Well hello there Shug here. What is the proper way to hang
a hammock? And I realize that a lot of people just they don't know. So today I
just want to touch on the basics of that. I have covered all this hanging stuff in
various videos of mine because I have tons of hammock videos. I like to refresh
it once in a while because I get new people asking and watching but for those
of you that are new just got a hammock and you're just trying to figure out how
you can hang your gathered end hammock and by that I mean it's a hammock like
I'm sitting in right now where it's it's gathered up on this little very end
right here and you're interested in finding out how you can hang that
hammock and maybe feel a little bit better in it by that we have a place
called the sweet spot for me my sweet spot is when I'm laying with my head to
the right my feet to the left that may be because I'm left-handed a lot of
people and I think most people sleep with their head to the left and their
feet to the right so to hang that suspension at around 30 degrees and get
a little bit of sag in that hammock it's gonna allow you to lay on that diagonal
and a hammock which gets you pretty flat okay here's my green bean hammock that
I've hung right here but you can see my suspension right here that's just that's
the parts that are holding my hammock up there at an angle like that and you can
see my hammock the actual green part is hanging with what you call a little bit
of sag it's almost smiling at you you can kind of see that the head end where
I sleep right here is just a little bit lower than the foot end and I'm talking
about the actual hammock there so my hang in here from the point where I've
got my suspension there to the point where it is on the tree is just under 15
feet now you might notice too that my length of my suspension from my head and
here and the length of my suspension on my foot end differ my suspension length
on my foot end is order then the suspension length on my
head end and I know this sounds counterintuitive it's sort of slide you
down into your sweet spot well what you see happens sometimes as people have 2
foot end a little bit lower they turn they're sliding toward their feet all
night what I'm using for suspension on this hammock is your basic cinch buckle
system a lot of new hammocks are gonna have something similar to this it's a
suspension system where you raise and lower your hammock now when I hooked my
hammock to the tree I'll have something like a very light
climbing rated beaner right here this is a camp Nano 22 it's less than an ounce
in weight and it is climbing rated one thing for a lot of new people don't hook
it like this so it's pulling against itself against the tree try to move it
where the the carabiners off to the side so your suspension going down to your
hammock is pulling from one side like that whenever I'm in the woods and
usually what they say and they not being me it's a collective group of us hammock
fans the general rule is something like 12 to 17 feet apart when you're out
camping you're not gonna find that perfect spacing so don't get too hung up
on it just learn to hang I'm normally hanging about head high and
I'm 6 feet tall sometimes it's a little eyebrow high sometimes it's a little
higher depends on the slope of your ground and different factors like that
so that's just something you're gonna have to figure out by doing people often
ask why I would use a beaner or something like that rather than just
running the strap through the little loop right here thus eliminating this
kind of the reason for that is if I want to move my hammock or take it down it's
just a lot easier to go around and cliff like this it only takes a few seconds I
would have to take my webbing out of the cinch buckle to run it through this
strap every time so with cinch buckles that becomes a little factors and
sometimes you have limbs sticking out on trees and you're testing your hang and
you don't like where it is and you want to move it up or down and you got to go
around that limb it's just a lot easier to be able to unclip take your
suspension go over that limb and clip it back on now the other kind of
suspension that may come with your hammock is what's called a daisy chain
with these Sonnen loops like this all the way up and down it this is your good
old poly straps they don't stretch I'm sorry I left the cinch buckle on here
just because it's hard to take off but I have the beaner hooked right into the my
continual loop here on the end of my hammock or whatever your hammock would
come with when you get a new hammock and normally they'll give you these really
heavy carabiners that are to me are way too heavy better to get something like
the camp nano beaner or one from REI just make sure it's climbing rated so
it'll hold your weight to won't Bend and that just clips right into one of those
loops and how it goes up through the tree right there you can see instead of
using a beaner or Dutch clip it's just looping right through itself and that's
a handy way to do it and it's a lot easier with this kind of system because
I can unclip from here leave the beaner on the hammock and just
slide that through and of course hooking it back on the tree easy you know around
get it about head-high to start and just clip it through one of these loops and
you're gonna have to go loop to loop to find your perfect your perfect hang here
we go Looby loo here we go Looby I make sure your tree is not dead make sure
that tree is not dead make sure that's a healthy tree the tree is what's
ultimately holding you up and make sure no big dead limbs are hanging over your
head and if you're hanging around the house make sure what you're hanging off
is safe and secure are you talking about 30 degrees and a lot of you don't know
what 30 degrees is here's kind of what how you can find 30 degrees it's pretty
close put your hand out like that my fingers are just straight across the
ground and that angle from here to here from your tip of this finger to the tip
of your thumb is roughly 30 degrees so if you get those straps to go like that
instead of like that also when you're when you're hanging your hammock really
straight with your straps and pulled really tight
the forces on the trees or your fence or whatever you're hanging on if you hang
that hammock really straight tight and your suspension is really straight tight
and then you get that body weight and it is pulling straight across like two cars
towing each other so if you go up with those forces a little bit at these
angles it's a little less force and stress helps the tree helps your
suspension helps your hammock personal choice
once again Roy Roy personally I like my hammock so I can sit down in it have my
feet on the ground and when I'm in camp just sit around and relax yes when
you're in a gathered at hammock you often have a wall a hammock right here
but if I just kind of bend that leg in a little bit I can kind of put my arm over
it and smooth it out I'm at a perfect height here for hat to have my coffee
from the hammock in the morning then when I get out of the hammock I swing my
legs up twist my body over stand up and a dance act
this is how I see a lot of hammocks hung straight across I could just feel the
tightness in the hammock right here when I get in my hammock for me personally I
don't want to be way up here I want to be right here like a little you can see
the space there with it my feet are from the end of my hammock
and that kind of gets me right up here in a place I like in my hammock your
sweet spots gonna be different than my sweet spot I basically sleep in a
hammock because when I camp out in a hammock in the woods I sleep 10 to 12
hours general every once in a while it's only eight hours now at home I'm a
five-hour sleeping guy maybe six then when I was at enter and a tarpor and an
ultra lighter I maybe five six hours a night but corn for 10 to 12 hours I love
that because the next day I'm refreshed my 61 year old body and I need to wake
up refreshed so I can hike like a 44 year old this hammocks do require a
little bit of fiddling they have a learning curve if you're not the kind of
person that enjoys that then you're not gonna really enjoy hammock stuff but if
you're the kind of person that does you're gonna enjoy this so this is shook
check it out Oh secured sixty-seven whoo buddy done will come to number