Wonder Why

Do you ever wonder what makes you sore?  Or how some movements tend to make you more sore than others?  In exercise science the soreness one experiences can be reliably correlated to the type of movement/contraction performed.  It's actually pretty simple.  There are three phases to a muscular contraction.  The eccentric, isometric and concentric phases.  Take the dumbbell bicep curl for an easy example.  When you lower the weight down with control, this is an eccentric contraction - your bicep is lengthening and contracting at the same time.  When you actively curl the dumbbell up, this is the concentric contraction - your bicep is shortening and contracting at the same time.  That point in between the eccentric and concentric contractions, when there is neither lengthening or shortening, that is the isometric contraction phase.  You can measure the force generated during these phases, and what they've found is that eccentric contraction create the most force/tension, isometric second, and concentric contractions generate the least amount of tension/force out of the three.  Force/tension is how the muscle is used and stimulated, which breaks it down to be built up stronger.  The more tension/force a muscle experiences, the bigger effect on the muscle, the more sore it will be.  Make sense?  If that's the case then, movements that have forceful eccentric phases WITH increased ranges of motion (more length = more stretch = more tension) will create more soreness. 
If this is true, and you think about where you are sore (super?) from Murph, can you pinpoint some eccentric phases of the pull up, push up, run, or squat that may be causing some of your soreness?  An easy one is the biceps in the pull up.  There is a major eccentric phase, along with a powerful isometric contraction in a kipping pull up, and actually a lot of the movement from an efficient kipping pull up relies more on the eccentric and isometric phases than the concentric. 
Getting to the point here.  Why did we do 10 prowler pushes today?  The prowler can be a phenomenal recovery tool because there is not a ton of eccentric and isometric contractions in any substantial range of motion, while at the same time you are able to push heavy loads.  This is the magic combo for recovery.  The ability to move heavy loads stimulates significant blood flow and hormonal changes, which is great for recovery.  Now pushing it for max effort 10x is a slightly different story :) but I would not be surprised if the pushes help to work out some of the soreness from The Murph beat-down!

Kelly was super game this morning to go hard on the prowler - as usual!
How did that last 5 meters feel??

Kelly below showing us a nice athletic position.

Workout:

10 Prowler Pushes (15 meters up and back) for load
* rest as much as needed
* score total weight
* prowler must continue moving in order for rep to "count"