Hogtie

What is a hogtie?

Hogtie is a bondage position in which the wrists and the ankles are fastened together behind the back, so someone lies face-down with their feet up. All four limbs come together at one point. In full the position is called hogtie bondage. Anyone tied like that can’t get themselves free.

How a hogtie looks in practice

Someone lies face-down, arms behind the back, knees bent, and one line connects the wrists to the ankles.

The simplest example needs no rope. A set of wide wrist cuffs and a set of ankle cuffs, and then the two carabiners to each other: that’s a hogtie, and it’s the form most people first come across it in. In rope the same position takes much more time to build. That build time counts. The clock runs from the first wrap.

It isn’t rare. Jennifer Rehor asked 1,580 women from the kink community about 126 acts; in the category “stringent/extreme bondage (immobilized)”, exactly the heading the hogtie falls under, 55.00 percent said they’d done it or had it done. Light bondage stood at 82.53 percent.

Where the hogtie comes from

From the farmyard. The encyclopedia notes that the hold was originally applied to pigs (hence the name) and other young four-legged livestock. With animals, by the way, three of the four legs go together, because all four at once is awkward and can hurt the animal.

Then came the police. The same source describes how the position was used in the United States to keep someone who resisted under control: ankles in leg irons, hands cuffed behind the back, feet pulled back until hand and foot could meet, and the person then flat on their belly. Professional literature calls that the prone maximal restraint position or the hobble position, with head and neck left free. Concerns about its safety have made many American forces stop using it.

Those two backstories explain the weight of the word. The hogtie is the only common bondage position that comes literally from livestock farming and from the arrest trade.

Why people choose a hogtie

Because there’s nothing left to move, and that’s exactly the point.

With most ties you keep something: turning over, turning your face away, shifting your legs. In a hogtie you can’t, because the four limbs are joined and the body is set in one shape you can’t hold on your own.

• For whoever is tied the last room to wriggle out of it a little falls away, and for many people that’s exactly the threshold where the letting-go begins.
• For whoever ties it’s a position that guards itself: you can’t step away from it, so the attention stays where it belongs.
• For a couple it’s a visible step up without a suspension point or extra gear: two sets of cuffs will do.

A hogtie is a short tie. The position leans on shoulders, hips and an arched back, and those start protesting before the scene is over. Anyone who wants to make it last picks the wrong tie.

What a hogtie is not

“A hogtie suffocates you because you’re lying on your belly.” Too firm. Chan, Vilke, Neuman and Clausen put fifteen healthy men in the lab in exactly this position and measured their lung function, after exertion too. They found a small but statistically significant loss of vital capacity and expiratory volume, so a restrictive picture. No sign of oxygen shortage, and after fifteen minutes no difference in carbon dioxide. Vilke summarized twenty experimental studies in 2020 and concluded that the position on its own isn’t enough to make breathing or heart function fail.

“So then it’s safe.” Also no. In that literature it’s always about healthy, calm subjects with no weight on their back, while the incidents that have been reported almost all involved people who had resisted, were exhausted or were under the influence. For the BDSM variant the encyclopedia explicitly names the pressure on the belly, and the restrictive effect grows the moment weight comes onto the torso. So don’t sit on someone lying in a hogtie.

“It’s the position itself that makes it dangerous.” The literature doesn’t bear that out. Where things have gone badly wrong in BDSM, it was almost always about pressure on the neck and not the shape someone lay in. That’s a reassurance about the position and at the same time the reason to leave anything to do with the neck to experienced hands.

What I see of it myself

I’m Victor, a gigolo, twenty-five years in BDSM and trained as a psychotherapist. A hogtie I rarely lay early in an evening, and never as a first introduction to rope.

People overestimate the position and underestimate the time. The first minutes feel fantastic, then the shoulder starts nagging, and then the question is no longer whether it’s exciting but whether someone dares to say so. So I agree an end time in advance instead of waiting for someone to squeak. My own rule, not literature.

What to watch for

• Set a timer before the first wrap goes on, because a hogtie runs out on the shoulders and not on the wish.
• Don’t lay a tight wrap over the back of the upper arm, where the radial nerve runs just under the skin; that’s the nerve that in Khodulev and colleagues’ study got damaged in nine out of ten cases.
• Never put weight on the back or belly of someone in a hogtie, so no knee and no seated body, because that’s exactly what increases the restrictive effect on breathing.
• Agree a signal that works without hands and without a voice, because in this position hands and mouth are often taken.
• Don’t combine a hogtie with a gag, a tight collar or breath play while you’re still learning; the encyclopedia warns about exactly that stacking.
• Release at tingling, numbness or a cold hand, and don’t wait it out.

More reading on the hogtie

On this site, bondage lines up the whole family the hogtie is the heaviest side of, and the art of bondage is the practical entry for anyone starting with simpler ties.

Off this site, Vilke’s literature review gives the full picture of what has actually been measured about this position.

Where this fits on my site

Do you want to know how lying tightly tied feels without having to work out yourself how long that’s responsible? Then it starts with a conversation beforehand. The page on the BDSM date explains what we agree in it about time and signals.

Sources

• Restraint physiology: A review of the literature. Gary M. Vilke, Journal of Forensic and Legal Medicine 75, 102056, October 2020. Review of twenty experimental studies of the hogtie or hobble position, also called prone maximal restraint position. Supplies that all fourteen studies measuring oxygen saturation found no clinically relevant drop, that FEV1 and FVC dropped statistically everywhere but stayed within the clinically normal range, that weight on the torso strengthens the restrictive picture, and the conclusion that the position on its own isn’t enough to cause respiratory or cardiac failure.
• Restraint position and positional asphyxia. Chan, Vilke, Neuman & Clausen, Annals of Emergency Medicine 30(5), 578–586, November 1997 (DOI 10.1016/s0196-0644(97)70072-6). Controlled cross-over study with fifteen healthy men aged 18 to 40 in a lung-function lab, measured seated, lying on the back, lying on the belly and in the hogtie position, before and after exertion. Supplies the significant drop in vital capacity, one-second value and maximum minute ventilation, the absence of hypoxia, the unchanged carbon dioxide level after fifteen minutes, and the conclusion that the position gives a restrictive lung picture without clinically relevant consequences for oxygen uptake or ventilation.
• Acute Radial Compressive Neuropathy: The Most Common Injury Induced by Japanese Rope Bondage. Khodulev, Klimko, Charnenka, Zharko & Khoduleva, Cureus 15(5): e39588, May 28, 2023. Supplies the sixteen nerve injuries in ten people after rope bondage and the share of nine out of ten for the radial nerve in the upper arm, with the back at the level of the deltoid tuberosity as the spot to avoid.
• Sensual, Erotic, and Sexual Behaviors of Women from the “Kink” Community. Jennifer Eve Rehor, Archives of Sexual Behavior 44(4), 825–836, 2015. Questionnaire study of 1,580 women from the kink community about 126 acts. Supplies the figure of 55.00 for “stringent/extreme bondage (immobilized)” in the role of doer and/or receiver, against 82.53 percent for light bondage.
• Hogtie. Wikipedia. Supplies the origin with pigs and other young four-legged livestock, the point that with animals three of the four legs are bound because all four can hurt the animal, the description of the police application with leg irons and handcuffs face-down, the names prone maximal restraint position and hobble position, the head and neck left free, and the point that many American forces have stopped using it.

Related terms

• Bondage. The practice the hogtie is the heaviest side of, with the other positions alongside.
• Panic snap. The closure that lets a hogtie in leather or chain open in one movement, under tension too.
• Handcuffs. The upper part of the simplest hogtie, with the ratchet that only works one way.
• Ankle cuffs. The lower part; together with wrist cuffs they make a hogtie directly.
• Wrist cuffs. The upper part, with the reason the wrist should stay straight in a hogtie.
• One bar prison. The same coupling of wrists and ankles, but standing and with a bar instead of rope.
• Double column tie. The basic cuff a hogtie in rope is built with.
• Futomomo. The leg tie that keeps the knee bent and makes the hogtie stricter.
• Friction. The clamp that holds every wrap of a hogtie in place.
• Floorwork. The category the hogtie falls under: rope without a suspension point.
• Groundwork. The same ropework under the other name, with the learning ladder alongside.
• Breath control. What a hogtie turns into the moment someone puts weight on the torso.
• Predicament bondage. The opposite principle: no fixed position, but two positions that both cost something.
• Shibari. The Japanese rope within which the hogtie has its own forms.
• Suspension. What happens the moment this position comes off the ground.
• Strappado. The position that pulls the arms up instead of toward the ankles, with the risk to the shoulder nerves.