Foam Rolling is Your Friend
Foam rolling is your friend. When you exercise you are breaking down your muscles so they build back up stronger than before. One of the side effects to this action is the development of scar tissue in the muscles and tendons. Stretching can keep some of the compounding effects of scar tissue development from keeping you on the side lines but once scar tissue develops in the muscle, stretching has a hard time getting it to go away. Foam rolling or any personal massage tool can get into the muscles and tendons and break up the scar tissue, manually stretch the muscles and help to increase blood flow to the area for faster recovery and better muscle development.
There are many good rollers out there. One of my favorite total kits is the PHLX massage system. Developed by Mark Fadil at Sports Medicine Institute in Palo Alto, this kit covers you from head to toe for everything soft tissue related injury and prevention. It is important to have a kit that will help you to prevent injury as well as recover if you over do it. The PHLX system has a wonderful support of videos and pictures to help the end user adapt to new methods and get the most out of their kit.
An Evaluation is a great way to get pointed in the right direction. During this appointment you can point out the areas that are bothering you and Adam can take you through the good-better-best uses of a roller to help recover and prevent.