Massage Balls Are the New Foam Rollers: Reasons to Consider the Latest Muscle-Releasing Therapy

Maya Ray and I are both gyrating our right hip bones over the clementine-size rubber balls that we’ve wedged between our sweatpants and the wall of her Brooklyn studio. My movements are slow and silent; such is my determination not to let the prop fall to the hardwood floor. Suddenly, a pinch gives way to a bright sensation, as if a tiny door inside my body just opened for the first time.

“Something just felt really good!” I exclaim.

As a scan of the upcoming events bulletin board at any yoga studio will bear out, massage balls are the new fitness craze. Think of them as the next generation of the colorful jumbo Tootsie Rolls that gymgoers use to work out their pains and myofascial kinks.

“Foam rollers are broad and imprecise,” says Jill Miller, something of a high priestess of the moving-sphere movement. The Los Angeles–based creator of the Yoga Tune Up method and balls (in four sizes) is also coauthor of The Roll Model, a 432-page massage ball bible. “The massage balls are like rubber scalpels that can get into nooks and crannies of every single part of your body.” Miller, who conducts her massage ball practice at her standing desk, brings up other benefits, including improved posture and elimination of stress. “Nothing is more beautiful than a relaxed face. We call it ball-tox.”

Yet massage balls can’t move mountains; they only work if they are a part of a broader fitness program. “There are good things about working the tissue and stimulating the nervous system,” says Justin Jacobs, who oversees a team of trainers with Equinox’s elite Tier 4 program. “What can be not good is when people spend a long amount of time doing it. It’s like, ‘I went to the gym for an hour today,’ but if 30 minutes was spent massage-rolling, I’m not sure it was an hour-long workout.”

I am happy when Ray, the rolling expert I have come to for my introductory lesson in “ballwork,” as she calls it, says that five minutes a day—or even only after you exercise—is sufficient. The yoga teacher and certified Rolfer discovered massage balls five years ago. “Rolfers align connective tissue and fascia with their hands, so it was a pretty natural progression,” she explains.

Ray, whose layered ringlets call to mind Miranda July, practices her many trades in a charming parlor-floor studio in a brownstone near Barclays Center. Stacked yoga blankets, a massage table, a bucket containing segments of a model human skeleton, and a basket of, yes, massage balls speckle the airy room.

I begin by standing on the yoga mat and placing the heel, arch, and then ball of each foot over the ball, pressing down while gradually rotating. The sensations that follow are both uncomfortable and exquisite, and the practice requires serious concentration. “I don’t recommend doing this in front of the TV,” Ray tells me. On the floor, we move through calves and hamstrings. Next it’s the wall, and Ray instructs me to place the balls behind my back and rock my body over them. “Just say hello to your spine,” she instructs me. “Places that are hurting you are good to work on, generally.”

By the end of our practice, I am getting the hang of it, and can guide the ball to the crunchiest, tightest areas of my upper back. On my way out, I tell Ray I see what the fuss is about. She looks at me as if I’ve just announced that water is wet. “People hurt,” she says. “Everybody wants to stop hurting.”

The following evening, as my husband and I conduct our nightly review of the delights and injustices of the preceding 12 hours, I’m lying on the floor, pushing the flesh directly under my left shoulder blade into the sphere beneath me. I keep moving until I land on a sensation so sharp I can feel it in my throat.

Ray was only half right: It hurts. But I don’t want to stop.

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