I’m a big fan of

1. General dynamic stretching before a lifting/running/exercise session
2. Specific warm-up sets before lifting heavy
3. General static stretching and foam rolling after a session or on off days (or just about any

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Most people do not realize how powerful water is in the healing process.

No, this is not an article about spa therapy, holistic medicine, or anything like that. This is about using simple methods to build muscle and strength as well as maintaining your overall health.

Your body might be 60% water overall, but your muscles are actually 70-75% water. Each time you work these muscles as you lift weights, small tears and rips form in the fibrous muscle tissues. Your muscles grow when these small tears are repaired. Guess what happens if your muscles aren’t able to heal:

Nothing.

Nothing happens at all. That means no growth, no toning, no strength increases… nothing.

Here’s a quick breakdown of why you need water to heal and how to harness its power to help your muscles after a workout.

Got Water?

Not getting enough water has serious side effects. Even a 1 percent change in your body’s water levels can seriously impair your exercise performance. Even worse, your ability to recover goes down the toilet… and the toilet it goes down is one of those water-saving dry flush things that doesn’t quite get the job done.

Some other reasons you need extra water when you lift weights:

The technical name for foam-rolling is Self-Myofacial Release (SMR).    Most people just call it by foam-rolling because it’s easier to say and it’s more well-known as that.  I am going to refer to it as SMR for short.  SMR has been used in physical therapy for years.  It has only recently become main stream in the fitness realm though.

SMR is primarily used to correct muscle imbalances in the body.  As we go through our normal (outside the gym) lives we develop some imbalances.  An imbalance reduces muscle strength and posture, thus increasing your risk of injury, especially when those imbalances are accentuated by heavy loads as in lifting weights.

It works basically like a deep tissue massage.  When rolling across a muscle you apply pressure to the muscle spindle.  The muscle spindle is what reflexively contracts your muscle when it stretches too far or too fast.  (Technically, that’s how your muscle contracts.  It doesn’t really shorten.  The muscle itself actually lengthens the muscle spindle then contracts it.  Some food for thought: While your muscle may appear shorter when it contracts, in one or more of the three planes of motion it may actually be lengthening.  That is how your muscle remains tense.)  By using the muscle spindle as self-applied force on the muscle, it will cause it to stretch because you are holding a segment in place while it is pulling from the other end of the muscle.

What are the benefits?

There are multiple uses for foam-rolling your muscles.  First, there is relief from soreness.  A person who foam-rolls targeted muscles after a workout is less sore than someone who didn’t.  Second, is for proper posture.  Most people really don’t think that this is a big deal.  However, as Darrin has stated before, strength is more neurological than it is muscle size.  People with less muscle imbalances have better posture.  This means that opposing muscles are neither too long, nor too short; thus able to fire with proper effort and timing.  That allows for greater neurological communication and further increasing strength, without any lifting at all.  The increase in core strength gained by the correct posture also gives the third benefit; injury prevention.

What muscles can be foam-rolled?

There are multiple muscles that can be foam-rolled.  When rolling