Brachiation: A Lost Art in Fitness
Brachiate (Intransitive Verb): : to progress by swinging from hold to hold by the arms
Over the last few years i’ve developed an incredible fascination for crawling patterns and brachiation for fitness, and the benefits therein for adults. The fact is that crawling and brachiating is HARD for adults mainly because we stopped doing it years ago when we traded playground time for office cubicles and happy hours after work.
With a slouched posture like this, it's no wonder we see so many shoulder issues in the population at large.
Now, with newer generations becoming increasingly sedentary and playgrounds becoming less and less centered around movement (and more focused on “safety”) by taking out high monkey bars, i predict that we are going to start to see more and more movement-related dysfunctions in the body. With that said, i’d like to use this blog post as a dissection of brachiation for health and fitness and break it down in regards to how it may benefit you!
1) Grip Strength/Endurance: Grip studies are some of the most prolific studies published in the literature. This is most likely due to the fact that the tests are easy to administer. In the eastern bloc, they would select future olympic weightlifters by testing children using a grip dynamometer, as well as a broad jump test. This is due to the fact that grip strength and leg power early on are strongly correlated with total body strength potential later in life. Grip strength studies are vast and some are crazier than others. Everything from athletic predictors to sexual behavior. As crazy as some studies may be, the reality is that we lose our grip strength pretty quickly in our society from not doing physical labor as we’ve done in years past. This poor grip strength could be related to instability or overuse in other areas of the body (i.e.-the shoulder), and should not be overlooked. Hanging from the bars and brachiating is a fun way to build grip strength and endurance which addresses this cultural problem of girp weakness. Also, neurologically, when you are able to grip something harder, it sends a cheering signal to the muscles up the chain (a principle called “hyper irradiation”) to contract and stabilize.
2) Shoulder Rehab/Prehab: As a disclaimer, anyone facing shoulder injury should be evaluated by a qualified professional first. Once that has been done, brachiation can be a powerful ally in healthy shoulders because by hanging by the arms, you get a tractioning effect in the shoulder joint. A lot of impingement in the rotator cuff, for example, can be caused by the joint being jammed up due to soft tissue and capsular tightness. Try building up to a minute of hanging with both arms before moving around from hand to hand. You can also superset brachiating with any overhead work like handstands or military pressing, and/or incorporate it as part of a warm-up before upper body resistance training. Hanging is an excellent pairing with handstand or inversion movement practice as they work antagonistic (opposing) muscle pairings.
3) Undoing dysfunction caused by “bodybuilding” methodology. Although it can be fun to do a “pump” session now and again to make our biceps look big through death sets of biceps curls, i’d postulate that this can be incredibly damaging to upper extremity health. A lot of guys will be quick to run to doing curls for their upper body, but neglect doing things like pullups or rowing movements that use the entire upper body as a coordinated unit. Then, if/when they go to do things like pullups and rows, they become dominant in the elbow flexors with poor motor control of the lats and scapular stabilizers. This can result in biceps tendon inflammation, shoulder irritation from poor ability to centrate the shoulder joint in the socket, and even elbow pain. The solution? Do your bicceps curls, but try supersetting with static pullup bar hangs, pullups done with good form, brachiating, etc. Brachiating is a way to build grip strength and shoulder stabilization without overuse of the elbow flexors that many gym rats are so good at using.
Now that you’re loaded with an “adult” rationale for playing on the monkey bars for your health, head to a playground near you and start playing!
In order to be able to do more pull ups, ive started to use wraps to help with gripping the bar. I’ve worked out my whole life, and struggle with pull ups. Without the wraps, I can get a good 10 pull ups before my hands start to hurt, from calluses. With the straps, I can get a solid 12.
What is your take on this usage of straps? Do you think this is good practice?
Freddie,
Im not necessarily opposed to the use of straps for things like heavy pulling (deadlift,cleans,snatch,etc). Especially if grip is a factor and the grip needs to be saved during a high volume training phase or prior to competition. However, this is a rare instance for most of us that are not competing in the sport of olympic weightlifting or power lifting. I would try to avoid it at all costs and would likely be augmenting their program with accessory grip work.
For pullups, I see no reason to use straps. In your workouts I would do as many pullups as you can with good form without straps and then? When you are done with your working sets, add some dead hangs for time to build pullup-specific grip endurance. Also, your lack of grip strength/endurance may be related to poor shoulder position/posture. For example, if your scapulae are elevated and protracted during a pullup, it can limit blood and nerve flow to the hands which could limit your performance.
Just some food for thought.
Genius as usual! But where do we do this in our lawsuit-prone nation? All of the great playgrounds are being built-over with “safe” options…so sad!
Josh, I guess we need to create a sub culture that supports the monkey bars, right? Like the bar-barians and parkour traceurs.
I think you’re on track. The NYT just published an article, and guess what Charlie? “SCIENCE” agrees with you!!! http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/19/science/19tierney.html?_r=1&hp
charlie,
great article, and loved your feedback.
thanks for your help!!