Foam rolling useful or not?

• Using a foam roller may reduce stiffness but it does not loosen anything. Muscle tissue contains certain sensors that are activated by pressure, creating relaxation in the central nervous system.
• Foam rolling does not make you stronger, more limber or less likely to get injured.
• Besides using a foam roller, it is also wise to use other recovery methods.

Foam rolling definitely makes you feel like something is happening. It can hurt or even feel good in a pleasant way. Foam rolling can be useful to reduce stiffness from exercise. The mechanism behind foam rolling works as follows:
By applying pressure to muscle fibres, you cause activation of certain receptors (mechano-receptors). The same applies to massage, by the way. Massage actually activates muscle fibres, reducing stiffness and increasing mobility. This stiffness is also called a neural lock in the literature. Neural thus stands for the nervous system. So nothing is literally locked in the body as we have always thought but muscle tissue is stiff. By activating muscle fibres and especially the mechano-receptors as mentioned earlier, mobility often increases rapidly. This is always temporary. Another confirmation that we cannot literally loosen or lengthen anything. Otherwise we wouldn't have an increase in mobility so quickly, often within a few minutes of foam rolling you already move much easier.

Foam rolling by itself has few benefits. When you don't apply other important things, the foam roller alone has little added value. By this I mean that if you want to become more limber, it is probably much more useful to start moving at the angles and positions in which you want to become more limber. If you want to be able to squat deeper, start focusing mainly on good squat technique. If you experience a lot of stiffness in your low back, make sure you ask mobility of your spine on a daily basis. Another thing is that you won't get stronger from foam rolling, of course. If you want to gain strength, train strength! Nor is it the case that you are less likely to get injured with foam rolling. Foam roll all you want but if your sleep, recovery time and training programme are not in order, forget it!

Foam rolling is best combined with other recovery strategies
When you do want to foam roll then, it is wise to combine it with other recovery strategies such as walking and cycling. Foam rolling on its own has too little benefit for recovery between workouts. If you really experience too many limitations such as a lot of small pains and stiffness, combine foam rolling with walking or cycling. In recovery training, the goal is to move as much as possible without putting extra strain on muscle tissue. What exactly you do doesn't really matter that much. Just make sure you enjoy moving around. In addition, it can be useful to give your body a longer rest between training sessions. If you notice that you are not performing as well as you would like to during a few training sessions, skip a day. If, as a powerlifter, you spend a day doing only your supporting exercises (triceps, trapezius, etc) or, as a bodybuilder, you spend a day doing arms, calves and abs, this is the ideal day to skip. You can probably catch up on these when you take a break from this session the following week. But trust me, your performance won't suffer if you just let this slip once. There is still too much fear about not training. Several studies show that literally nothing happens to muscle mass and muscle strength when you take a week's rest. Of course, this shouldn't become too many weeks in a year but you get what I mean.

Personally, I am neither for nor against foam rolling, but am annoyed when it is magnified to the point of forgetting to actually train. Moving a 300-gram foam roller doesn't really count as training. Also, too much energy is often wasted on foam rolling that it seriously affects your first exercise! So if you enjoy doing it, do it after your workout or on a separate day and combine it with walking, running or another light workout.