Hitch Fit Living Magazine Volume 6 - May/June 2016 | Page 46

A foam roller is a fitness apparatus that will enhance your results in the gym! As you may or may not know the muscles actually grow outside of the gym through recovery and nutrition. Working out simply supplies a demand for your muscles to grow. Recovery is the most important factor for your muscles to grow. After you work hard in the gym you must supply your body with the nutrients and time it needs to repair those muscles! People who choose to use steroids to get huge and build extreme amounts of muscle aren't getting huge because the drugs allow them to lift more weight. What steroids do is speed up the recovery process meaning they can repair their muscles faster which means growing them faster and can be ready to work the same muscle again much sooner than someone who is natural. Steroids are awful for your body, have horrible side effects and should be avoided at all costs. You can however increase your recovery time naturally, through your sleep patterns, supplements, a quality nutrition plan and foam rolling. Foam rolling will help you in the gym by naturally increasing your rate of recovery. In every muscle there is a fibrous membrane wrapped around the muscle fibers called muscle fascia. When you exercise a muscle and cause those positive micro tears by working out, your muscle fascia starts to tighten up and constrict your muscles and as a result traps in the toxins such as lactic acid waste and carbon dioxide rich blood not allowing it to escape. Along with the small positive micro tears causing the soreness of your muscles the tightening of the muscle fascia causes you to feel the tightness and soreness as it’s squeezing your muscles restricting blood flow and limiting the nutrients that are being pumped into your muscles. If you roll out your muscles using a foam roller you are stretching out the muscle fascia which loosens the constriction on your muscles and allows the toxins that are trapped to be released while also allowing a bigger flow of fresh oxygen rich blood carrying the nutrients your repairing muscle fibers need to recover. All this means is by foam rolling you naturally create a faster recovery rate which results in more muscle growth. You should foam roll every single time right before your workout and go over all your muscles, it’s a short 10 minute cycle to roll the entire body and will do wonders for your recovery rate and soreness levels. Kurtis McLellan is a Hitch Fit Transformation Trainer at the Overland Park location. Contact him for training at [email protected] or visit www.HitchFitGym.com