How Hanging Healed my Shoulder

Escaping the Knife of Shoulder Surgery is Possible

When I heard that hanging can heal your shoulders I just had to try it.

Orthopedic surgeon Dr Kersch prescribed it to a group of patients who were recommended to go under a knife (of shoulder surgery). Surprisingly, 90 out of 92 participants of his study didn’t need the surgery any more after doing the dead hangs. That’s a 98% success rate. So why not try, I thought. It sounds simple enough.

Besides possibly avoiding shoulder surgery, there are also other benefits associated with hanging, which are frequently mentioned:

- that it can help to correct your posture,

- makes you taller

- improves your whole life somehow

- and how it will save your life,

- and generally how it’s the best thing since sliced bread somehow.

Now, some of those claims seemed a little over the top. But I like doing things that don’t take up too much time and have a big health payoff. So this sounded like a good thing to try.

I have never hung for any extended period of time. I think about 15 seconds was as long as I would to help stretch my back sometimes. To reap the benefits though, you should do it for 2 minutes a day, they say. There have been times in the past when I have not been kind to my shoulders (that’s a euphemism for being stupid) and the result is that I had a painful problem in my right one. I would feel it when swimming as well as during the arm swinging part of the Radio Taiso stretches (it’s a Japanese stretching routine that only lasts 3 minutes)[1].

This was going to be a different thing but hanging for 2 minutes didn’t sound too daunting and I thought (somewhat naively) that I might even be able to do it all at one go. Boy, was I wrong.

When doing it for the first time… Remember don’t try to overdo it. Dr Kersch says that “it’s equally beneficial to maintain floor contact and do partial weight hanging.” You’ll get the same benefits doing it for 30 sec 3 times a week) so build gradually. And remember, it’s a dead hang. Relax your body and let your shoulders touch your ears… Partial hang is okay. To begin with you can support your weight with your feet.

The first time I tried it, I was able to hang for about 20 seconds and I was a bit miffed. What? Me? The fit over 40 personified? I took a rest and tried it again and and then a third time, and then I decided to leave at that: 1 minute and 38 seconds. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and I don’t have to push myself too much in an unfamiliar exercise during my first day. What I noticed was that coming out of that posture felt a bit awkward. I first stood with my arms raised up and then lowered them gradually and let my shoulders settle back in. It felt like things were adjusting.

Meanwhile I went back to the source and studied Dr Kersch’s book [2] which describes how hanging opens and reshapes spaces in your shoulder joint to prevent rotator cuff tears and impingement syndrome in the shoulder, as well as treating these conditions and frozen shoulder. The book is full of testimonials and CT scan images. I was sold, especially that it makes so much sense. It seems like it is very easy to hurt one’s shoulder, which would point to a serious design flaw… Unless of course, our bodies were designed for a completely different environment than the one we find ourselves in. You mean that we weren’t meant to be sitting hunched over keyboards?

Yep, our environment is all wrong for our bodies. Our closest living relatives are chimpanzees and bonobos, both experts in hanging on branches and swinging from tree to tree. We have almost identical shoulder joint anatomy and we too were meant to be swinging from tree to tree on a daily basis. We don’t get many opportunities to do that in our daily lives and the position we get our shoulders into gets us in a lot of trouble. Hanging like our ancestors is an easy fix to realign your shoulder joint.

This exercise can reshape the bone and tendons surrounding the shoulder to make more space for the ball in the socket to move more freely. Hence the discomfort you might feel…

A word of warning. Dr Kersch in his book says that you can expect it to be painful. But please, be discerning. Play with the position and load. When doing these I felt discomfort but not pain. Use your judgement, consult a physician. You might have to support your weight with your legs a little to begin with. Build up gradually! Most important of all, don’t blame me, I’m just an anthropologist!

I took to the bars again the next day and I put my mind to it and hung the stop watch over my head where I could see it to make sure I can do at least 30 seconds at a stretch. Again, it took 4 hangs to get there…

But where does the “save your life” claim come from? Hanging increases grip strength, which is a very strong predictor of mortality, meaning the stronger you can grip, the less likely you are to die. I don’t know if focusing on having strong hands can really delay your appointment with Miss Death, it’s probably just an approximate measure of the overall fitness. But for sure it can’t hurt and it is nice to be able to grip and open those jar lids more easily.

Personal experience

I felt that things were going in the right direction with my shoulder right after the first day. I could still feel something during my Radio Taiso arm swings, but there was a marked improvement. At the end of the week I could hardly feel it any more. (Swimming free style was a revelation too, zero discomfort!)

The other thing I had noticed is that my arms and shoulder and chest muscles felt like I have been through some intense bouts of exercise aimed at these areas. It was a good kind of muscle fatigue.

And of course, my grip improved and I could hold on for longer (20 sec → almost 1 min).

I’m definitely going to include dead hangs in my daily routine. (Update after 2 months: still hanging for about a minute, not quite every day, but close).

Conclusion

This is a great exercise to fix your posture, which is something most of us need to be doing as we are hunched over our computers, phones and keyboards while sitting in poorly designed chairs.

You don’t have to do it at one sitting, actually you shouldn’t, we’re talking about 2 minutes a day cumulative, but that may be hard to do if you live far away from a bar you can hang from. But you can get a little creative around your apartment. Even if you don’t have shoulder pain it does seem like a good bit of “preventive maintenance” one should be doing to prevent problems from arising and to keep you strong and athletic. There is no escaping our origin and biology. This is what our shoulders have been designed to do and this is a way to maintain their proper function and keep them pain free..

Make sure you don’t overdo it at first, the original Kirsch protocol calls for about 30 seconds three times a week!

If you’d like to see this in action, go and check out the hanging video on my YouTube channel.

References

[1] Radio Taiso in English (a rare find) plus a video explaining how to do each movement.

[2] John M. Kirsch Shoulder Pain? The Solution & Prevention. Fourth Edition (2013)

[3] The hanging video.