What manual rollers can't do
The essence of recovery is to relax the muscles to polish out the knots within the muscle fibers and prevent any stiffness and tightness. When the auto-motion is engaged on the serenity, you are allowed to relax while it kneads out your muscle knots.
Whenever you have a massage, don't they always tell you to relax your body? Manual foam rollers force you to remain tense while supporting your own body weight in order to manually move. With the Auto-Motion feature, relaxation is achievable and KEY! Keep your entire body in a loosened state in order to penetrate deep into your muscles. When you allow your body to do this, your blood will efficiently allocate cells and nutrients to that specific area. AMAZING RIGHT! This can be a double edge sword because the safety of your muscles need to be accounted for as well. Unlike your extremities, such as your arms and legs, your big muscle groups (ie. chest, glutes, upper and lower back, etc) weigh much more and can actually harm themselves using your weight on a normal foam roller or even the auto-motion foam roller, Serenity, if not used correctly.
With this new era of foam rolling, we have compiled a list of 7 positions that would be most advantageous to the bigger muscle groups to reduce the potential for harm and increase the recovery aspect and accelerate your performance!
1. Seated Upper Back
The purpose is to relax your back! The very middle of the Serenity does not have nodes to avoid any spinal pressure. Fix your pillow to the middle of your back and set your Serenity on top of it. lay back onto the pillow and slowly increase your applied pressure of your upper-back. Let your Serenity use its finger-like nodes to attack any knots in your muscles.
2. Seated Neck Massage
Much like the seated upper-back massage, fix your pillow to the upper-middle of your back. Set your Serenity on top of your pillow and recline onto it. Be sure to ease your applied pressure onto the rotating massage nodes and let your Serenity begin to align your neck muscles and decompress your spine.
3. Laying Back Massage
Set your Serenity onto the floor and sandwich it with 2 pillows. Lay onto the pillows, easing your weight onto your Serenity. This is more extreme deep massage and we recommend that you do not stay into position for too long. Once you feel your knots releasing, end the exercise to let your body begin to allow blood (your bodies recovery workers) to attend to your back muscles.
4. Semi-Seated Glute Massage
Set 2 pillows next you the long end of your Serenity. Sit onto the pillows and pull in your Serenity to begin to massage your glutes. The gluteus maximus is generally surrounded by fat and requires your body weight to adequately massage which will trigger the safety feature of your Serenity so be sure to support your weight onto your arms and pillows.
5. Seated Upper-Glute Massage
In your comfy chair, set your Serenity in it and sit in front of it. Allow the nodes to climb your upper-glute and soothe the fascia connecting your glute to your lower back. For more pressure sit further onto your Serenity, coupled with your vibration.
6. Seated Lower Glute/Upper-Hammy Massage
Sit comfortably into your chair and lift your leg. Use a foot rest or ottoman to rest your foot and pull your Serenity into your glute and upper-hamstring. Allow the fingers to massage the fascia between your 2 muscles.
7. Laying Pectoral Massage
Lay your Serenity longitudinally onto the floor. Lay onto it with your chest and squeeze down with your elbow. You will feel it massaging with the grain of your muscle fibers, keeping them as even as possible and in-sighting accelerated recovery.
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Stay relaxed!
Above all, remember that relaxation is key! The best way to recover your muscles is to relax them because potters don't try to start with a rock. They mold soft clay into the beautiful pottery that is then used for what is needed! In the same manner, having tense muscles will never benefit you, but when you use your Serenity properly, your will begin to see the changes!