tight calves. Those two things equated to a mangled achilles tendon for me!

Foam Rolling Calves

Foam Rolling Calves

With the major pain now out of the way, thanks to the eccentric heel drops I started this past week, I’m now looking at adding foam rolling to my daily routine in order to loosen up the calves and release some tension on the achilles.

This video demonstrates the procedure, just be sure to not go too low as you don’t want to do your achilles tendon – focus exclusively on the calf muscle:

Some tips I’ve found so far when it comes to foam-rolling:

  • It’s supposed to be painful, especially the first few times you do it. The first few times I did a whole body routine, I was in agony but felt great afterwards!
  • Avoid rolling the achilles. I think this is pretty obvious, but just wanted to throw it out there just in case.
  • Foam rollers, particularly good quality ones, are crazy expensive. A decent full size one is $40 and up. If you want to save money and don’t want to do your entire body, then you can just get one of the narrower ones, or get a section of PVC pipe from your local hardware store.
  • A good quality foam roller is really stiff – the soft rollers are useless and will sag/bend too easily. Believe it or not, PVC pipe is probably best. But it’s downright painful at first for most people.