TCI Friday isn’t an essay, a feature or a review. It’s a long form question. We’d love your answer below.
How old you are doesn’t matter, or at least it doesn’t matter to me. I have my own problems. Seriously though, by my estimates there are three actual ages. You can be young. You can be middle-aged. And you can be old. The older you are, the younger everyone else is. Everyone thinks they’re old, until they get older, and understand they didn’t understand what that even meant before.
When I was young, which is to say before I thought I was old at all, my idea of a recovery aid was a large pizza and maybe a full gas Coke. At some point, I acquired a foam roller. I’m not sure how old I was. I guess I was foam-roller-old, the point in your life at which you think “maybe I should do more than ride real hard and eat a lot.”
This is either maturity or the first sign of real aging. Maybe they’re the same.
I imagine, for many people, the foam roller is the first step down a recovery tool path littered with devices of wildly varying shapes and debatable efficacy. I have squeezy rings I used to recover from torn tendons in both hands. I have a massage stick, which is rolling pin for tired/sore/cramped/crappy muscles. My nephew saw my foam roller and raised me one vibrating foam roller. That was a Christmas gift.
Anything that vibrates is probably good for you.
Beyond vibration comes percussion. We got a Theragun. I love that thing. The Theragun pounds the resistance out of you, pummeling your sorry form until it becomes a sort of pudding. The older you get the more pudding-like you should strive to be. Given the disappearance of your soft tissue and the muscle loss that comes with a certain number of years, puddingness is an ideal.
We have a set of Chirp wheels and a Sidekick muscle scraper.
This week’s TCI Friday wonders how much of this stuff you have. How old are you? Are you foam roller old? Are you vibrating foam roller old? Are you Theragun old? What works for you? What doesn’t?
I don’t have any of it, though I am starting to consider becoming “foam roller old.” I am lucky in that I’m not yet 40 and my body is still (mostly) in good shape. Recovering from injuries is starting to take longer, and I think this factor is the key in people moving to various recovery aids.
63, ride about 120 miles a week. If I get “bike sore” I go for a walk. Works most of the time.
Rolling pin
Massage gun
Foam roller
Therapy bans
I started riding a bike because my knees were old way before the rest of me was old. All of the above is trying to to avoid knee pain as a consequence of riding pain.
Foam roller? Sure. The one with the torture devices raised on its surface.
Yoga mat? Check. Trying to stave off foot and hammy issues and keep back issues at bay.
My ex M-I-L bought me a ‘massage chair-back’ which is kinda sweet too.