Biggest Bang for your Buck Mobility
Biggest bang for your buck mobility | Part 2
“Dude, I've hung three straight days for a cumulative of 5 minutes at a time and I shit you not I already feel a difference in my upper back and shoulder. Crazy shit.”
Continuing our series with biggest bang for your buck exercises. If you missed last week check it out here. Moving on we are talking about hanging. Yes I am asking you to do more than just lay there this week.
WHY HANGING?
In one movement we are addressing shoulders, elbow, wrist, hand and spinal health. Seems like a pretty good “bang for your buck” exercise. I am going to pick on the desk jockey once again. He is sitting in a hunched forward turtle position all day long. Gravity is doing its thing having his body adapt to this position. Now that you have pictured that person, think about your position when hanging, basically the complete opposite position of that. With once again gravity doing all the work to open everything up that has been closed off.
Where do we start with this? This is most likely going to be a very stressful and or uncomfortable position on the entire body at first. A few ways to minimize this is partial hangs (see picture below) This allows your body to slowly begin to adapt to the new stresses or increase demands.
There are a variety of grips an athlete can utilize with hanging. For simplicity sake let’s start with either a neutral grip(palms facing each other) or pronated(palms facing away) grip as these are the two most less stressful position to put the rest of the body in. I think Ido Portal summed up hanging with this quote
“Avoid pain, aim to strain, no strain no adaptation. Proceed with caution, it is better to underdo then overdo.”
The call to action for this week is ACCUMULATE 7 MINUTES A DAY over the next week and see how your shoulders feel. This should also not be 7 minutes all at once but accumulate throughout the course of the day. A typical day looks like this for me; 3 x 60 seconds in before noon while at the office(and yes my office is in a gym so I have multiple pull-up bars to hang from) I will perform 1 x 60 pre and post WOD. Lastly I will accumulate 2 x 60 seconds in the evening before going to bed(yes I have installed rings in the ceiling of my Boston apartment, don’t tell my landlord) Make it a habit so I can start getting more emails like the one above.