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Regarding chin ups, please make the idea clear. People tend to use the terms pull up and chin up interchangeably. Pull up is where you keep a pronated grip (palm downwards) on the bar. In chin up, the hand grip is supine (palm up). Amongst ignorant gym goers in India, it’s also known as “chilling”… God knows why!
Anyway, start by seeing this video:
Most probably because you lack in any of the 4 points mentioned above. The most important are the first 2 points. If you are too heavy, even strong lats will fail to pull you up. If you have very weak and deconditioned lats, even a light body will find it difficult to be pulled up.
Grip and core strength are two simple issues that can be improved with practice. Without strong grips, if you can’t hang on to bar for 30 seconds, forget pull ups. Improve that first. If your abs and erectors are weak, your body will swing madly and can never do solid pull ups after a few reps. Let me tell you, we are not talking about those swinging keeping pull ups here.
You need to start with basics. If you can’t do a single pull up with form you are on the right post. Read on…
Start by reducing weight. Despite big and strong back, you can’t do many pull ups when you are very fat with a huge pot belly. Fat reduction must be your primary step, if your goal is to do many pull ups.
Start by reading how to lose weight fast
Seems easy but for middle aged newbies to the gym? Believe me, it is not that easy. Try hanging on to bar for 1 minute. If you can’t, start with 30 seconds and slowly increase it. But don’t engage any muscle here. Let the lats, biceps and lower traps stay relaxed. Let your grips do the whole job.
As you can do the previous step, go for active hang. Isometrically contract your lats and lower traps for a while. Proceed to a little contraction of biceps and brachialis and keep slight flexion of elbow. Hang with all those muscles in isometric contraction for few seconds, relax and repeat. Slowly increase the contraction time. 10 to 15 second intervals of isometric hang for several reps will be your target.
Almost every gym has this machine. Start with a load, you can manage for 15 reps with good form. With practice you can get better muscle recruitment and increased strength. But focus on progressive overload and strength building of lats. This happens better as you practice lat pulldown to max 5 – 8 rep max with continuous progressive overload.
Attempt pull up after you can pull a load near or equal to your body weight with good form. Keep one point in mind, go for full ROM. pull the bar down until it crossed your chin level.
This is an extremely important part often ignored. Nothing hits the whole of your posterior chain like a deadlift. Go heavy and burn those erector muscles. This strength will help you a lot later when you want to progress in pull ups. Read my post on how to deadlift.
Regarding core exercises, hanging leg raises and crunches with progressive overload (can be done by, rope/machine or plate crunches) will be your best friend. Remember weak core is a recipe for disaster for any heavy workout.
Now this may seem strange as they seem similar with just opposite grips. But chin ups involve biceps and a bit upper chest too. Now, these muscles are stronger in most people than the brachialis (more involved in classical pull ups) lats involvement being almost similar. Thus you can do chin ups to progress to more reps. Use that strength to do pulls ups too, at a later stage.
This is a machine common in many bigger gyms. Go for the minimum weight needed to do 10 to 12 reps per set. Slowly decrease weight so that you can pull yourself up with very little machine assist. Finally do few full reps without machine and use the last few reps with machine assistance.
Bands of various resistance are available. Use the band’s with higher resistance and progress to one having lower resistance at a later stage. Just insert one or both knees (or even feet) in the band loop and pull yourself up!
Band helps you to overcome the top most part of the pull up where the elastic assist is least. This is important as people are weakest at the top part of the movement. Please remember, most failures at the end of a pull up / chin up set occurs due to failure of the chin to cross the bar.
This is where your exercise partner, spotter, trainer or any gym buddy can be of immense help. He/she will hoist you up. The mechanism of assist is like the pull up machine with human element.
We know that our body can always handle better load in the eccentric or negative phase. For that, jump (or take a chair/tool) to the top part, with flexed elbow and extended upper arms. Then hang down slowly, in a controlled manner. Repeat this for all the reps.
For even more progression, pause in isometric contraction (for few seconds) at two to three stages of the lowering phase. If you can do this with better efficiency, be sure that you have almost reached your goal. Please remember, don’t just hang down in a jerky manner. It has to be ‘slow and controlled’.
This is a crucial but often ignored advice. Practice these movements with progressive overloading (aim for strength gain with heavy and lower rep training) :
Even if you can’t do many reps of strict pull-ups, do as many as you can, rest and repeat. Carry on even if you are restricted to even one or two reps at a time. Do these for a fixed no. of reps (whatever be the no. of sets for that) like 25 – 30 in total.
As you learn doing 10-12 strict pull ups / chin ups, it is time to go further. Use the weighted belts and suspend weight plates from it to increase resistance during pull ups. Alternatively, you can hold a dumbbell or weight plates between your knees/feet.
You will notice that this weighted pull ups will help you to progress in free pull ups as well. You can do the same for chin ups too. You can even bring down heavy shot in even that lat pulldown machine!
This gymnastics movement is actually an explosive movement and a marker of top class fitness. Attempt this only after you can do strict 15 pull ups in a row. Watch this video to learn about it :
So don’t worry, it is achievable. You can do lots of pull ups / chin ups at some point of time even if you can’t do any right now. Just follow the above steps. But remember weight loss is the critical factor and be ernest about it.
All the best. Pull your up to fitness!
[…] Just ask yourself another honest question. Check if you can do several slow controlled pull ups or chin ups. If you can concentrate on improving them and use a weighted vest or dumbbell between knees/thighs. Pull ups can give you a lots of other benefits too. To know details, please read my post on how to do pull ups (chin ups) from scratch. […]