What do chin ups

In fact, chin-ups may be one of the most important exercises your clients should be doing. It helps my athletes become motivated for their training program when they see that they can actually do a modified chin-up after only a few weeks. The only equipment needed to perform a proper chin-up is a solid, stationary horizontal bar. The purpose of the chin-up is to use the upper back and arm muscles to lift the body from a stationary hanging position—the focus is on developing strength with the minimal use of momentum.

Other variations of the pull-up using momentum have recently been made popular by high-intensity conditioning programs, but for developing serious upper-body pulling strength, nothing beats performing chin-ups from a non-moving position.

The primary movement pattern of the chin-up is pulling from an overhead position, and the specific joint actions include elbow flexion and shoulder extension in the sagittal plane. The movement involves hanging from a horizontal bar usually at an overhead height and using a supinated underhand grip while pulling the body toward the bar so that the elbows move past the rib cage until the chin elevates above the bar.

The primary muscles involved in the chin-up are the biceps brachii, brachialis, brachioradialis, latissimus dorsi, teres major, posterior deltoid and the deep spinal stabilizers, including the transverse abdominis, lumbar multifidus and thoracolumbar fascia. The primary benefits of the chin-up are increasing strength and definition of the upper arms, specifically the biceps, the posterior deltoids of the shoulders and the teres major and latissimus dorsi muscles of the back.

Additionally, holding on to a bar and being able to do chin-ups helps develop crushing grip strength, which can come in handy for opening stubborn jars or having an impressive handshake.

Why focus on the chin-up instead of the pull-up? Chin-ups are performed with the palms up, while pull-ups are performed with the palm down. In short, the supinated grip of the chin-up places the shoulder in an externally rotated position, while also placing the radius and ulna bones of the forearm in their natural, parallel position. Mike Boyle, a Boston-based strength and conditioning coach and author of Advanced Functional Training for Sports, prefers to use the chin-up with his clients.

A palms-forward pull-up grip creates the abduction and internal rotation that generates impingement. One of my main concerns with clients is helping reduce the risk of injury, and the supinated hand position is essential from an injury-prevention standpoint. Sitting all day at a desk using a computer or banging out texts while hunched over a mobile phone places the shoulders in an internally rotated position.

Therefore, any exercise that helps increase the strength of the external rotators of the shoulder can help improve posture and reduce the chance of developing upper-back soreness. The pull-up uses a pronated palms-down grip, which places the shoulders in an internally rotated position, while causing the radius and ulna bones to cross over one another. This can create tightness of the pronator quadratus muscle in the forearm, which has been linked to carpal tunnel syndrome. The best assistance lifts for the chin-up are pulling lifts that work our back and biceps at the same time, such as underhand lat pulldowns.

We can also use assistance lifts like the pull-up or row to work our upper backs and forearms. The best accessory lifts for the chin-up are the ones that work our biceps or lats under a deep stretch.

For our biceps, barbell curls are great for engaging our upper backs and forearms, whereas incline curls work our biceps in an even deeper stretch. Both are fantastic. For our lats, we want to look at lifts like pullovers and straight-arm pulldowns.

Both of those challenge our lats in a deep stretch with a great strength curve. The chin-up is perhaps the single best lift for bulking up our upper backs and biceps, and is one of the very best compound lifts for gaining overall muscle mass. There are many different ways of doing chin-ups, but the underhand chin-up is the heaviest variation that works the most overall muscle mass.

The only variations that rival it are the neutral grip, angled grip, and gymnastics rings variations, all of which are similarly heavy and work the same muscles.

The pull-up is equally popular to the chin-up, but because it uses and overhand grip, it prevents our biceps from engaging. So the pull-up becomes a smaller, more advanced lift. To get better at chin-ups, we want to focus most of our efforts on doing chin-ups themselves. But we also want to use a wide variety of similar exercises, such as lat pulldowns and rows, and to work our muscles in different ways, such as with curls and pullovers.

If you want a customizable workout program and full guide that builds these principles in, then check out our Outlift Intermediate Bulking Program.

His specialty is helping people build muscle to improve their strength and general health, with clients including college, professional, and Olympic athletes. What is the best distance between the hands?

Are close grip chin ups even better because they further increase the range of motion? Gripping the bar about shoulder-width is a good default. With your arms hanging straight down, that would give you the largest range of motion.

If gripping the bar a little narrower or wider feels better or makes you stronger, go for it. Also, feel free to vary your grip width from phase to phase. For example, you could spend a couple of months with a moderate grip, then switch to a super close grip, then switch to overhand pull-ups.

You could be right. It could be the chin-ups and chin-up variations, but it could also be a hundred other things. When that happens, switching to a neutral grip or to gymnastics rings will often solve it. But that might still be a good place to start: try using the angled or neutral grips. Some other people find that the forearm pain goes away if they squeeze the bar tighter and keep it more in their palm, less in their fingers. You could also ease back on the volume and leave an extra rep in reserve, see if simply taking it a bit easier allows you to recover and adapt from the strain.

And if the strain is currently in the process of adding up, getting worse with every session, maybe deload for a week to clear the stress, and then ease back into those movements or alternatives more gradually, starting with fewer sets and stopping further away from failure. I do pull-ups along the bar parallel, moving from side to side. First right hand in front, then after 10 swap to left in front, trying to touch my shoulder against the bar. I use this as a variation to stop any boredom.

Offset pull-ups can be good, too, where you pull towards just one arm at a time. Just wondering what you might recommend as an alternative for performing a chin-up or pull-up from home without the bar. Hey Winston, you might like our article on bodyweight hypertrophy training. If you have weights but not a chin-up bar, then other row variations would do the trick. Barbell and dumbbell rows. Pullovers can work well, too. Thanks for the quick feedback, Shane; that at least gives me a starting point.

I read through the article on hypertrophy training and with regards to reps, if I did a set that included say, the push-up, vertical push-up, squat, chin-up, and deadlift, would 3 sets of 8 repetitions be a good starting point, or should I do 3 sets of as many reps as I can get in as close to failure as possible? Do as many reps as you can for each exercise, stopping just shy of failure.

Thanks again Shane for the clarification! You do a really great job at keeping up with all of these blog questions, so hats off to you! Am I understanding that correctly from the articles? Free weights are popular for a reason. They really do make it simpler and more pleasant to build muscle.

In that case, starting with bodyweight training is perfectly fine. If you have free weights, you can still do the better bodyweight exercises, yeah.

If your program says 3 sets of 10 repetitions, you can add weight whenever you can do 10 repetitions for all 3 sets. Hey Shane, I am a seventeen teenage girl who wants to build muscle, get curvier and stronger. I would appreciate if you inform me about where to start my journey as a female beginner on strength training and some tips to stay as lean as possible. It includes a 5-month workout program, tutorial videos teaching all of the lifts, everything you need to know about nutrition, recipes to make the diet easier, and much more.

One question on chinup. We tend to stimulate the most muscle growth near the sticking point of the lift, where our muscles are challenged the most. Ideally, that sticking point is when our muscles are in a stretched position. A good example of that is on the bench press, where our chests get a deep stretch at the bottom, which is also right near our sticking point.

For the chin-up, the sticking point tends to be at the top of the range of motion. So, yeah, that could be better for challenging the lats in a stretched position. You might have better luck by finessing your technique.

In this case, instead of pulling with your hands, think of pulling through your elbows, driving them down to your hips. Getting better at that movement often helps to correct the lagging lat issue. For more, you might dig our article on range of motion. Keep trying to fight for more reps every workout, do more sets, do chin-ups more often, or consider adding some extra assistance and accessory work: lat pulldowns, biceps curls, rows, pullovers, and so on.

Gaining weight and muscle mass will also help although it will also mean you have you to lift a heavier body! Great articles, thanks. You can use a dip belt with a chain and carabiner to attach a weight, such as a plate or kettlebell, to your body for added resistance. Start by adding 5 pounds about 2. The use of the weight belt allows you to use pullups and chinups as an advanced upper-body exercise and maintain sufficient difficulty to keep building strength and muscle.

Both exercises involve pulling your body up from a suspended horizontal pullup bar. The pullup uses a pronated grip with your palms facing away, while the chinup uses a supinated grip with your palms facing toward you. While each exercise emphasizes slightly different muscles, both exercises are appropriate as a primary upper-body resistance exercise. Additionally, modifications allow you to scale the difficulty up or down based on your current level.

Adding pullups and chinups to your fitness training will allow you to reap the benefits of these excellent upper-body strengthening exercises. A pullup bar allows you to work your entire body. Along with pullups, you can use the bar to do exercises such as leg lifts, hanging crunches, and…. The wide-grip pullup is an upper-body strength movement that targets your back, chest, shoulders, arms, and core.

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See the 10…. Using your own momentum to propel you forward, manual treadmills offer an effective way to break a sweat. See the manual treadmills that our expert…. Health Conditions Discover Plan Connect. Pullup vs. Chinup: What's the Difference? To avoid this, it's important to ensure you're using proper form by pulling your shoulders down and back before bending your elbows to pull up.

Pull-ups target your back muscles primarily, specifically your lats , but also your chest and shoulder muscles. Compared to a chin-up, pull-ups better engage the lower trapezius muscles in your back, between your shoulder blades. The overhand grip of the pull-up improves posterior chain activation, says Sobuta.

Posterior chain refers to the muscles on the back side of your body, which are key for everyday movements. Chin-ups and pull-ups are both powerful strength moves that use your entire body weight. The main differences come down to slight variations in position and preference. Ultimately, both are great ways to work your entire upper body and engage your core.

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