This technique is called flushing the quads. We use the word flushing because the inside of our muscles are actually full of liquid. That liquid is our blood.

Whether we’ve been doing too much or not doing enough, we have a tendency to have stale blood in our muscles. In the world of Chinese medicine, it’s called Qi, stagnant Qi, and we want to get that Qi flowing. If you could imagine a sponge full of murky water and taking a steamroller and rolling it out, it’s going to squeeze out that murky blood, that leftover acids from workouts and also just stagnant blood from sitting in a car or traveling or sitting at your desk.

We’re going to go through the quad flushing and the hamstrings and the inner thighs. We’ve already done the IT band. So come on to the roller with your thighs right on the roller and drop down to your elbows.

This is like plank, so remember to suck in your tummy so your lower back doesn’t hang down. Start with your feet nice and wide. I actually pick my legs up and turn them out one at a time to really get that external rotation in the thigh.

That’s going to get you onto the inner edges of your muscles. As you roll up and down, you may feel some tenderness and some soreness. I recommend rolling up and down ten times like that, then curling the toes under, rotating the knees into a more neutral position so the toes are towards the floor and rolling right down the middle.

Make sure you go all the way up to the top, the thickest part of the thigh near your hip and all the way back down to your kneecap. And then last but not least, we’re going to go internal rotation one at a time so the feet are like pigeon toe. Now your toes don’t have to touch but they are towards each other and your heels are apart.

And then once again, roll all the way up to the top and all the way down to the bottom. If you really do ten of each of the three positions, that’s 30 times up and down. That’s going to send a massive amount of blood rushing down your leg to your feet and also send that blood all the way back up towards your heart.

Now we’re going to do the hamstrings. There’s lots of different ways to do this. Today, we’re going to sit on the roller, take the legs out wide, and you want to wiggle yourself back so that the roller is not actually under your bottom but under your hamstrings.

Now depending on your flexibility, this may not be available to you, so you could take your hands behind you. Either one is good. You’re going to pick up your legs and move your body on the roller.

So you can have your hands behind you or in front of you, moving the body. The roller is moving from the back of your knee all the way up to your sits bone, which is called ischial tuberosity, which is right where your hamstrings attach. You can also get a little more technical.

Like if you feel there’s a particular band in your hamstrings, and remember there’s more than one in each leg that needs more love, meaning it’s hurting, you can take the end of the roller. I have to do this sometimes for a specific issue in my body, where you get the end of the roller right into that groove where you feel it, and where your hands go and how you set yourself up is going to be personal. So what works for me is having one hand behind me and the other foot flat, and then I’m just going to lean into it in sort of this funky, somewhat awkward position.

And the whole point is to get the body weight, the center of my body, over that hamstring so that roller is making contact with those hamstrings. You can also move right into the calves. So after you’ve sat on it, you can put it under your calf muscles, cross over, get a little more pressure with an extra leg on top.

Remember to do both legs, and then of course your inner thigh. This one, they call it the army position. I think you’re in the army position like this.

Now, I wasn’t ever in the army, but I can imagine you’d be down in a trench. So the secret is to get the rest of your body off the ground. So I’m in the army position, and I’ve got the rest of my body off the ground, and I’m going to roll out that inner thigh.

So I’m showing you from different angles so you can really see what I’m doing. The roller is perpendicular to my thigh bone. People are often doing it with their leg back here, and it doesn’t work.

You’ve got to hike that puppy up. The foot can be in the air. Lift off your body and roll all the way up to the pubic bone.

The closer you can get to the pubic bone, the better. That’s where your groin muscles come together in a bundle. It’s a lot like a steel cable.

Taking the time to roll your quads, your hamstrings, and your inner thigh muscle on a regular basis will really help improve the overall flexibility of your hips, the circulation to your lower body, the health of your knees, and just in general help you recover from workouts more quickly.