The Chin Up Exercise Guide For Bodybuilders and Athletes
By Ed Clements
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The Chin up exercise is a tactical workout movement that has probably been performed by men since the dawn of time. It’s a great exercise for building up the biceps, whilst also working the back and chest muscles, particularly the lats.
The exercise is performed with your palms facing you whilst gripping an overhead bar, whereas for pull-ups your palms are facing away from you. Chin ups are slightly easier to do than pull ups and work slightly different muscles.
Muscle groups used: Chin ups work the latissimus dorsi, posterior deltoid, teres major, the rhomboid muscles, the middle and lower portions of the trapezius, the elbow flexors and the pectoral major muscles.
The following are reasons why, in my opinion, the chin up is much better than the standard barbell or dummbell curls that most athletes perform:
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It develops functional strength that will translate to everyday activities, sports etc.
It is a whole upper body workout that seriously shocks your system, causing an anabolic hormone response – this just doesn’t happen with bicep curls! The chin up exercise can be classed alongside excellent compound exercises like the squats, bench press and deadlift. Clearly curls don’t work nearly as many muscles as the chin up exercise does.
Tones and builds your chest and back. The chin up exercise will not only cause your biceps to grow quickly, but this exercise will tone your chest and back. Chin ups tighten your whole body as you have to tense all muscles whilst doing them to help keep you stable.
Teaches you to handle your own body weight. If you can’t handle your own body weight then your never going to excel at sports and can never call yourself truly fit. Whereas fat people can often lift a lot on the bench press, I’m yet to meet a fat guy that can do twelve chin ups.
It will improve your sporting performance. Dumbbell curls are joked about in changing rooms for building beach muscles that look good but have no strength. By getting good at the chin up exercise you can greatly improve your upper body strength and this will clearly help you to perform better at a whole load of sports.
Lets you lift a heavy weight. When you perform the chin up exercise your always lifting a heavy weight (your body) as opposed to the minor dumbbell weights you would be lifting. It’s no secret that lifting a heavy weight forces your muscles to grow much more quickly than doing many reps of a lighter weight.
The chin up prevents injury from doing heavy pressing exercises. It is important to perform pulling movements like the chin up exercise if you regularly perform heavy pressing movements like the bench press or incline bench press… otherwise you will create muscular imbalances that can lead to injury.
It’s easy to increase the difficulty level. You can add weight buy wearing a weight belt or a rucksack containing weights. Alternatively you could get your training partner to lightly hold down your legs to provide increased resistance. Granted its pretty easy to move up weights when doing barbell or dumbbell curls as well.
Can be performed outside of the gym. All you need to do chin ups is some kind of bar or rafter to grip onto. You may well find you already have access to something suitable in your house, garden or local park. If the ledge you have is more suited to pull ups, do these on that and be happy to know that strength increases from pull ups translate well to chin up strength gains.
Works the biceps in the full range of motion. Chin ups require you to fully extend your arm at the bottom of a rep and then fully contract the biceps at the top to get your chin above the bar – this works the bicep muscles completely. Many people incorrectly perform barbell and dumbbell curls so that they don’t fully straighten their arms at the bottom of a rep – this is why you see guys with strange lumps in the middle of otherwise thin arms.
It's Cheaper. Even if you don’t have a bar or rafter to use already in your house, garden etc., it’s a lot cheaper to buy a chin up bar than to buy a whole set of dumbbells. These bars are pretty easy to install too.
Improves grip strength. Better grip strength will help you in real life, sports like rock climbing and will help you to perform other serious exercises like the deadlift where the limiting factor to how much you can lift is often how powerful your grip is.
By the way, I’m not saying you need to stop doing curls. Consider doing your curls after the chin ups. They will obviously be harder when your already tired, but this is a good thing and will increase muscle growth.
Technique for the classic chin up exercise:
1) Arms should be shoulder width apart or slightly closer.
2) Arms must be fully extended at the bottom of each rep and shoulder blades should be elevated. This way you work the bicep through the full range of motion and also increase the difficulty of the exercise.
3) Breathe at bottom of rep, but stay tense.
4) Keep your legs straight, bent, or behind you – whichever way you choose make sure they stay still.
5) Look straight ahead, or at the bar, at all times – do not look down.
6) Keep your shoulders back whilst doing the exercise and drive up with your chest.
7) Do not swing – swinging creates momentum, making the exercise easier (or harder if you get out of control!) and stops you from generating the tension you need to encourage strength gains.
What if I can’t do a chin up?
Simple. Get someone to help you by giving you some assistance when coming up from the bottom position. Very soon you will be able to do an unassisted chin up, and from this point there will be no stopping you.
Don’t bother using an assisted chin up machine – having the platform coming up from under your feet is very off putting and will likely ruin your form. The improvements you make on these machines tend not to translate to the proper chin up exercise either.
Advanced Training Tips:
If you want to get really good at chin ups then pay attention to these advanced technique tips that will help you to build strength and mass:
To really recruit your lats, pull from the elbows not the hands – this technique is easy to master and really helps performance.
For bodybuilders: Take four seconds on the way down and one second on the way up. This works both your slow twitch and fast twitch muscle fibres and will increase muscle growth. Be sure to keep the upward movement controlled even though your doing it explosively. You won’t be able to do as many reps as normal doing the chin up exercise this way – swallow your pride and enjoy the bigger biceps it will create.
Try doing the exercise slowly. Keeping the muscles under tension for a longer period of time will lead to greater strength gains and will increase the difficulty of the exercise.
Squeeze shoulder blades together at top to really work the lats.
Don’t wrap your thumbs around the bar as this will weaken your biceps. Keeping most of your weight on your ring and little fingers will strengthen your biceps.
Squeeze the bar when you are about to hit full stretch at the bottom of a rep to protect your joints.
Three variations to try:
1) The One Arm Chin up exercise: one of the ultimate shows of strength. Being able to do the one arm chin up exercise is proof you have excellent control of your body weight.
2) The wide grip chin up exercise: just position your arms slightly wider than shoulder width apart. Great for widening the upper back.
3) The Narrow grip chin up exercise: position your hands just wider apart than the width of your head. Widens the lower back.
Final note:
Once you have got used to proper chin up technique try some of the chin up programmes in this section, get really good at them and make fast strength and muscle gains.
* Ed Clements, creator of muscle-health-fitness.com, is an independent health and fitness writer who specialises in dietary, supplementation and weights training advice for improving body composition and hormone balance.
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