Just because ‘everyone’ is doing it, doesn’t make it a good exercise…maybe it’s just a fad or even a ‘bad’ exercise.
Exercise tip of the day:
Regarding your stretching program using foam rollers and lacrosse balls as the tools:
More often than not, foal rolling and using instruments IMHO creates more damage and re-arranges the fascia in a non favorable way, myofascial stretching as i was taught long ago, requires you to know the many and complex fascial structures and attachments involved in the area. It must be done with factors of progression myofascial stretching is not designed to loosen or release tight muscles, instead is a very specific maneuver used to normalize fascial tension with respect to certain fibers, at the same time it can also improve proprioception of the involved structures, the length of the muscle may improve but that is not the goal.
True myofascial stretching does not shut off or inhibit a muscle like other forms stretching such as foam rolling and the use of other gizmos, of course you can test this by means of NKT.