Lunchtime HiJinx

For 3-4 days a week, I go to the Mountains to Sea Trail to do a little "play" at lunch. I work right next to the Parkway and it's a good 20-25 minutes of monkeying around in the woods. I started doing it back in the spring when I read about a guy in Men's Health who trained athletes in South America to use their bodies they way they were meant to.

It's called MovNat http://movnat.com/ and you can google it, YouTube it or whatever. The great thing is that you can do the movements anywhere, anytime. It's great for me because the foundation is to NOT have a structure. Just find things to climb, crawl under, jump and sprint. The guy's name is LeCorre and the videos don't do it justice. I'd recommend reading the Men's Health article more than any other on him because it gives you a better grasp of the concept.

So today I spent 20 minutes "playing". I started by jogging down the trail for a second, then trying to climb a pretty big tree with really deep grooved bark. It was hard to hold onto..more of a bear hug. But it leans a little, so you can hook onto it. I realized I could use my feet on both sides to inch up it and man did it work me. Suddenly I was 9 feet or so up and just hopped down and sprinted down the trail.

I charge up a steep little incline and grab this big, flat, triangular rock that I leave laying off the side of trail and do a squat then launch it in front of me like a 2 handed shotput a bunch of times. Then get on the ground and do crab walks and switch into a spiderman crawl. Hop up. Grab the big rock over my head and walk with it about 40 yards and go back. Chuck it off the trail.

Next is my favorite...a skinny, angled tree that I can hang on for chin ups, pull ups, hang upside down on no handed, even jump off of. Then climb onto a 6 foot high angled boulder on the side of the trail and do offset push ups to help my balance. Jump to the ground. Jog up the trail back to the entrance, climb two tall skinny trees (one with a great limb to hang on) and drop from about 10 feet to the ground.

Stretch. Eat a sandwich. Work.