How to Do Dead Hangs: Tips & Proper Form

The dead hang is an excellent upper body strengthening and stretching exercise for decompressing your spine and developing forearm grip strength.

Dead hangs can be used for both stretching and strength training sessions. You can perform dead hangs immediately the first time in the morning to decompress your lumbar spine or after the tough lifting workout to achieve the same effect.

They are excellent to perform daily since the benefits are numerous. You can negate many negative effects of back squats if you do them regularly.

Also, if your grip strength is poor, you may want to incorporate dead hangs into your regular workouts since they represent the best bodyweight exercise for developing exactly that.

"The pull-up is a foundational upper body exercise that carries many benefits — namely more back and arm muscle, pulling strength, and full-body control. It’s also straightforward to do."

- Mike Dewar, Certified Personal Trainer

Good gymnastics rings are one of the most functional pieces of equipment that can be used in all sorts of places, both indoors and outdoors.

The best thing about dead hangs on overhead rings is they allow your shoulder joint more range of motion, which results in better shoulder joint mobility.

How to Perform Dead Hang On Overhead Rings

1. Set up overhead rings to hang from them without touching the floor with your feet.
2. Take an overhead grip and grab both rings with your hands.
3. Hang freely from the rings while keeping your back straight and legs aligned with your hips and spine.
4. Hold that position as much as you can, and feel free to internally and externally rotate the shoulder joint.
5. When you feel you can hold the rings anymore, slowly release the handles and drop yourself to the floor.
6. Repeat three consecutive sets for as many seconds as possible and rest only as much as you need between the sets.

Neutral Grip Dead Hang

The neutral grip dead hang is the variation of the original pronated dead hang exercises that places your shoulders in the best position with equally internal and external rotation.

This is why it is called the neutral position, and it can only be performed on the parallel pull-up bars, which are often placed as an additional extension to the normal bar.

How to Perform Natural Grip Dead Hangs

1. Pick a pull-up bar with a neutral parallel bars extension that has sufficient distance in between. This space between the bars shouldn’t be less than the width of your shoulders.
2. Take a neutral grip on both bars and let your body hang while keeping your spine straight, hips neutral, and legs aligned with the rest of your body parts.
3. Look straight ahead and let those lats stretch as your forearms start burning from holding the bars.
4. When you feel like you can’t hold your body in the neutral hanging position anymore, slowly drop to the floor.
5. Repeat for as many sets as possible with as little rest in between the sets. Hold the neutral hanging position for as many seconds as possible.

One-handed dead hang is the hardest hanging variation.

It is the best unilateral hanging exercise to build superior grip strength and stretch your lats even further [3].

How to Perform a One-Handed Dead Hang

1. Take a pronated grip with your right hand on the pull-up bar and hold it strong enough to hold your body in the air.
2. Slowly start to get your feet from the ground, and test if you have enough strength to hold yourself with one hand.
3. If you still can’t perform a full version of the one-handed dead hang, you can leave one foot on the ground and slightly lift it to increase the tension of your right forearm.
4. Lift your feet from the floor and assume a one-handed dead hang position.
5. Hold the hanging position as much as possible without compensating too much with the rest of your body parts.
6. When your forearms can’t longer produce the desired grip strength, release the bar and drop yourself to the floor.
7. Repeat for a couple of sets with both hands and ensure to rest enough between the sets to recover fully.

Improving your grip strength can be difficult and dead hangs are one of the best exercises for bulletproofing your forearms.

In addition, grip strength is a vital indicator of man’s health and is widely used to assess the current health of your whole locomotor system.

When you see an older man with a firm handshake, you know he is still healthy and has no problems regarding typical heart and cardiorespiratory issues at his age [4].

The best way to improve your grip strength is to start with bilateral dead hangs transitioning to unilateral variations.

One-handed dead hangs are the pinnacle of grip strength development and should be used regularly throughout your workouts to ensure longevity.

Stretch the Upper Body

Dead hangs are an excellent exercise for stretching your latissimus dorsi muscles.

In today’s day and age, all people suffer from tight latissimus dorsi muscles, often resulting in internally rotating your shoulder and rounding your thoracic back.

Many people with rounded upper backs believe they should only strengthen the scapular protractors, but stretching the pectoralis major and latissimus dorsi is also crucial.

Also Read: Best Chest Stretches Before a Workout

If you suffer from tight and immobile shoulders, the dead hang might be the exercise for you.

Let's start with the neutral grip dead hangs and slowly progress towards the overhead rings variation.

The rings will allow your shoulders to experience the full range of motion, activating both internal and external rotation.

Your shoulder ligaments, which are most often tight, will be stretched.

This will prolong the health of your shoulders and allow you to participate in shoulder-demanding activities such as basketball, baseball, and similar.

Learn More: 30-Minute Shoulder Workouts

You must always perform the proper technique to work out safely and avoid injury.

Performing the proper technique is key to avoiding injuries and optimizing your performance to make as much progress as possible.

The next thing is to rest enough intra and post-workout.

This means incorporating proper rest intervals between sets and reps and between individual workouts throughout the week.

Lastly, nothing can replace high-quality sleep and nutrition since those are paramount to preparing muscle growth and development.