Daily Foam Rolling Schedule for Runners

Why is foam rolling such a pain in the ass?

Ask me to do a 20-mile training run on the weekend? No problem.

Ask me to foam roll for ten minutes a day? I’ll whine about it, make excuses and eventually commit to doing it during commercial breaks while watching Homeland.

Foam rolling is not a fun activity! It hurts. It leaves carpet burn on my elbows. And while doing it, all I can focus on is how badly I need to pull out my couch and vacuum underneath it.

Despite my angst for foam rolling, it’s something I commit to doing because I know it’s something I must do in order to run injury free.

The other issue with foam rolling is time. When I’m training for a race, I’m already designating a significant portion of my time to training. Training no matter what people say, is very time consuming.

Foam rolling might be the thing that gets left off a training schedule because it doesn’t always seem to have an immediate impact. Let me be the first to tell you- foam rolling makes a big difference over the long haul! Let’s stop making excuses to skip foam rolling and commit to doing it on a regular basis, not just when a PT or coach begs you to start doing it.

I created an easy-to-follow foam rolling schedule for runners. All you have to do is commit to foam rolling for 5-minutes on weekdays and 10-minutes on Saturday and Sunday.

Foam rolling doesn’t have to be a daunting task. Follow the schedule below to ensure you hit every important muscle group at least once a week.

Split the 5 minutes equally between each leg. On the weekends split the time equally between each muscle group and then equally between each leg.