The benefits of brachiation, and the hanging challenge

Hanging is a natural human position. As our hominid ancestors left the ground and headed for the trees, a strong shoulder girdle, highly flexible shoulders, long nimble fingers, and short, strong thumbs evolved to allow unparalleled swinging, grasping, and climbing. This form of locomotion, moving by swinging from the arms in an overhead position, is called brachiation, and it is a vital, often missing piece of human health and wellbeing.

Even after ancient humans returned to life on the ground, we retained many of the characteristics in the shoulder girdle, shoulder joint, arms, hands, and wrists that allowed brachiation. Although today we are no match for our closest living relatives (with whom we share 99 percent of our DNA), the feats of gymnasts, parkour athletes, and climbers show that our shoulders are still meant to brachiate effectively.

If human shoulders are designed to be so mobile and strong, why do so many of us have stiff, painful, immobile shoulders?

The answer is, in large part, an absence of hanging in everyday life. As kids we have an important developmental call to hang, but we lose it, because modern daily life offers little opportunity. That does not mean our shoulders no longer need it for health. We are simply not giving the body the Vitamin M(ovement) it needs to stay well. Frequent, relatively short hangs send a powerful signal, producing new strength and freedom of movement, and they are even a primary way to recover from some shoulder injuries.

Please note: while hanging helps recovery from many injuries, shoulders can be complex, and hanging alone is not a solution to everything.

It is time for a challenge

Let us enjoy the benefits of a daily, frequent, small-dose practice for the health of our shoulders, bodies, and minds. A little every day goes a long way toward better shoulder health and performance.

Before the challenge begins, identify any anchor points readily accessible at home or at the office. Set up some rings, a bar, or a doorway pull-up bar to make it easy to hang throughout the day.

Look around outside too, in nearby parks, for swing sets, trees, walls, anything you can safely hang from. The main problem is a lack of opportunity in daily life, so at first we must consciously create and seek it out. If there are no anchor points, there will be no hanging. But if there are anchor points, the potential for a hang exists.

The hanging challenge

The challenge is simple: spend five minutes of accumulated time, not all in one go but spread throughout the day, on various types of hangs, passive, active, and dynamic, for 30 consecutive days.

Rather than packing five minutes of hanging into one block, make it opportunistic and dispersed through the day. That way hanging becomes part of your day, not just a training activity for sets and reps. We are meant to receive frequent but short movement signals, and this cues the body to adapt. Hang from a variety of surfaces, walls, beams, railings, tree branches, and use a mix of passive, active, and dynamic hangs depending on where your shoulders are right now (see the scenarios below).

This hanging challenge was created in 2014 by Ido Portal, and saw thousands of people around the world take part with fantastic results.

The goal is to feel better, get stronger, and create new habits and patterns for long-term health. It is not to create dramatic before-and-after photos with strangely improved lighting and bigger smiles at the end. That said, it is good to check in and measure what we can, so it is worth recording your hang time and number of chin-ups (if applicable) at the start, and again at the finish.

The benefits

1. Shoulder, elbow, and wrist health, and the return of lost overhead reach. Allowing gravity to do its thing in passive work, or fighting it in active work, sends an intense, adaptation-producing signal into your structure. Shoulder integrity and elbow, wrist, hand, and finger health all benefit from daily hanging.
2. A base for pulling, climbing, and more advanced patterns. Hanging sits at the base of all of these, just as standing does for walking. A deficiency in hanging shows up eventually. If you want a pull-up, or smoother pull-ups, this is the base position. Get hanging.
3. A plateau-breaker. Active hang work is an especially useful tool in certain advanced phases, helping experienced pullers move to the next level of difficulty.
4. Grip strength and grip endurance. If you cannot grip it, you cannot manipulate it. We have grown weaker all over from the lack of physical demand in daily life, and grip is no different. A strong grip carries over to handstands, locomotion, team sports, and more.
5. A vocabulary for future complexity. Hanging builds awareness and a language of positions that can later be assembled into sophisticated movement, from gymnastics to parkour to tree and rock climbing. It is a tool for improvisation and play.

Approach and scenarios

Adapted from Ido Portal.

Shoulder pain, no dislocations

Use partial-weight passive hangs (feet supporting some weight) and full hangs in pronated and neutral grips for the daily total, at least for the first week or two. Eliminating swings and active hangs gives maximum adaptation to reshape the shoulder and affect the soft tissues. Avoid pain, but aim to strain the tissues: no strain, no adaptation. Proceed with caution, and better to underdo than overdo.

Note: shoulder injuries may need more than hanging, such as scapular stabilisation work. For a complete approach we can set up a private plan.

Shoulder pain, dislocations or partial dislocations

Start with partial-weight and full active hangs. Eliminating passive hangs and dynamic swinging lets the shoulder regroup, tighten up, and educate the musculature, capsule, and ligaments to hold and stabilise better. Do this for the full month and beyond. Passive hanging can be reintroduced after that, gradually and carefully, to see if you can progress into more relaxed and dynamic hangs. Always work without any pain.

Healthy strong shoulders, but inflexible

Concentrate on passive hangs for the full daily duration across the 30 consecutive days.

Note: increasing shoulder mobility safely in adults is a complex issue that may require more than just hanging.

Healthy flexible shoulders, but weak

(Cannot do a pull-up or chin-up, or only a few reps, or wanting to break a plateau.) I would recommend one minute a day of passive hanging, usually as a mini warm-up, with the rest of the daily time spent on active hangs and a few dynamic hangs as a cool-down. This maintains mobility, increases strength and shoulder-blade stability, and prepares you for more advanced work.