In this new video I demonstrate three of my favourite techniques for using the roller on your quads!

The feedback from our recent calf rolling video has prompted me to make a similar video for foam rolling the front of the upper thigh.

The myofascial release techniques highlighted in this video are incredibly effective in managing pain and tightness in the quads muscles, helping many runners successfully avoid, or recover from, knee pain.

Let me know how you get on!

You can find more of James’ advice on Kinetic-Revolution and here is our recommended foam roller.

[Here below a transcript of the video]

In this video I’ll show you 3 techniques to more effectively foam roll your quads. Hey there, team, it’s James from Kinetic Revolution. I want to say a big thank you to everyone who liked, shared and commented on our calf rolling video last week, looking how to better use one of these guys. That spurred me on, especially the feedback that we’ve had from that, to look hat giving you more videos to focus on foam rolling, and the observe next choice is to look at those quads.

To begin with, let’s set up so that we’ve got the foam roller underneath the lowest end of of those quads, just above the knee. You’re going to be face down, foam roller obviously between the ground and your quads. From there, we’re going to work then up and down, moving your body up and down in long, straight linear strokes, from the top of the thigh back down to the bottom of the thigh, back up to the top, back down to the bottom. Don’t forget, just as we worked on with our calves last week, we can also make sure that we change the positioning of that limb to start to get different areas of this muscle group. We can rotate the leg in to start to get some more of the outside of the thigh, and then we can rotate the leg out to make sure that we get somewhat more of the inside of the thigh.

From there we can also start, as we’re rolling up and down, thinking about what we’re feeling, thinking about whether there’s a certain area that feels a little bit of a knot, a little bit of a trigger point. If we’re finding one of those more tender areas, you can pause momentarily over the top of that, hold your body weight onto that area, breathe gently into it, and after a few seconds hopefully that’ll start to relax.

You can also start getting into a little bit of cross-frictioning. Again, those muscle fibers being aligned straight up and down the leg, we can start to think a little bit more about trying to get that 90 degrees angle of attack if you like across those muscle fibers, some more cross-frictioning. We can start to get onto that same tender point and oscillate from side to side, side to side, half an inch either way, very slow, very deliberate. Again, let’s keep going with that for 30 seconds or so, and you can repeat if you find other areas which feel similar as you move up and down the thigh.

From there we can also start to add in some slightly more active techniques. Again, just like we did with the calf last week, we can start think about how we could pinpoint an area, again one of those tender areas, one of those knots we find. We can hold ourselves over the top of the foam roller on one of those areas, and then start flexing and extending the knee, using those hamstrings to pull the knee into flexion, bend the knee and then allow ourselves to come back to extension. Flex, extend; we’re working those muscles through range of motion with that extra little bit of a little applied force over the top as we bring our body weight onto that foam roll, so we start to get again that active release.

So, 3 techniques there, something for you to have a go at. Let me know how you get on. Leave a comment below. If you found this helpful, don’t forget to like the video, and I’ll speak to you soon. Bye now.