Strappado

What is strappado?

Strappado is a position in which the wrists are tied behind the back and pulled upward from there, until you have to bend forward. In the scene the feet stay on the floor and the body carries its own weight. In the torture version, also called reverse hanging, the body hangs from the wrists.

What strappado looks like in practice

The scene version and the torture version share a name and a shape, but not the load. That difference is the whole subject.

Here is how the scene version usually goes. The wrists are tied behind the back, the line runs up to a point and is pulled tight until the upper body tips forward on its own. The feet stay put. Every attempt to straighten up pulls on the shoulders, and not straightening up tires the back. Five minutes is a long time. A one bar prison forces the same bend, but from below.

The torture version lets the feet go. Then the whole body weight rests on two shoulder joints in hyperextension. The moment your heels come off the floor you have landed, mechanically, in that second version, whatever the scene was meant to be.

Where the word strappado comes from

From Italian, from strappare: to pull, to wrench. The encyclopedia describes the position originally as an old judicial method with the same motion, and Dutch never took a word of its own from it. That origin explains the name, no more. In a bedroom it is about something very different: not punishment, but surrender you chose yourself and that can stop at any moment.

What happens in the shoulder

Not what you would think. The weak point is a nerve bundle, not a muscle.

Michael S. Pollanen and Ricky Ng mapped the anatomy of this position in Forensic Science International. When the shoulder is hyperextended backward, the joint capsule, the socket, and the surrounding muscles come under tension, but the most sensitive part is the brachial plexus: it is stretched and at the same time drawn tight over the head of the humerus, which compresses the nerve bundles. How much gets damaged depends on the force and on the duration.

Sara Woldu and Marie Brasholt worked through the literature for the Journal of Forensic and Legal Medicine and listed the consequences: nerve damage including brachial plexus injury, scarring, and joint dislocation.

And there is a second route that has nothing to do with the shoulder. Prolonged overstretching can damage muscle tissue over large areas, and the breakdown products from that put a load on the kidneys. It happens without a single blow, and without anything showing on the outside. That is exactly why this position should stay short, and in the hands of someone who knows what he is doing.

Why people are drawn to this position anyway

For what it forces without anything happening.

A strappado asks nothing of you but to keep standing, and that turns out to be the hard part. You cannot move without it costing more, you are looking at the floor, and you feel someone behind you without seeing what he does. If you like to surrender, it is one of the purest forms there is: no blow, not even a touch, and still every second is a choice you do not have. That helplessness you chose yourself is exactly where the arousal sits.

What it does not do: fix anything. If you start out tense, this will not calm you, and most people notice within two minutes that their shoulders are done before their head is.

What strappado is not

Not a position where you can tell afterward how far it went. The encyclopedia notes that correctly applied strappado leaves lasting but invisible damage, and Pollanen and Ng build their whole paper on that fact: in a victim with no lasting neurological loss, a temporary loss can still be evidence of this torture, such as weakness in the arm, a clumsy hand, or tingling that has faded on its own. Translated to a bedroom: the fact that nothing shows means nothing.

Not the same as a hogtie or an ordinary suspension. In a hogtie the weight rests on the belly and the chest. Here it rests on two joints at their extreme end, and that is a different class of risk.

Not something you build up to. Flexibility does not help against traction on a nerve.

What I make of it

I am Victor. I have worked in BDSM for twenty-five years, with a background as a psychotherapist, and this is one of the few positions where I put a hard clock on it rather than watching how it goes.

People only report the shoulder once it is already going wrong. The first signs are in the hands, and they sound unimportant. A finger that has gone to sleep. A thumb that feels “off”. That is the moment to bring it down, and exactly the moment when most people think they can keep going a little longer. So I do not ask “are you okay”, but whether she can move her fingers and whether everything still feels normal. That question gets a different answer.

What you agree on before you do this

• Agree on a time before the line goes taut, and set a timer. With a strappado the duration is the variable that does the damage, not the force.
• Agree that the heels stay on the floor. If they come off, the position is no longer a scene but the torture version, and then the line comes down at once.
• Check the hands every minute, not the shoulders: tingling, a finger going numb, less strength. Bring it down the moment one of those three shows up.
• Keep a pair of scissors in a fixed spot, and never leave the person who is tied alone, not even for a moment.
• Do not do this with a shoulder that has ever been dislocated, and not after alcohol.

Where to read more

• One bar prison explains the same forward bend from the other side, with fainting as the main risk.
• Bondage has the general rules on time, position, and supervision that apply on top of this.
• The paper by Pollanen and Ng is technical but short, and shows why the research on this position comes from forensics and not from sports medicine.

Where this fits on this site

If you want to feel this without watching the clock, the knots, and the nerves yourself, that is exactly what I take over during a BDSM date. You only have to keep standing and surrender, I keep the time and watch your hands. Beforehand we agree on how long it lasts and what signal stops it.

Sources

• The anatomical basis of suspension-related torture of the shoulders (reverse hanging). Michael S. Pollanen & Ricky Ng, Forensic Science International 378, 112707, 2026. Provides the anatomy of the hyperextended shoulder: joint capsule, socket, and the muscles around the shoulder joint plus the brachial plexus as the points of stress, with simultaneous traction on that nerve bundle and compression as it is drawn over the head of the humerus, depending on force and duration; and the finding that temporary loss such as resolved weakness, clumsiness of the hand, and tingling can be evidence even without lasting neurological damage.
• Suspension torture and its physical sequelae. Sara Woldu & Marie Brasholt, Journal of Forensic and Legal Medicine 80, 102155, 2021. Systematic literature review. Shows that suspension torture is one of the most common and widespread forms, and lists the physical consequences: nerve damage including brachial plexus injury, scarring, and joint dislocation.
• Strappado. Wikipedia. Provides the alternative names corda, reverse hanging, and Palestinian hanging, the origin from the Italian strappare, and the finding that correctly applied strappado leaves lasting but outwardly invisible damage.

Related terms

• One bar prison. The same forward-bent position, but forced from below instead of from above.
• Bondage. The practice strappado is a position within, with the rules on supervision and time.
• Predicament bondage. The family this position belongs to: every way out costs something.
• Hogtie. The other position that brings four limbs together, with the risk on the torso instead of the shoulder.
• Partial suspension. What happens once rope does start bearing weight, and where the nerves sit then.