Shortly before the World Cup kick-off in Russia, our partner launched a very special product pack: the BLACKROLL Die Mannschaft Performance Kit, which was designed in collaboration with former German Football Association athletics trainer, Yann-Benjamin Kugel. The German National Team has also shared different exercises that you can easily do on your own, so you can almost say you’re training like world-class athletes. You may be asking yourself: What’s actually in the Blackroll Die Mannschaft Performance Kit? What exercises can I do with it? Read on, you’re about to find out.

The BLACKROLL® Die Mannschaft Performance Kit

The brand BLACKROLL is best known for its fascia rollers. Training with these rollers has two main goals: strengthening through functional training and/or helping the muscles regenerate. For the first goal, BLACKROLL offers exercise suggestions with every product it sells, so you can mix up your training. If you want to know what exercises you can do with the BLACKROLL Die Mannschaft Performance Kit, carry on reading. As for regeneration - this can be improved with the use of fascia rollers and other BLACKROLL products. Fascia cover all of the muscles in your body, a bit like a second skin. They’re all connected, so they play a big role in the development (and prevention) of muscle injuries. Using BLACKROLL products on your muscles activates individual parts of them, improving the elasticity of the relevant fascia, encouraging circulation to the muscles and shortening regeneration time after workouts. Now, it’s time to tell you which products are particularly good for this purpose.

BLACKROLL® Die Mannschaft Standard

The brand’s most renown product is the black fascia roller. Its main function is to improve mobility and treat painful, stiff muscles. Dr Robert Schleip, director of the Fascia Research Project at the University of Ulm, comments on Blackroll: “The option of adjusting pressure of the relief technique to suit the individual's needs gives rise to a wide spectrum of therapeutic uses. Comprehensive tests on patients show outstandingly positive results.” The most popular way to use Blackroll is self-massage. This means working with your own body weight and finding the easiest way to undo any fascia tension. The Standard Blackroll is not just recommended by professional athletes - it’s just as suitable for amateur sportspeople and those who sit or stand a lot in work. You can quickly work away any tension with just a few exercises.

BLACKROLL® MINI black

The Blackroll Mini is the same as the Standard roll, but smaller. This makes it more portable but no less functional. It’s ideal for self-massaging your arms and legs. Plus, its small size means that you can take it to the office with you for a quick foot, lower arm or neck massage during your break to give you energy for the rest of the day.

BLACKROLL®BALL 08 black

One of Blackroll’s most popular products is the fascia ball. With this small ball, you’ll find it easier to target specific muscle groups during a massage. The Blackroll ball is ideal for people with chronic back and neck ache. These kinds of aches are often caused by inappropriate weight distribution through incorrect posture. With the Blackroll Ball, though, you can reach these muscle groups, massage them and loosen the tension in them. At just 8 cm in diameter, you can take it on your travels or even bring it with you to the office or the gym. In essence, you have two kinds of muscle and fascia massage to choose from: You can either take the ball in your hand and use it to massage wherever you can reach, like the arms and thighs, by applying light pressure with the ball. If you want to improve your fascia massage, you can use your own body weight. This type of therapy has the great benefit of allowing you to massage hard-to-reach areas without the help of another person.

BLACKROLL® Die Mannschaft LOOP BAND green

The Blackroll Loop Bands are a new product on the fitness band market, and they were specially developed for training smaller muscle groups. Targeted training of these muscles reduces risk of injury and improves your body statics. At the same time, with this training band you’ll also target muscles that aren’t used much for other sports or that are rarely used in general. The green colour of the band means that it offers medium resistance.

BLACKROLL® Die Mannschaft SUP-R BAND black

Former athletics trainer of the DFB team Yann-Benjamin Kugel comments on the Blackroll SUP-R Band: “I’m really impressed with the many ways in which you can use the BLACKROLL® bands. Be it for warming up, activating muscles or recovering - I heartily recommend to all players that they use these products in their daily training! Improving regeneration and reducing risk of injury are deciding factors when it comes to competitive sports.” You can use the band like a classic theraband. It meets the requirements of professional and amateur sportspeople alike, both for use during training and recovery. The 1.52 cm length allows a wide range of activities in the areas of strength training, endurance training and mobility training. The structured surface provides a good grip.

Exercises with the Blackroll® Die Mannschaft Performance Kit

As mentioned earlier, there are all kinds of exercises you can perform with the Blackroll Die Mannschaft Performance kit. This product was designed for fitness training and recovery of any fascia in need of treatment, so we’re going to talk you through some of the exercises you can do with the fascia roll, the Blackroll Ball and the fitness band.

Strengthening exercises with the BLACKROLL® Die Mannschaft Performance Kit

With the Blackroll® Die Mannschaft Performance Kit, you can expand on and modify lots of the exercises you use for functional fitness training. It’s not without reason that the Die Mannschaft Performance Kit was designed in collaboration with former fitness trainer of the DFB team Yann-Benjamin Kugel - he knows how the pros train, what exercises help them and how to get the best performance out of them. We’ve summarised the exercises in the pictures below. By using the fascia roll or the mini fascia roll for sit-ups, you’ll go through a bigger motion radius during the exercise, making your training even more effective and giving your back a massage at the same time. Push-ups with the roll will take the challenge of this standard exercise up a notch, so training your shoulder muscles will be even more effective. This also adds a stability element to your exercise that would otherwise be only minimal. Balance and strength are extremely important for sports and everyday life. The following exercise, a plank with your feet on the roll, is yet more proof of how versatile the Blackroll is. For this exercise, put your feet on the roll and glide them forward until your hips are high up in the air. This trains your torso, arms and balance all at the same time. For the last exercise, you’ll need the loop band: tense it up by spreading your knees and doing deep squats. The extra tension will increase the effect of the training on your legs. Just be creative and find new and different ways to improve your sports with the Blackroll Die Mannschaft Performance Kit.

Regeneration with BLACKROLL® Die Mannschaft Performance Kit

Of course, the Blackroll products in the Die Mannschaft Performance Kit are just as useful for regeneration as they are for training. The creativity principle applies here too: the possibilities are endless. On the whole, make sure you use your body weight to apply pressure to the right areas. Then you can start moving forwards and backwards or in circles to massage the area thoroughly. The pictures below show you just four of the many ways you can use these products for a sports self-massage. Photos: Facebook/Blackroll