3/10/14 Monday March 10, 2014 (BU PR 20kg, PR 28kg, heavy 1H SW ladder)

6:00am - Original Strength and Primal Move - 35 minutes

6:35am - Kettlebell warm up

1/2K halos - 8kg, 4X each side / each leg (total 16X)
1/2K halos - 12kg, 4X each side / each leg (total 16X)

16kg Roll to press (TGU start) - shoulder cam shafts, each arm
Arm bar 12 kg, 1+1
Crooked arm bar 12kg, 3+3 with press

6:50am - Training session - Focus on superset BU PR 20kg / PR 28kg, finish with heavy 1H SW ladder

TGU 20kg, 1+1 including marching in place, about 30 seconds per arm

2X of the following superset:
BU PR 20kg, 1/1 (last week same)
PR 28kg, 5/5
Dead hang from front front porch (modified pull-up bar hang essentially)

3X of the following superset:
BU PR 20kg, 1/1 (last week same)
PR 28kg, 3/3
Dead hang from front front porch (modified pull-up bar hang essentially)

Total of 5 BU PR with the 20kg per arm, and 19 PR with the 28kg per arm

1H SW ladders, 3x as follows:
28kg, 10/10
36kg, 5/5
32kg, 5/5

120 swings total 60 per arm

7:30am - Complete

Notes -  Interesting day. A few things to note.  As per my training notes yesterday I felt I had to figure out a way to incorporate some modified pull up bar hangs into my routine, particularly pressing days, because of the benefits of the spine decompression and stretching out my lats.  My lats have tightened up quite a bit from doing heavier pressing, renegade rows, pull-ups, push-ups..... that has been a lot to take on.  Getting them stronger and having more awareness of the lats has been tremendously beneficial but this can be overdone and I must find a way to release them.  I really think the dead hangs are going to do it.  I realized I can walk outside my basement door and hang from the porch leading up to the front door.  It is very grip intensive as it is basically a fingertip grip to do the hangs, nothing to hold on to really since this is the edge of the porch, but I can do it, and after trying it last night as part of my mobility work I realized this was going to be money and determined that doing 1 hang after each set of presses is going to be my "active rest" movement.  I did this with great benefit today, and I am very pleased.  Should have thought of this earlier but I have never been the most creative guy, most CPAs are not.... Anyway I did not have too much time today as I was flying to Spokane at 9am, and and also given that I finished up yesterday's interval session pretty late in the day, and I have been doing a lot of overhead work, I consciously told myself if I needed to back off the volume from last week's press effort, which was a big PR, that I should do it.  On the 3rd set today it became clear to me that I should not continue with 5/5 and thus I settled for an "easy" 3/3 and just tried to get great cleans and great reps.  I am very pleased I did this, it was absolutely the right call.  It is not about trying to set a PR every day out, it was way more important today to get in quality reps and save myself because I have been beat up a bit, and I need to get that sorted out before trying to go crazy busting PRs.  I actually was more interested today in making the 20kg BUPs feel tighter and better, which I achieved, and I also wanted better quality heavy swings because I felt like last week I just tried to survive them after the pressing PR.  The swings were WAY better today, I was really focused, keeping the bell very tight when loading it on the descent, controlled float at the top of each rep.  The 36kg felt better than it ever has and I decided before hand I was going to park it instead of doing hand switches because that didn't feel right last week. So I parked it between each set for each arm, picked it right back up and kept going and this was another good move.  I think I got a little bit smarter today, mentally stronger, and that leads to physical strength too.

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.