Dead hang is one of the easiest exercises you can do and has many benefits. All you need to do is get a solid bar to hang on and let gravity do its job. Easy enough?
When I talk about hanging many of us may bring back vague memories of hanging around on monkey bars as a child and exploring the world around us. As a child you have much more energy compared to being an adult, one of these reasons are breathing. Kids breathe more fully and complete using all of their lung capacity and thus oxygenate their blood better, and for this reason have more energy. As you get older and begin stressing about things you lose that ability. But this topic is for another time.
So, as we get less active with age our body begins to tighten and mobility and posture gets affected negatively. Having a desk job and sitting in front of the computer screen all day, or sitting in front of a steering wheel driving all day does not help. Also, the fact that gravity pulls us down compressing our bodies creating tension is another factor.
What is the correct way of doing dead hang exercise?
There are quite a few varieties of doing a dead hang, but we will start with the most common one.
Beginners dead hang:
- Get a solid bar or tree branch to hang on, don’t jump to grab it rather get a step to climb on if it is too high. Jumping will make you swing and in a dead hang you need to be still.
- Grab with an overhand grip (palms facing away from you) slightly wider than shoulder width and keep your legs off the ground if you can. If not, you can let your legs support you slightly.
- Relax your whole body and feel how everything stretches, there should not be any tension in your body and your arms/elbows must be relaxed and straight.
- When you are doing it for the first time don’t overdo it, you can do more harm than good. Pulling a muscle can put you out of action for a while. Start by hanging for 10 to 20 seconds, take a little 30 seconds to a minute break and do it again. Do 3 repetitions of dead hangs daily, or every second day integrated in your existing training program or on its own.
- Best time to do dead hangs are in the morning when you just woke up, it’s also beneficial to do it before or after your normal training.
- As you are getting stronger try to extend you dead hang to 30 seconds and then later to one minute and beyond and remember to breath while you’re hanging!
What does a dead hang do?
Hanging from a bar affects the muscles in your hand, wrist and forearms the most while your shoulders and spine get stretched. Dead hang exercise also activates your core muscles and works to keep your body together and to stabilize it.
When you hang you will feel your grip and forearms work heavily and you will feel your latissimus dorsi (lats) being stretched like never before. Your lats are a flat muscle that stretches from the back to the sides underneath your shoulders. You will also feel your back lightens as it stretches out.
4 Benefits of doing the dead hang exercise daily
Strengthens your grip
Dead hangs are by far the best way to improve your grip strength. It strengthens the muscles in your fingers, wrist and forearms. Your hand is the only thing that can grab things and without them you will feel lost. It will help you in any sports that you do, it will help you in the gym, you will notice that you can suddenly do more reps than before while doing arm related exercises. Doing regular dead hangs will add muscle mass and definition to your forearms. You use grip strength with many things in you daily life from carrying grocery bags, opening a jar or lifting and carrying heavy objects will become so much easier.
Increased shoulder range mobility
Many people have stiff or weak shoulders and struggle to hold objects above their heads or even doing anything above your head like hanging curtains or putting things away in the overhead cupboard. Small things like this will take its toll. Doing a dead hang, your arms must bear the weight of your entire body and your shoulders are connected directly to your arms and must bear the weight as well. Dead hangs will increase the range of motion in your shoulder joints and also strengthening your scapula muscles which are the muscles connected to your shoulder blades. Starting out with this exercise you might be struggling with it because of limited shoulder mobility and grip strenght, but the more you do it the easier it gets. Having more mobile and stronger healthier shoulders could help prevent injuries while working out in the gym or just doing your daily chores.
Can also help with shoulder injuries, dead hangs could help when you have a rotator cuff injury by strengthening the muscles in your shoulders. It can also relief shoulder or neck pain caused by tight shoulders from sitting in an office all day.
Decompress the spine
Thanks to gravity standing or sitting and sometimes even sleeping in a wrong position cause the vertebrae to compress and might result in stiffness in the back. By doing dead hangs it will decompress and stretch the spine creating tiny spaces between vertebrae. It will straighten your spine so that vertebrae are all aligned.
Doing a dead hang, both hands grip the bar, and the weight are divided equally between them correcting posture imbalances. Dead hangs will leave your back feeling relaxed creating a pain free back reducing aches and pains.
Strengthens core and lats
Doing dead hang exercise is primarily an upper body exercise engaging your core to stabilize your body. It works your back and all the around to your abdomen strengthening it. The lats connects your arms to your spine originating from or close to the scapula. Not everyone has muscle fibers connecting directly to the scapula, some have only a few muscle fibers or a soft fibrous link connecting to the scapula. Hanging from a tree branch or pull up bar will stretch and lengthen your lats opening it up increasing mobility in your shoulders. Any type of push or pull exercises will benefit from stronger healthier lats.
Conclusion
Doing regular dead hang exercises is a must for people slouching at a desk all day, sitting most of the time may give you a hunched and tight back creating back pains and aches.
Dead hang exercise has many benefits and is such a quick and easy exercise to do. Dead hang stretches your body and helps to correct posture and can be an instant fix to aches and pains in your back, shoulders or neck.
It also strengthens grip and in the long run will give you forearm gains while strengthening your shoulders and increasing their range of motion. Hanging from a bar engages your upper body and core strengthening it and reducing the chance of getting injuries.
