3/9/14 Sunday March 9, 2014 (interval running / pull ups / push ups)

It was an interesting weekend.  Most of last week and through the weekend I was feeling tightness in my pecs, primarily L side, and the L bicep tendon.  Nothing too severe, but enough to notice and go "what brought this on, and what can I do to improve this?" Several years ago I had a couple of bad falls on ice and one in particular did a number of my L shoulder.  Kettlebell lifting has been incredible for it, really dramatically improved the stability of that shoulder, range of motion, nd overall strength is just through the roof.  it has been awesome.  With that said once a body part is injured once, at least in my experience, things come up from time to time (ie a tweak more easily re occurs).  So on Friday and Sat I did a decent amount of lacrosse ball release and that really helped, but I kept thinking to myself that "hangs" from a pull up bar or the equivalent would be really good to stretch out the lats which I suspected were a root cause of the bicep tendon tightness.  Hangs would also decompress my spine from all of the pressing I have been doing, and I think would also help the biceps tendon directly.

So I got down to the lake late Sunday evening and did 10-15 minutes of hangs.  I was absolutely shocked how immediately my body responded and very positively.  It is very, very clear to me that I HAVE to keep incorporating these very regularly, possibly even daily with mobility warm ups, similar to the benefits I have seen from more frequent SL DL practice with a KB.

I also decided to mix up the interval work.  I actually did the following:

2 minutes running,  body weight SL DLs 2/2, 2 minutes running, 2 pull ups, 2 push-ups
3... 3/3.... 3, 3 , 3
4... 4/4.... 4, 4, 4
5...5/5.... 5, 5, 5
4...4/4.... 4, 4, 4
3....3/3....3, 3, 3
2....2/2....2, 2, 2

Essentially I "laddered" everything.  I liked it.  Total running time was 46 minutes, with 23 SL DLs each side, 23 pull ups, 23 push ups. This is actually more work than I had been doing, which was not necessarily my intention as did my math wrong.  Next time I will probably drop the ladders of 2 and just  do 3, 4, 5, 4, 3.  Felt really good though and this was a great way to end the weekend after quite a bit of frustration with how my body was feeling up to this point.  The hangs were really a godsend.