To deadhang or to keep arms engaged?

When using a hangboard or hanging from anything else to increase contact strength, I saw a video where this climber says not to engage your muscles, but let hang fully. This seems like a lot of pulling at the shoulders. He also said not to reach a deadhang while doing pullups, but rather keep engages and don't reach full hang when doing pullups.

What is your take?

I've always been a dead hang guy. I did eventually tear my shoulder after years of climbing due to overuse not injury.

That being said I just wouldn't be a climber if dead hanging weren't possible. The opposite is too annoying to do.

Doesn't metolius instruct to NOT dead hang?!? I believe they instruct you to keep your shoulders and core engaged at all times...

You should engage the shoulders...

Yep; engage the shoulders to keep the joint from getting pulled apart while hanging. You don't have to fully lock off while hangboarding (unless you're incorporating that into your training), but just enough to keep the weight on your muscles. The easiest way to do this for me is to lean back a little when you come off the ground and concentrate on pinching your shoulderblades together.

That being said, I will do a couple of "dead hangs" after my workout on a pull-up bar just to stretch my lats a bit, but that's limited to three 1-minute hangs.

You shouldn't lock the joints when doing any exercise. Ever notice that some people's elbows slightly hyper extend when they outstretch an arm? Add weight with, say, an overhead press--that's a lot of pressure in between the joints. Halt the rep just before joint lock out. As for climbing, do what ya gotta do to send!

I find now that I'm working my hang board is that a full dead hang is a big full stretch for me and I need to go slow and be careful I'm afraid I'll pull or tear a rotator cuff or something . So I don't do it much or for long. I've done pull-ups for years and I've done years of weighted pull-ups and I always stay engaged it seems too risky not to I don't want to get injured while training

SMR wrote:You should engage the shoulders...

If don't already understand how the shoulder and elbow joints are held together with ligaments, it's worth doing some imagine searches to find out. I'd rather keep my muscles engaged than put the weight of my body on those ligaments repeatedly. Plus, you get the extra benefit of working those muscles.

Engage your shoulder girdle, lats, and elbows, keeping a very slight bend at elbow and the shoulders packed, back, and slightly down.

This shouldn't be an issue to maintain unless you are doing very heavy singles to triples. At a weight you can get 5 reps of 7-10sec, on a sub-DIP depth edge, you should be able to maintain the engaged position.

One reason I stopped doing max singles (well, stopped doing them as an entire phase, I still do them from time to time) was that keeping my shoulders engaged was the failure point, they would drop out before my fingers/grip did.