How to improve your Chin Ups
October 31st, 2011 // 10:25 am @ Chris
The Chin Up or Pull Up (depending on grip position) is usually described as one of the most intense upper body exercises, and yet its performed with nothing more than your body weight.
It’s a great exercise to target your Latissimus Dorsi and develop that awesome V shape, as well as building bigger biceps.
The move itself is fairly simple to do, but hard to execute. Simply hang from a bar and pull yourself up. Sounds easy enough, but its pretty difficult to do. So here are some tips to help improve your chins:
Negative Reps
A negative rep is the eccentric phase of a lift, i.e. the lowering movement. So for the Chin up, the negative phase would be when you are lowering yourself down from the bar.
Even if you cant do the concentric part, the part where you pull yourself up, you should be able to slowly lower yourself down in a controlled movement.
By focusing purely on the negative movement of any lift you are targeting the same muscles that are used in the Positive phase, however your muscles are 70% stronger in the eccentric movement.
By strengthening your muscles doing just negatives, it will have a cross over effect with your strength when doing the actual pulling up part. So focus on getting better at doing negatives and the concentric phase will become easier.
To do this with Chin ups, you can either Jump to assist with the concentric phase, or use a step or a bench to get into position. Once in position, concentrate on lowering yourself slowly and controlled.
Assisted Reps
If you can’t do Chin Ups using just your bodyweight, a good way to improve is by using some form of assistance.
Many gyms have assisted chin up/dip stations available where you can stand on a platform and this will take a % of your body weight. Using this piece of equipment is a good way to form the strength needed get you on your way to doing body weighted chin ups. Simply focus on reducing the amount of weight the machine takes each time you use it, until you get to the point where the machine is providing no assistance at all.
If your gym doesn’t have one of these, swap gyms.. or grab yourself a resistance band. Tie this around the gyms pull up bar or smith machine and stand on the band. The Resistance band should push you up towards the bar, providing you with some assistance.
Alternatively, grab your gym buddy and get them to hold your legs while you perform your sets of chins. They will be taking some of your weight for you so you won’t be pulling up all of your body weight yourself. As you get better, your buddy can just reduce the amount of assistance he is providing.
Perform Other Exercises
Give the bar a rest for a while and focus on developing your upper body strength with other exercises.
Exercises such as the Pull Down will target the same muscles you use when doing a Pull Up, so head over to your Lat Pull Down Machine and focus on building your back strength up on that first.
Or, you can use a TRX and perform different Row exercises, reducing your angle as you progress. This will again help develop awesome back strength needed to perform a Chin Up.
So, even if you are unable to do one single Chin Up to start, there is no reason why you can’t ever do one, you just need to practice. Give these three methods a try and you should be chinning in no time. Good Luck.
Category : Blog &Exercise &Weight Training
