How To Get Insanely Good At Chin-ups And Pull-ups
19 May
Chin-ups and pull-ups for me are the most intense upper body exercises. Ever since I was a kid, I have been fascinated by them and had always wanted to master them. This wouldn’t happen until my early twenties and here I will share my approach with you. But first let me tell you what happened today.
[No picture of a dude struggling on the pull up bar? Lets have a totally random gorgeous woman instead! By the way, most guys are totally clueless when it comes to what women like about a man's physique. Here is the deal: hot girls dig the V-shape of the torso (the waist to shoulders ratio). Gunz or bi's or however you call 'em serve mainly to intimidate other guys.]
I Was Chilling After A Nice Walk In The Saturday Sun
…when I felt like I was in the mood for some mindless fun. So I popped a DVD with some flick called Mindhunters. It starred LL Cool J, Christian Slater, Val Kilmer and two hot girls whose names I couldn’t remember. The movie was pure brainless b-movie/slasher fun, and I enjoyed every second of it, though I’m sure the director wouldn’t like me calling his masterpiece a B-movie. Anyway, you maybe asking yourself what this movie could have to do with getting insanely good at chin-ups and pull-ups. Well…
LL Cool J Was A Ripped Bad Ass In The Movie
In one of the scenes one guy was hanging off some bar (falling was not an option because the floor was flooded and the killer had rigged the water with electricity). LL came to the rescue, swinging, climbing and pulling himself up various ledges, bars and walls. And the first dude was waiting for him and hanging for dear life. Naturally, I thought to myself – if only this guy had gotten his pullups in check BEFORE getting himself in a life and death pullup bar situation. Now LL Cool J, on the other hand, was having a breeze because he always keep in shape.
Here is the tutorial this poor guy probably wished he HAD read lol:
The Perfect Pull-up and Chin-up
- Watch your grip. Make sure to grip the bar towards your fingers. Basically, it should rest on the soft part just below your fingers. Avoid pinching your skin there. Pull-ups will cause callouses but they will actually make the exercise easier. Pinching the skin, on the other hand, will cause you unnecessary pain.
- Pack your shoulders. Always start the chin-up from a dead hang position. From there the first thing to do is, with straight arms, to pull your shoulders down toward the body and pack them into your torso.
- Use your back. The pull-up or chin-up is primarily an exercise for your back muscles. Those are the lats – the muscles of your armpits. You will fail to get good if you can’t feel and use your lats. It’s just that the biceps is too small and too week, no matter how well developed, to allow you chin-up mastery. Here is quick drill to feel those muscles. Extend your arms forward and ask a buddy to exert upward pressure on your arm. Now, try to lower it in spite of his efforts. Feel those muscles working? Good – use them in the pull-ups.
- Cross your legs. The phenomenon called irradiation allows neighboring muscles to make each othe stronger when contracting harder. So by crossing and flexing your legs against each other, you become stronger.
- Bend the bar. By attempting to twist the pull-up bar downward (your left hand will twist counter-clockwise and your right hand will twist clockwise) you will achieve a greater contraction in your upper body.
- Squeeze your butt. Same as crossing your legs and gripping hard, squeezing the glutes will give you an instant strength boost.
[From left to right: sternum chinups, sternum pullups, wide grip pullups.]
Mix Up Your Pull-up Training
- Regular chin-ups – these are done with an underhand grip. Pull yourself up until your chin clears the bar. They are excellent for biceps development and for overloading the exercise using additional weight.
- Regular pull-ups – same as chin-ups, except done with your palms in an overhand grip. They are also excellent for overloading with additional weight using a belt, a backpack or a dumbbell between the legs. They target the biceps less and the upper back as well as the brachialis (muscle below the biceps) and brachioradialis (muscle on top of the forearm) more.
- Wide grip pull-ups – these target the arms less and the upper back more. They are useful for learning to use the back muscles for chin-ups and pull-ups.
- Sternum chin-ups/pull-ups – these are the same as the regular chin-ups and pull-ups, except that they are done until the bar touches the chest bone (sternum). Sternum chin-ups and pull-ups are harder, but they work the mid-back and rear deltoids more.
How Get Better At It
The way to get better is to practice often (3 or more times per week), do a relatively high volume of training (25-36 repetitions per workout is a great goal), use progressive overload, and focus on strength training repetition ranges (doing 3 reps with a weight with which you could do a total of 5 repetitions is good rule of thumb).
[Lat activation, or simply put using your back, and NOT your arms, is the key to pull-up greatness. Note how the shoulders go down and are packed into the body. Not using the lats - the armpit muscles properly, is the number one mistake people make on chin-ups.]
These Mistakes Sabotage Your Progress
- You are not using your back. If you don’t learn to use the back muscles to initiate the movement and do most of the work on chin-ups and pull-ups, you are never going to get good at them. The upper arms are simply a small muscle and cannot compete with the big and powerful muscles of the upper back.
- You are training to failure. When doing complex movements like this, always stop 1 or 2 repetitions short of failure. This means to do 8 reps when you are capable of doing 9 or 10. Training to failure is a viable tool when it comes to breaking down a muscle so it can recover and grow bigger and stronger. Pull-up and chin-up performance, however, comes down to learning to use your back and getting more efficient at it.
- You aren’t using full range of motion. If you don’t go all the way down on chin-ups and pull-ups, you won’t be able to powerfully activate the back muscles.
Your Weaknesses Are Killing Your Performance
You are as strong as the weakest muscle that takes part in the exercise:
- Train your grip. You won’t be good at pull-ups if you can’t stay on the bar long enough. You need a strong grip. Train by hanging off the bar for time with two arms (eventually try hanging off one arm). Barbell holds with heavy weights for time also will help.
- Develop your forearms. Training your forearms with wrist curls, reverse wrist curls, reverse bar curls and pinch gripping (holding two weight plates together and lifting them off with one hand) will also improve your grip, thus your chin-up performance.
- Strengthen the mid-back muscles. The mid back muscles are responsible for the hardest part of the movement – the finish. Strengthen them with dumbbell, barbell or cable rows.
- Strengthen your upper arms muscles. Your upper arm muscles – biceps and brachialis, are also responsible for the finishing part of the movement. Improve them with barbell and dumbbell curls and reverse curls (like the regular curls but with your hands on top of the bar).
[Here's me doing 16 pull-ups. Notice the grip and the full extension at the bottom.]
So there – use proper form, activate the back, train often, use low reps and progress in weight (either with a weight belt, a backpack with weight plates or a dumbbell between your feet) as soon as it gets easier and you will be on your way to chin-up mastery.
Insane Photo by Digital Sophia
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Great article! I think there is a mistake that has escaped you: a chin up is an underhand grip, not an overhand grip.
Rambodoc
haha, thanks for pointing that out buddy! I will fix that.
Cheers,
Yavor
Nice article, Yavor. Pullups are one of the weakest exerices for me. I’ll have to incorporate some of your suggestions as always.
BTW, regarding your movie reference – have you seen a picture of Val Kilmer lately. He looks like a train wreck. Almost as bad as Nick Nolte’s arrest photo.
Andy,
Haven’t seen the photos buddy. We all age – so I get Val is no exception. This is one more reason to try living each day right.
Yavor
Great tips, Yavor! Packing your shoulders is an important note that most trainers miss.
John
Great article Yavor – like where you’ve been going with these articles – I think it’s becoming clear to everyone that for badass strength, you don’t need traditional gym equipment – as Arnie is aging, it looks like that phase of our culture may finally be over – and you’re one of the guys getting the word out – keep it up buddy!
Yavor:
A favor– can you specify what you mean by ‘packing the shoulders’? I was conscious of lat activation yesterday when I did pull ups. I wasn’t feeling it in the lats, but the tension in the arms and forearms was clear. Should the elbows flare out when pulling? Does that make a difference?
John,
Yeah buddy most people are not aware of packing the shoulders and using the lats (and consequently they (1. suck at pull-ups, 2. don’t have developed lats) – this is what I’m trying to teach here. Luckily there are guys like you, Adam Steer and me that look not only through the perspective of packing muscle, but also improving the function and performance of the body.
Kaiser,
thanks buddy – nothing wrong with bodybuilding if perceived as a challenge and a goal. But most people miss the point that bodybuilders get past a beginner strength training level first – then worry about details.
But I’m all for alternating and using ALL TOOLS available – train for looks and for performance. Btw you are being modest here because i know you’ve accomplished both of those goals.
[Here is Kaiser accomplishing one of his goals of competing as a bodybuilder.]
[And here he is ripped and kicking ass as a kick-boxer.]
Doc,
Packing the shoulders means to start the movement by ensuring that your shoulders are compressed in their sockets as tight as possible. Try this – extend your arms toward the ceiling and reach up as much as possible (your shoulders will obviously be shrugged). Now – without flexing your elbows, try to bring down your shoulders. Your arms will still point toward the ceiling but your shoulders will be ‘down’ and ‘packed’ into your torso. In all strength disciplines (gymnastics, powerlifting, martial arts, etc) the power comes from the core or center of your body. By keeping your limbs as close and as tight to your body you amplify your strength. This is why there are cork screw techniques in karate punches. Powerlifters use these tricks on bench pressing movements (shoulders and lats packed) and squats (lats packed and squeezed). Gymnast use all of those tricks too – packing shoulders, tightening the lats as well as using the hollow and arch core positions.
Don’t flare the elbows unless you are doing wide grip pull-ups. The tension in the arms and forearms is normal. But the movement is mainly for your lats – the armpit muscles. Once you learn to use them you will dominate at pull-ups. You can try wide grip thumbless grip pull-ups in order to really start feeling those lats (shoulder width grip pull-ups are best though – but come back to them once you feel the lats)
Great comments guys,
Yavor
Thanks for a great explanation, Yavor! You are a very responsive blogger, I must say!!
Ha – nice – I’m going to send people here to check out the cool profile I have in the comments section!
Doc,
No problem man! Keep training hard!
Kaiser,
Haha! That’s PR for you LOL!
Good stuff guys! Cheers,
Yavor
Incidentally, Yavor, I have taken this article very seriously (having read it several times), and am now following the Russian 5 RM pull up program by Pavel. I am getting the numbers up, bud! You a Russian, too?!
Doc,
I’m Bulgarian, man. Pavel definitely knows what he’s talking about. Do you have a link to that specific program? Or which book it’s in? I’ve been following his stuff for 7 years now, after a friend of mine introduced me to his principles…
For pull-ups the basics are: train often (5 times per week is best), avoid failure and fatigue (train with clean perfect form), train with lots of volume (upper body lifts need volume because of the neural efficiency we have in out arms – as opposed to legs).
Cheers,
Yavor
Yavor:
Here it is: http://www.dellanave.com/files/the_fighter_pullup.pdf
Enjoy!
Doc!
Thanks for sharing it with me and the readers of the site. It is a perfect companion to this article.
Cheers,
Yavor
Yavor,
I’m a new reader. I’d love to help your readership with a specific chin up (palms facing toward) volumization technique that helped me tremendously.
For those unable to complete 10 bodyweight chins: Monday perform 5 sets of ~60% of your maximum reps.
For example, if you can manage to knock out only 3 chins with proper form, on Monday you will perform 5 sets of 2 chins with 2 mins rest between each set–2/2/2/2/2.
Wednesday you will increase the total number of reps by 1 (and do this in the first set)–3/2/2/2/2.
Friday, your “test day,” max out on 2 sets of close-grip chins and 2 sets of a lat pulldown using the same grip you would use on the chin bar.
The next Monday, add another rep so you’re at 3/3/2/2/2.
Repeat this cycle as necessary. By the time you reach 6/6/6/6/6 or 7/7/7/7/7 you should be able to knock out 10 full, proper bodyweight chins on your next test day and you can/should then begin adding weight using a weight belt. You’ll then be on your way to being insanely good at chin-ups.
Thanks for the motivation and invaluable info.
-M
Michael,
thanks for sharing this routine – it is definitely a good one. The key is to do lots of fresh (as in without fatigue) repetitions. Using this you can come up with lots of successful pullup routines.
For example – back in the day when I started I used a similar routine. It was however even simpler – I was doing 1/2/3 repetitions and just adding one more set each workout.
Cheers,
Yavor
Yavor,
Great tips. I’m on tight time line to improve my pull-ups and this is one of the better resources I’ve found thus far.
Mike
Michael,
Frequent practice with perfect form and fresh repetitions, along with volume will do wonders for your pullups. Keep hustling!
Cheers,
Yavor
Hey Yavor great post! I have been really struggling with pull-ups for a long time. For the past few years I have only ever been able get a measily 10 reps with my own Bodyweight. I’m going take some of your advice like not training to failure and use the back more.
Best Pull-up post I’ve read so far!
Kieran
here is a good resource. This describes what’s out there and the perfect form
http://www.begin2dig.com/2008/08/pull-ups-how-to-resources.html
I am 17 years old and just recently got into working out. Will Lat Pulldowns be enough to work the back? Or should i replace them with wide-grip pullups?
Michael Harris,
Thanks for sharing this resource.
Jon,
For complete back development you need 4 exercises.
1. deadliifts will work your lower back.
2. Rows will work the muscles around your spine – the middle of your back
3. Shrugs will work your traps
4. Pullups will work your lats – giving you the wide back V-shape look.
Lat pull downs suck compaterd to pullups. For widce back you dont need wide grip pullups.Shoulder width grip works fin, because aq wider grip actually has LESS range of motion. So do regular grip pullups. And just get good at them (reach 15+ and you are good)
Yavor
Great tips!
I love pull-ups, one of the best exercises for upper back strengthening.
In the video you are doing some worm-like movements.
Just joking. Good work. Keep it up.
Tom,
worm like movements – you are killing me man! I def shouldn’t have attempted that last rep. But – I needed to because I was trying for a PR lol!
Yavor
p.s. – your site looks great! I like that you train at an awesome place out in the woods. Incidentally your last name means green wood or something so it’s very fitting.
Excellent post Yavor,
It looks easy to reach the 15 reps but in real it’s very hard hahaha
I just can do 6 reps correctly.
I have a question though about the video title: Why Doing pull ups “While Fasting”?
Thanks,
Kei
Kei
If you are a normal bodyweight, it is actually relatively easy to reach 15 reps in a few months. Going from 0 to 5 will take maybe 2-3 months and going from 5 to 12 another 2 and finally from 12 to 15-17, yet another two.
Going from 15-17 to 20 and beyond will take some more (and harder) training. This is actually the hard part.
The video is called doing pullups while fasting, because I fast 1-2 times per week almost every week, so I control my bodyweight. You can read about the fasting program here ==> http://relativestrengthadvantage.com/eat-stop-eat-how-to-lose-fat-and-preserve-your-muscles-without-traditional-dieting/
It happened that on the day I had a buddy of mine shoot me do pullups I was fasting. So I had not eating the whole day (from the night before actually). This wasn’t a problem however and I had enough energy for the pullups and for a workout too because the food from the day before was still in my muscles.
Cheers,
Yavor
Hi Yavor!
Thank you for this post. It’s helped me tremendously. Question for you. Do you think that doing negative pull ups and the flexed arm hang help with getting better at pull ups? Or should I just replace my negatives/flexed arm hang with more pull ups instead?
For example, my routine is like this
Wide-grip pull-up
Regular grip pull up
Chin up with regular grip
Chin up with parallel grip
Negative Wide-grip
Negative regular grip
Flex hang Wide-grip
Flex hang Narrow grip.
4-5 reps on each.
Thanks again,
Alex
Alex,
they help, but they are not an efficient use of your time. I’d stick with regular pullups and once they are easy (12+ reps) I’d add additional weight.