How often do you just hang out at the gym?

I’m not talking about aimlessly killing time, I’m talking about literally stretching out your entire body by hanging from a bar.

Normally, we consider the pull up bar to only be useful during pull or back days.  But, it actually is the piece of equipment that should be used every time you go to the gym.

According to Men’s Health, hanging from the pull up bar is a stretch you should perform daily.

One of the health and performance hacks I’ve consistently recommended… is hanging from a bar daily. Hanging vertically provides much-needed spinal decompression that lubricates, hydrates, and nourishes the intervertebral discs of your spine. This is especially helpful following compressive exercises like squats and deadlifts in the gym or sitting at your desk all day.

If you think about it, we spend approximately 2/3 of our days in the upright position which requires our spine to constantly hold up half of our body weights.  In addition, when we go to the gym, half of the exercises we do end up putting more stress and further compress our spines.

If you don’t properly release that stress through stretching and exercise, you can develop some nagging pains and numbness all the way from your neck to your lower back.

How do we take stress off our spine?

Naturally it happens when we lay down to sleep at night.  But sometimes, that’s simply not enough to release all the stress that’s built up.  At this time, one thing we can do is hang from a bar and literally use gravity to pull apart the vertebrates and elongate our spines.

Hanging from a bar also has another benefit.  It helps stretch out the lat muscles.

You may know that the lats is the muscle group that attach your upper arms to your upper back.  In reality, the lats attaches even lower all the way down to your pelvic which can cause you some lower back pain if they are not well conditioned.

..if your lats are stiff, when you extend your arms overhead as with hangs, pullups, or overhead presses, they will pull your pelvis into an anterior tilt and cause your lower back to hyperextend. This can lead to lower back pain and hurt performance.

Of course, hanging can help fix that too!

The best way to do this exercise is to hang from a bar for a couple of minutes each day.  Relax your scapula to let all the weights to hang off your shoulders.  Tighten your core and focus on deep exhales to pull down your rib cage.  You can even incorporates some lower body movements and rotations to help the stretching.

So next time, before you go running to the chiropractor to get your back fixed, you may want to hang out more at the gym.  You may be surprised at the results!