Foam rolling is an excellent technique to remove lactic acid and metabolic waste from your body, allowing your muscles to replace those harmful, lingering compounds with new oxygen. If you can’t afford your own personal masseuse, a foam roller is the next best thing (plus, it’s far cheaper).

 

What makes a good foam roller?

Foam rollers have gone much beyond simple cylinders of solid foam during the last decade and a half, and the market now offers full-blown pieces of sophisticated, specialized technology. This implies you should think about a range of product attributes before getting one.

 

These are the three main things to look out for:

 

1. Is the foam roller the right size?

All of the bells and whistles in the world won’t help you if you can’t stretch out every square inch of your body that has to be rolled onto the roller.

 

2. Are the extra functions on your foam roller beneficial?

When you use all of the bells and whistles on your roller, are you experiencing a better final result?

 

3. Is the roller capable of performing all of the necessary tasks?

Would your roller become a piece of trash if its special functions stopped working, or would its size, grooves, and textures allow it to continue to function well despite the absence of special functionality?

 

We looked at some foam rollers and made a concise list of the 3 best ones we found.

 

The Morph

 

The Morph is one of the best out there. It’s a full-sized foam roller that compresses quickly and can be carried almost anywhere. The Morph features a surface texture that meets or exceeds that of other premium foam rollers that are not portable, in addition to having a pack-flat construction.

 

Foam rollers’ portability is an under-appreciated quality, especially if you plan to keep one around for personal usage and require it to travel. All the automated features in the world won’t help you if you can’t get the foam roller to where it needs to be.

 

If you need to foam roll on a daily basis for the long-term health of your muscles, having a portable foam roller like The Morph on hand ensures that your foam roller is working as hard as it always is, even when you’re on vacation.

 

Buy The Morph for $69.95 from Amazon.

 

 

Moji Foam Roller

 

This foam roller is a warmable foam roller that heats up in the microwave in the same way a Hot Pocket does. Aside from having surface texturing similar to other premium rollers, the Moji can also be split into two halves, allowing you to change its length and foam roll different areas at the same time.

 

Since heat is linked to muscle relaxation, heating a foam roller makes sense. It aids in the faster transport of heat to the muscle and enhances the warming of the muscles induced by the roller’s friction. Because you want your muscles to relax and be comfortable, adding heat rather than cold to your rolling mixture makes more sense. Heat has a way of speeding up the process. It isn’t, however, a deep penetrating massage.

 

Buy the Moji for $69.99 from Fit2Run.

 

Lifepro Surger

 

This roller is a vibrating roller with ridges and texture that, thanks to its intense pulsations, can speed up the muscle-activation process. Even if the vibrations don’t work—or if the vibrating function doesn’t operate at all—the grooves and ridges on this roller are more than enough to get the job done, and outperform those on most rollers, including others that aren’t electrically boosted.

 

The Lifepro Surger has all of the important rolling features, including a substantial size, suitably firm foam, and ridges to target deep tissues, as well as the capacity to charge and vibrate. Because the outcomes are more or less the same, this can help you get through the rolling process more quickly.

 

Buy the Lifepro Surger for $99.96 from Amazon.

 

 

Now that you know more about recovery, here’s advice on how to choose the right protein supplement for you, in order to maximize that workout.

 

Photo via Amazon