Hammock from a Poncho How to Get a Great Nights Sleep - Tips

Description

When using our Poncho as a Hammock it is pitched up differently than a regular hammock, see how to set it up for a very comfortable nights rest. Also included are a couple ways I like to tie it off to a tree. Link to Poncho info http://wildernessinnovation.com/?p=1935

Also a special thanks to Beau Graves for being the "big guy" testing the hammock set up early on, his photo in the first segments of the video.

Tags: Hammock,Camping (Literature Subject),Sleeping,Poncho (Garment),outdoors,hammock knots,PSS,PSSL,survival gear,survival training,camping,Summer

Video Transcription

hey Perry peacock here with will in his innovation and I want to do a little video here just with some tips on how to you how to get the best use out of our poncho when you set up as a hammock I mean it started out the poncho was was a poncho on a tarp and we decided to make a hammock out of a two and now you're gonna get six seven eight different things you can do it but one of the most common uses for it and one of the things we love the most is the fact that we can use it as a poncho and when we get somewhere or whatever if we need to you know we can use it as a hammock and it's very comfortable if you set it up the right way and it is it isn't a hammock I mean we're saying hey this is we're using it we're using as hammock but it's actually a poncho that we convert to a hammock so there are some tricks to make your sleep a little more comfortable so I want to go over a couple of those today so that you can get the best night's sleep you've ever had and and do it using a multi-purpose piece of gear like our or a poncho survival shelter here and so I'm going to show you that and I'm going to show you a couple different ways that I do the knots how I how I tie off to the tree and and that sort of thing because I'm a little bit of an oddball I do things different sometimes been a long time since I did a video where I showed how to set up the the poncho as a hammock and I'm not going to detail how to get the cord through the ends I recently did a video when I've shown the am still blue Dyneema cord that you can get as option and I showed how we dropped the cord through with that so I'm not going to redo that on here but I empty my pockets out when I go to bed at night just throw them in the hood the hood becomes my pocket so you know doing that I'll even show you see how easy it is right here just unsnap it it's got a drawstring right here so there's my hood how it normally is I go to bed at night I just cinch that thing up I don't even really have to snap it I can just do that's fine and I pull everything out of my pockets I dump it in there that way I'm not losing stuff in the night away or anything if you do you'll find it in the hood anyway in the morning that's what we found at first but anyways that's a nice little nice little added feature but let me get into this and show you how to pitch this thing up and kind of tell you try to explain why because our Theory's a little bit different than a regular hammock some people have raved to me so much about how much they like it I've actually told some of them I don't believe you it's not that good you know it's good but you know but you know whatever if that's how they feel about it I mean that's cool you know we love it but I for myself I absolutely love this thing this is what I use so let me get right into it and quit running my dang mouth like I always do

and let's get right into this let's let's show you how to set this dude up and and a couple of tips and then we'll be on our way okay so let's get to it I want to do a little update and and show you some things that we've learned over the years and how we like to set these things up this is not set up like you typically would see a hammock set up for example this looks virtually horizontal and normally when you're setting up a hammock you use that rule where you hold your you hold your hand out in front of you like this with your fingers and your thumb here and this should be the bottom of your hammock and up here should be the curvature that comes up here and you hook to a tree up at that elevation on each side and that's kind of a guide for first standard hammock set up so anyway so what I typically do is I'm I'm going in here about oh somewhere about bottom of my rib cage height and from there to you know maybe armpit height or something normally and so now you'll notice now in the early days and sometimes still I used to get in here it would pull all the slack out of the knots and the cords and and you know when you're drawing the ends to get to put up your hammock when you get in and all that stuff will drop snug and so that will result in some curvature of here in here and I used to get in here and I would and I would do that and then I would retention it so it's tight again all right so now go ahead and get in here make sure you don't got my knife off of here so it's not in there I don't need that so now what I'm gonna do since I do have my shoes on and I'm doing this I'm not going to I'm not going to put my feet in here to kind of adjust myself around like I normally would okay but I'll just let them lay like that so now right here at this position this is very comfortable I have I'm putting I'm putting pressure on the I'm putting pressure on the on the hammock or the poncho in an area about so wide here and this upper area is kind of loose and what I found is if I put more sag in here it narrows a band in the middle it gets pretty narrow that's very tight and it can become uncomfortable a lot of people that use hammocks they sleep diagonally their foot feet over kind of to one side of Center in their head to the other side to help because that center part being very tight like that in the middle makes it uncomfortable but because we pitched these a little tighter anyway it just it makes a wider tight area and so it's it's basically comfortable I don't feel any area in here that is that is like tight and uncomfortable as you see I'm not very far off the ground and I don't care you know if you get in something like this you want to go be higher off the ground you know just start higher when you when you tie it off you know sometimes I've tied it off shoulder high but I used to you know I used to try to get up off the ground more but I mean as long as I'm clearing any obstacles or whatever I don't really worry about how far off the ground I am necessarily is that we generally like to pitch these things tight and not with a curvature like a hammock because this isn't this isn't a dedicated hammock this is a poncho that we took into a hammock and we found that this is the most comfortable way to sleep in it like I say I used to do this then get back up and retention it so it's even tight and then get in and sleep and you can do that too I just I just don't do it anymore I just I just kind of snug it up now I pile in here and I'm good to go I didn't pull it like really tight but I just kind of kind of snubbed it so kind of is horizontal begin with then you just get in it and you're good to go all right so now I'm going to show you I'm gonna get in and show you just a few things sleeping on my side maybe I'll sleep on my stomach a few few things there now this is this is very cozy pitching this a little tighter and I know they tell you that that's a forbidden thing and regular hammock use but but it works very well with these and I'm and I'm I'm about I'm about 225 pounds so just to give you an idea I'm 5 foot 10 and I'm using the the PS SL the long poncho survival shelter so let me go ahead and get in here and I did take my boots off because I've tensioned it a little tighter pitched it a little flatter I'm pretty evenly tensioned like just laying like this I mean I really haven't got that much curvature on my body so that being the case I can actually sleep on my side very easily and you notice I'm not sleeping diagonally I'm sleeping sleeping parallel to the to the to the to the way the poncho is hammock so now if I lay on my side I do like to use a pillow of some kind and this is a this a pillow made out of materials the same materials we make our survival blanket set of I'm messing around with a multi-function pillow now so but it's not right yet but anyway if I lay on my side because my shoulder be up here I need a little something for my head so now I normally like to sleep on my side this way so I'll try to do this and still be able to talk to you a little bit but you see I can I can lay like this and I don't have I don't have that much curvature to where it bothers my back or my hips or anything like that so this is pretty comfortable and I have even and you see I can even I'm kind of kind of going to a little extreme here but they see I can actually spread out pretty wide sleeping on my side like this and this is very comfortable I'm not feeling any I'm not feeling any stress points anywhere I'm not feeling anything that's too hard or too soft or something like that I'm feeling that my body is pretty evenly supported all the way around so I can sleep like this and I can get an excellent night's sleep one other tip that I wanted to show you is how I tie off my poncho and I set it up as a hammock I'm not I'm not a hammock guy I've never been a hammock guy I'm a poncho guy that uses my poncho as a hammock it's

sometimes I get people comment that are you know these guys are big-time hammock people and they do things different than I do so nothing no offense to them I'm just doing what seems to work best when we use our punch was a hammock so let me show you how I tie it off now I did this early on because I've basically this is all secured with two half inches and it and the knots never the nuts never get too tight undo easily so so I'll just slowly undo it so you can kind of see how I've done this and then I'll redo it for you so I'm coming in here like I say about rib cage high or whatever armpit high however you want to do it you kind of get whatever kind of get whatever tension you think you want on your hammock and like I said I like to just kind of pull it so it's a little so let's say you know more or less horizontal okay so so basically I have one around the tree and now I take this in and I pull it back like that I could I could tie off a couple half hitches right there and it would be fine but if I can I like to get around one more time and then and then at this point I like to just make just throw a half hitch in there like this and pull that up hope you saw that and draw another half hitch up through there like that basically like that and so that what happens here is because I've gone around the tree and I've doubled back is that takes basically all the tension off the nut but anyway so when you get in there this knot will never tension too much to where you can't just get it undone very easily so that is 90 percent of the time that is how I do the nut now if I can't if I can't get back around it again like say the trees too big of a diameter sometimes I will come around instead of doubling back I'll come up over the top and I'll come down in here and I'll go over this basically I just do a I just do a weave around their little now right now I'll come in here and throw me a couple half hitches in there and if I want to I can even make the last half hitch slippery so it's easy to pull out of it and then I just snug them up like that and now now again just by kind of making that one little weave around there I've taken all the stress off the nut I get in here it'll never be a problem to undo it there never be it'll never be too tight that I can't just take my finger and just pull on a little bit and get it undone so anyway this is peri peacock with wilderness innovation just showing you a few tips on how to how to use our poncho when you set up as a hammock and how to optimize how to optimize this to get the best the best night's sleep you can out of it so I hope this tip will help you this is this is really about the only way we sleep occasionally we sleep on the ground or something on bowels or something I got to do something once while just for a little different adventure but most of the time it's the way when my wife goes with me camping we sleep just as we sleep like this in our ponchos set up of hammocks and we absolutely love it it's so comfortable we sleep like logs well I snore like crazy but you know we sleep at least I sleep like ugh nobody around me sleeps at all but anyway have a great day enjoy your time outdoors get out and enjoy it if you've got one of our ponchos be sure and use it like a hammock it's one of the it's one of the best uses for it besides using it as a poncho you'll get an excellent night's sleep and

very cozy and if you're gonna carry something with you why not carry something you can use for three or four or five six seven different things like this poncho can be so enjoy your time love it see on a next go-round you