My shoulders have been cranky again lately – tight and sore and really, really particular about how I sleep.*
When my shoulders especially unhappy with me earlier this week, I decided to take some stretching advice that I read recently and hang by my arms from our chin-up bar for a little while to see if it would help.
And since I’m trying to do three minutes of fun movement every day for the next few weeks, I hung there for a bit longer than I would have otherwise. It was really hard BUT it was also really helpful and I felt much better afterwards.
In case you were wondering, what I was doing is called a modified dead hang (a name which sorta skeeves me out) – I was lightly resting my toes on the floor behind me while I bent my knees toward the floor.
I was modifying because the bar is not high enough (and I am not strong enough…yet) to do a full dead hang and this approach puts most – but not all – of my body weight on my hands, arms, and shoulders and gives me a good stretch without being entirely too difficult.
I always liked that swing-by-my-arms kind of movement when I was a kid and I would like to be able to do more of it now but it is entangled in the whole ‘need to build upper body strength – gotta have pre-existing upper body strength in order to do the movements I enjoy’ conundrum that tends to plague me when it comes to exercise but I’m working with it.
Speaking of conundrums, after doing the modified hang I discovered that there are just as many people saying that activity is bad for your shoulders as there are people who are saying it is good for you.
I recognize that every person’s body is different and that it is hard to give all-purpose advice but it would be swell to have a little less fuss about every damn thing.
Anyway, all of this is to say that my fun movement challenge is going well and that I am one of the people who will benefit from hanging around like that.
How about you?
Any fun movement lately?
Done any hanging around?
*Sometime last year I learned that curling my arm under my pillow while I sleep (as I have done for as long as I can remember) is actually a terrible thing to do to my shoulder. (Apparently that position is one way that various physical therapists stress a shoulder joint to determine range of movement.) So I had to teach myself to sleep with my arms in a different position (not easy!) which took a lot of getting used to. And I still end up with cranky shoulders – just less cranky than they used to be.