The secret power of the foam roller, used wrong on purpose

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Move Like It's 1899

Welcome to the first episode of a new weekly feature that gives paying subscribers focused strength, power and flexibility workouts in ~7-minute doses that will often piggyback on top of free #WorkoutWednesday videos—only more intensely and with weighted movements and progressions that allow you to follow along, regardless of where you’re at physically.

Why I’m starting this 1899 series with foam rolling

Subsequent Move Like It’s 1899 videos will go heavier, with weights and workout-level progressions in multiple planes of motion, and progressions that push past what Workout Wednesday can do. But I started this series with foam rolling for specific reasons, some of them personal, that I think apply to everyone.

Forty-eight years of lifting and seven orthopedic surgeries have taught me that the workout you can’t do with proper form, flexibility and proper warm-up is often the one that hurts you, either immediately or—worse—slowly over time. A lower-back seizure has put me on the floor for hours and days, and after 50 an injury that once cost a week now costs a month. The psychological costs of starting over get harder with age.

So this is the groundwork, literally: what I do on the floor before and after training so the harder episodes are ones I can keep doing. Learn these first. Everything that follows assumes you have and, more importantly, you’ll be glad you did.

The progressions, and what they’re doing

Three sequences from the video, in the order I do them, with notes on what each one is working. None of this is rolling in the usual sense. The roller is a fulcrum. Gravity does the work that opens your hips, your back, your shoulders and other joints.

Let’s get started.

1. Thoracic spine opener (before a workout)