Vitality 40+ 5 Minutes Every Evening Reverses Decades of Sitting.

I want you to stand with your back flat against a wall and raise both arms like this straight over your head. Now try to touch the wall with your hands without your lower back lifting off it. If you can't that's what years of sitting have done to your shoulders and your upper back. It's also the reason why your neck is so stiff by the afternoon, why your lower back aches when you stand up from your desk and why you feel shorter than you used to. Now the good news is Five minutes on a bar every single day is enough to reverse all of this. I have watched this work for over 300,000 of my own students from their 30s to their 70s and most of them started without a gym or any real strength right where you will start. So feet on the ground first, then step by step through all of the five minutes until your back and your shoulders feel like yours again. So why should you be able to hang? To see why five minutes is enough, go back to the last time that you hung from anything. Most people think that hanging from a bar is something that only athletes and kids on monkey bars do, but your body was built to hang. And you still have the long arms to prove it. You only stopped hanging because your life stopped asking for it. And the last time that you held your own body weight from your hands was probably on a school playground. Sitting all day presses your spine down and it compresses everything. And hanging uses your own body weight to pull it long again. So every second that you hang, gravity works on your spine like traction. And your shoulder joints get space that they never get at a desk. It sounds too simple, but there's no other position that does this. Hanging also loads your grip and your shoulders together with nothing underneath to hold you up. That sounds hard if your grip is weak and Moana's was. This is my student Moana. When Moana first started working with us, she couldn't even hang for more than 10 seconds. And that's even with her feet on the floor to assist her. Now she hangs for 60 to 90 seconds, two or three times a day. Every one of those hangs trains her grip too. And a study of almost 140,000 adults in the Lancet study I found grip strength predicted death better than blood pressure did. That's why I want you to do dead hangs every single day. So let's talk about the hang progression because you can't just grab a bar and hang any way that you like. If your grip strength is low, you will probably let go of the bar long before your body relaxes enough for your spine to completely decompress. This progression lets you control how much of your body weight your grip takes. So this way you can start where your hands are today and slowly build up from there. There are five levels and the first one keeps your feet on the floor. To find your level, you're going to grab a bar with both hands And you're going to lift your feet off the floor and see if If you can hold this position for 10 seconds. If you can't, you're gonna start at level one. Plenty of adults don't make it on their first try, whether they're 30 years old or 70 year olds. And your number only tells you where you will begin. Whatever your level, time your best hang today and write it down because we are going to retest this 30 days from now. So level one is the feet assisted hang. You're gonna either use the floor or stand on a bench. Find a bar low enough that you can place your feet on the ground and stay there. Let your feet carry as much of your body weight as you need. Wrap your thumb around the bar and relax completely and let your shoulders rise towards your ears so that your spine can fully decompress. This is exactly where Moana started and there is nothing wrong with spending a few weeks here. To test the bar safely, step up, to the bar from a box or a step instead of jumping into it. A doorway bar has to sit on the doorframe itself because the trim alone will not hold you up. If your hands or your forearms get sore, Keep your hangs shorter for a few days and let them catch up. You want to accumulate time throughout the day. Just meet yourself where you are today and you will hang longer next time. Level two is the two arm dead hang. In level two, you're gonna pick a bar low enough that you can step up to it and back down safely. Lift your feet off the floor and keep your legs straight the whole time. I want you to try to avoid bending your knees. From there, relax completely And allow gravity to pull you. All the way down. Keep your body still. Try not to swing back and forth or side to side. So this might look passive, but every second that you stay relaxed, gravity is pulling your spine long. Level three is the active hang. So level three is essentially the same as level two, but this time you're going to pull your shoulders slightly down and away from your ears so that your shoulder blades stay a little set. Think about pulling the scapula into your back pocket. You will feel your lats and your shoulders switch on while you stay in control. If your shoulders ever feel unstable, this is the version that I would like you to use to begin with. Level four is the one arm hang. Now, before you try this one, Make sure that you can actually hold a two-arm hang for at least 60 to 90 seconds comfortably. Your active hang from level three should feel solid as well since that builds up the shoulder control that you will need once you do go into the one-arm hangs. So once you have both, hang from one hand then switch sides and from here when you're switching you really want to make sure that you're staying active on the way up to grabbing the bar. And level five is the weighted hang. You add weight with a belt or a backpack or even a dumbbell, but only once every level before this feels easy. So whatever level that you are on, start with 10 to 20 seconds at a time and build up gradually from there. Start with a five minutes in the evening and once that's easy, add short hangs during the day. I call those quick hangs or movement snacks and they are a bonus on top of your regular evening five minutes. So once the five minutes a day feels easy, make each set longer and longer until you can hang for 60 to 90 seconds comfortably. Then you can even start to play with more dynamic swings. As I say, it doesn't matter when you hang, as long as you spend time hanging, but there is a time that might be a little better than the rest because your spine is a stack of bones with soft discs sitting between them. And those discs work a lot like sponges. So every hour that you spend upright, your body weight presses down on them. And this squeezes some of their fluid out. That's why you are at your shortest by the evening. Researchers measured a group of eight men Nine times over 25. 24 hours and by midnight they had lost about 19 millimeters of height, roughly 1% of how tall they were. More than half of that height was gone within the first hour of getting out of bed and about 80% of it was gone within three hours. Lying down at night takes the load off and your discs soak up that fluid back while you sleep. Take gravity away completely and the spine stretches even further, which is why astronauts living in space have grown by as much as seven centimeters. A bar gives you a few minutes of that every evening with your own body weight doing the pulling. But years of desk days do add up. And the stiffness that they build in your shoulders and your upper back doesn't just magically wash out overnight. Hours hunched over a screen pull your head forward and round your shoulders so you end up in that prawn position. Over the years your upper back stops extending the way that it used to. So remember the wall test from the start of this video? That test checks your shoulder mobility and your thoracic spine, which is your upper back. So when these two can't get your arms all the way overhead, your lower back arches to take the last few inches. That arch is what the chair took from you. It is also a big part of why your lower back arches when you stand up from your desk, because it's been doing work that your upper back stopped doing. So give the last five minutes of your day to the bar when the day has pressed you down the most I want you to think of those five minutes as your evening dose. So I want you to set a timer for five minutes and keep your bar somewhere that you will walk past before bed every night. Minute one, you're gonna wake up your hands. So start with the feet assisted hangs. Even if you can already hang with your feet off the floor, wrap your thumb around the bar and allow your shoulders to rise towards your ears while your feet take some of the weight. Think of it as a warm-up for your hands and your forearms before the real hanging begins. Hang here for 10 to 20 seconds at a time with a few breaths of rest in between all the way until the minute is up. Minute two is your level so you're going to move to whatever level you found earlier in this video. You're going to hang here for 10 to 20 seconds at a time with short rests in between and keep everything nice and relaxed except your hands. If you are on level two keep your legs straight and let gravity do the work and if you are on level three then keep your shoulder blades slightly set back. In minute three and four you're going to do squat rotations. I want you to use these two Just two minutes for some squat work. which goes straight to the upper back stiffness that the wall test found. This also gives your grip a break before your last hang. So you are going to sink into the deepest squat that you can. If your heels lift then slide a couple of books underneath them to support you and to allow you to sit into this position. You can also hold on to something in front of you and you will work within whatever depth you have today because I couldn't get my elbows near the floor when I first started. So you're going to take your left hand and you're going to grab your right ankle, then dig the left shoulder into your left knee. Use your own body as resistance to twist, leading with the arm, reaching up for the sky and then turning down, driving the elbow towards the ground. Your aim is to rotate as far as you can and to keep opening up that spine. You will do 10 of these. Aiming to get further and further with each repetition, which will of course improve over time, the more that you do it. Once you've done 10, you're going to pause for 10 seconds at your end range and hold that stretch deeper. You see, that hold at the top strengthens you right at the end of your range, which is where you are weakest, and the more time that you spend there, the more of that range you get to keep. Keep switching sides and repeat. You might hear some popping and cracking in your upper back. And that is completely normal. If 10 feels like too much, you can start with five. And minute five is the longest tank. Finish with one long hang at your level held for as long as it feels comfortable for you. Breathe deeply and let your jaw and your face go loose. My breathing slows down while I hang and it feels like pressing a reset button for my whole upper body and also my central nervous system. Feet assisted time counts for every minute of this. Now the hardest part of all of this is remembering to do it every single night. Stack it onto something that you already do before bed like waiting for the kettle to boil for your tea or right after brushing your teeth. I want you to track every session in your notes app or a habit tracker. And I want you to aim to beat your weekly total instead of chasing one big hang. If you want somebody to keep you honest, start the 30 days with a friend. And finally, here's what you can expect over the 30 days. In week one, this is what I call the awakening. This is where your forearms are gonna feel like toast and your shoulders are gonna ache. And I also questioned this time whether it was even worth doing. You might feel this too and it's completely normal. Your hands and your forearms haven't held your body like this in years and they're waking back up so it's normal to feel this way. Stick with short sets this week and keep showing up even when your hang time barely moves. Week two is the opening. By week two your upper back is going to open up. And you will also catch yourself standing taller and breathing deeper. The neck pain that you might be experiencing from computer work is also going to start to fade. I could feel even my spine popping during this time as it decompressed while I hung. The hanging will also stop feeling so intimidating. Week three is the neural adaptation week. This is when my grip started holding longer without me even trying. And the same will probably happen to you. Your forearm muscles haven't had time to grow much yet But, your nervous system has gotten really good at recognising what it's doing and using the strength that you already have. Your shoulders will feel more stable, and for me, the frozen shoulder that I had been dealing with for a long time started to show signs of improvement. And week 4? is the craving week because by this week it's going to turn into a craving something that you need to do. I personally looked forward to this first thing in the morning and last thing at night and my mind felt calmer every time that I came off the bar. It became almost meditative and that's exactly why it belongs at the end of your day. So on day 30, I want you to retest the hang time that you wrote down on day one. And do the wall test again. Look at how far your hang time has moved and how much closer your hands get to the wall. Then I want you to notice how your lower back feels the next time that you stand up from your desk. And this all starts tonight with the same five minutes that I do every evening. The day is going to press you down the way that it always does. And now you have five minutes to give some of that back. Do this every single day for the next 30 days and you will feel the difference every time you reach overhead or stand up from your desk. As a matter of fact, you will feel the difference in every waking hour of your day. Write your day one hang time in the comments and come back on day 30 to tell me your new one. If this helped you, give it a like, subscribe and send it to somebody who Keep moving, keep hanging, and I'll see you in the next video.