Research

Mixed

Post-rolling (post-exercise foam rolling) slightly attenuates exercise-induced decreases in sprint and strength performance and reduces perceived muscle pain, but has trivial effects on jump performance recovery.

Use foam rolling after workouts to help manage muscle soreness and slightly preserve your sprint and strength capabilities for subsequent sessions. Do not expect it to restore your vertical jump or max strength quickly. It is a useful tool for comfort and minor performance preservation, not a magic recovery bullet.

GoodQualifiesMEDIUM confidence
Post-rolling slightly attenuated exercise-induced decreases in sprint (+3.1%, g = 0.34) and strength performance (+3.9 %, g = 0.21). It also reduced muscle pain perception (+6.0%, g = 0.47), whereas its effect on jump performance (−0.2%, g = 0.06) was trivial.
Thimo Wiewelhove et al. · Frontiers in Physiology · 2019

Why this rating

Meta-analysis of 7 post-rolling studies; results for performance were not statistically significant (p>0.05) but pain reduction was.

Source

A Meta-Analysis of the Effects of Foam Rolling on Performance and Recovery

Thimo Wiewelhove et al. · Frontiers in Physiology · 2019

DOI 10.3389/fphys.2019.00376

Meta-analysis · 21 studiesCited 282×
Read the paper
DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10

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