Which is better in a dead hang

Hello all,

a quick question:

Yesterday I started a new round of dry-land training with my athletes, including some FSP. However we are not sure what to do in a dead hang. Do you activate your lats and pull down/out on the corner of the scapula so that your shoulders widen and your head rises a tiny bit, or do you relax the shoulders and concentrate on the grip etc?

*note as everyone in the group is a swimmer they tend to have stronger lats than expected and weaker grips than expected.

Just hang.

However, I like to shrugs in hang to warmup in both pronated and supinated grip as well as shrugs in support. Both prep me pretty well to do pullups and dips.

... we are not sure what to do in a dead hang. Do you activate your lats and pull down/out on the corner of the scapula so that your shoulders widen and your head rises a tiny bit, or do you relax the shoulders and concentrate on the grip etc? ...

Artificially restricted ROM is for targeted mobility and prehab movements only and NOT for general strength training.

Yours in Fitness,

Coach Sommer

Coach Sommer said:

Artificially restricted ROM is for targeted mobility and prehab movements only and NOT for general strength training.

Yours in Fitness,

Coach Sommer

Somehow I don't get the point...

Until now i did the dead hang with elevated shoulders, but as Coach stated in the post above you need to retract your shoulders.

On the other hand Blairbob said "Just hang."...

Or did I get something wrong??

Greetings,

Chris

You should be hanging with completely relaxed shoulders.

Yours in Fitness,

Coach Sommer

So it's literally a "dead" hang? You don't try to set your shoulders/shoulder blades at all?

No. Just hang. Nothing special here.

The artificially restricted ROM recommendations so popular with many of today's personal trainers are only possible when working with sub-maximal weights. As it is literally impossible to maintain this abbreviated ROM with the vast majority of dynamic elements (e.g. Chinese or 'kipping' pull-ups, throwing a ball etc), it is best to prepare the body structurally for what will be asked of it in the future.

The reason that many adults incur issues when attempting to (re)employ this natural ROM are threefold:

1) inadequate mobility due to inactivity

2) engaging in improper muscular strength progressions

3) insufficient time at their current muscular strength level for their connective tissues to also adapt.

Note that this is a non-issue with most of the population from small children up to young adults as their bodies are already in perfect balance. The problems arise as we get older, stray from our natural movement patterns and become far too sedentary.

Yours in Fitness,

Coach Sommer

I was under the impression that fully relaxing the shoulders had a risk of causing shoulder instability (essentially pulling the humerus out of the socket). I cannot find a source right now, but I know I've heard this somewhere

If a person isn't physically prepared, perhaps.

In part Coach's point is that many trainers just make black and white statements and are not able to put physical development into context.

I go for full ROM, i.e. hang as "dead" as I can.

Coach Sommer said:

3) insufficient time at their current muscular strength level for their connective tissues to also adapt.

Yours in Fitness,

Coach Sommer

Hi Coach! would you say #3 falls into the same reason why very fit people have restricted range of motion? because they have focused for so long on the easy portion of the ROM and the connective tissue is not allowed enough load at the beginning stages of strength development? I see tons of gym goes doing pullups and dips with minimal movement... just wondering if this applies.

JP

phrak said:

I was under the impression that fully relaxing the shoulders had a risk of causing shoulder instability (essentially pulling the humerus out of the socket). I cannot find a source right now, but I know I've heard this somewhere

I suspect that exactly the oposite would happen ( That is, unless there are previous socket problems), as working with an artificially reduced ROM will create unbalances and tightness that eventually could lead to an injury. :?: I would like to know wich are the potential consequences of such restriction.

Also see a lot of strong people on the gym performing pull ups with restricted ROM (really far from a dead hang), it seems as if they lock the arm at 90º, only pulling from the lats (it seems more like some kind of pull-swing than a proper pull up). That way they are able to perform a higher number of repetitions, but I see little progress once they get there. It is more common on bodybuilders, not so much on bar hitters (although some of them do it like that)

What is the case with pull-ups/chin-ups? Do you also should start the movement from a dead hang with shoulders "unpacked". I'm asking because I was thaught to "pack" the shoulders and by that pre-flex the lats during pulls even if it's a simple hang. Though this was thaught thru RKC methods and not any particular gymnast training method. So maybe the two differ for several reasons.

Yes that's why they we often use the expression 'dead hang pull ups'.

Start in a dead hang, pack and lift, lower back down and unpack to dead hang.

As the movements get more dynamic (which should only be done after proper preparation) the boundaries will blur, at least that's my understanding.

Coach Sommer said:

You should be hanging with completely relaxed shoulders.

Yours in Fitness,

Coach Sommer

Thank you for clarifying this!

Greetings,

Chris

Gergely said:

What is the case with pull-ups/chin-ups? Do you also should start the movement from a dead hang with shoulders "unpacked". I'm asking because I was thaught to "pack" the shoulders and by that pre-flex the lats during pulls even if it's a simple hang. Though this was thaught thru RKC methods and not any particular gymnast training method. So maybe the two differ for several reasons.

Doing it that way just allows you to keep some tension in between reps. In fact, one of the RKC pull-up drills is to alternate between a complete dead hang and hanging with packed shoulders. Either way, one must pack their shoulders at the start of a pull-up in order to do it properly (as best I can tell). It's just a question of if you unpack at the bottom every time or not. I would argue neither is wrong, just different, and what you do depends on your goal.

An analogy: Doing pullups while maintaining packed shoulders at the bottom would be like a set of swings. Doing pull-ups going to a complete dead hang at the bottom would be more like a set of the so-called power swings.

Hello Coach,

This thread has received a bit of attention beyond this forum. Here is one response in particular from an individual comment from another website:

"I don't care how strong you are. Hanging 200 pounds of your shoulder ligaments is a bad idea. I learned the hard way, I dislocated my shoulder in a dead hang pull-up. As I pulled-up the joint pulled out. You will lose a lot more strength from an injury than the 1 inch ROM between dead hang and active shoulder pull-ups."

Another person on the same discussion said they received an injury in a similar fashion by doing a weighted pull-up, and was injured for a month.

Any comments on this?

Asclepius said:

Hello Coach,

This thread has received a bit of attention beyond this forum. Here is one response in particular from an individual comment from another website:

"I don't care how strong you are. Hanging 200 pounds of your shoulder ligaments is a bad idea. I learned the hard way, I dislocated my shoulder in a dead hang pull-up. As I pulled-up the joint pulled out. You will lose a lot more strength from an injury than the 1 inch ROM between dead hang and active shoulder pull-ups."

Another person on the same discussion said they received an injury in a similar fashion by doing a weighted pull-up, and was injured for a month.

Any comments on this?

I believe that's a common place for someone training in gym and don't really worry about developing the little muscles and tendons, is like they are pressing and pulling way more that they can handle.. That's common in body building, at least those "big guys" that go to the gym and learn from others, they don't learn the "right way".. It's common to see in the gym people that don't really understand the exercises nor to they know the muscle they are working.

Asclepius said:

... This thread has received a bit of attention beyond this forum. Here is one response in particular from an individual comment from another website: ... "I don't care how strong you are. Hanging 200 pounds of your shoulder ligaments is a bad idea. I learned the hard way, I dislocated my shoulder in a dead hang pull-up. As I pulled-up the joint pulled out. You will lose a lot more strength from an injury than the 1 inch ROM between dead hang and active shoulder pull-ups." ... Another person on the same discussion said they received an injury in a similar fashion by doing a weighted pull-up, and was injured for a month. ...

Any comments on this?

Improper training will always lead to improper results.

Yours in Fitness,

Coach Sommer

Coach Sommer said:

Improper training will always lead to improper results.

Yours in Fitness,

Coach Sommer

blackcat said:

I believe that's a common place for someone training in gym and don't really worry about developing the little muscles and tendons, is like they are pressing and pulling way more that they can handle.. That's common in body building, at least those "big guys" that go to the gym and learn from others, they don't learn the "right way".. It's common to see in the gym people that don't really understand the exercises nor to they know the muscle they are working.

But... these people did exactly what everyone is now saying in this thread, including Coach Sommer: to do pull-ups from a completely dead hang. So now is there... a wrong way to do a dead hang pull-up? This is turning into a circular defense.

Yes, I find this interesting as well. I have a troubling right shoulder becasue of a previous accident i got when i thought it was cool to skateboard...then found out how bad at it i was. When I do a dead hang pull up, i do not have any problems. But the other day i tried to do a l-sit pull up form a dead hang (becasue i was able to do 5x5 l-sit chin ups dead hang) and when i began to pull my shoulder felt funny. So as not to really hurt myself, i stopped and went back to l-sit chin ups. How can i properly train?

If you have been reading this forum for a while surely you noticed that it doesn´t matter what kind of exercise is the center of the conversation, you will always see the same advice: Build the strength slowly, bit by bit, and do your prehab.

I don´t know how that injuries you told have happened, maybe there was a previous undetected problem, maybe a somewhat too hard training or just plain bad luck. Nobody is completely free of suffering an injury BUT you can minimize it for sure. Just watch some gymnastics competition, the bar or rings swings. I assure you that when you are hitting the lower part of the swing the tension is huge, far greater than 50 extra pounds. One of the ways to be prepared for that forces is performing full ROM pull ups(and several other prehab exercises, plus years of progressive swings exposure.

Look at 00:22, he begins with a dead hang, and then at 00:49 at the swings he fully stretches at the lower portion of the swing.

_hrY-kEO1jg

This discussion seems quite similar to the deep squat vs. the parallel squat one. There is plenty of people with injuries due to deep squats, but if you perform them properly they are far more beneficial than a parallel one.

I'm loving this discussion. That extra inch or so into the dead hang really makes all the difference in difficulty...maybe it is because the muscles have to relax before contracting again? It's like putting the weight down in a deadlift and letting go instead of just tapping the ground and continuing; I've always found that makes such a big difference in difficulty, all the muscles have to be recruited again from scratch. That's how it seems to me, anyhow.

Asclepius said:

This is turning into a circular defense.

Nonsense.

Their results (unable to hang with elevated shoulders without injury occurring :|) speak for themselves and are completely the result of faulty programming and execution. Had they consistently inserted the appropriate mobility/active flexibility exercises into their workouts and used the correct ROM on the proper exercises from the very beginning they would not now be suffering thru the inadequate and painful results of their flawed training.

As for that gentleman's comment about being 200lbs, that also fails to carry any merit. Our largest trainees at 230-250lbs are substantially heavier and by following correct training protocols have had no issues.

Bottom line; the body you build is the body you have to live with, so build wisely.

Yours in Fitness,

Coach Sommer