Are you trying to get your first chin-up?
Are you wasting your time with banded chin-ups?
Do you have shoulder pain or elbow pain when performing chin-ups?
Are you using the correct technique or trying to perform a bodyweight biceps curl?
If you answer yes to one or more of these questions, your in the right place.
Many people want to be able to do strict chin-ups because they look badass, and they are one of the best exercises for sculpting a nice back…. when performed correctly.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll repeat it STOP DOING BANDED CHIN-UP because they:
Teach the incorrect form
Increase the chance of tendonitis in the shoulders and/or elbows
Increase the chance of injury, especially shoulder injury
Fail to build strength at the weakest points of the chin-up
"But how do I build the strength required to do a chin-up if I can't use the band?"
Your first goal should be to hold your chin above the pull-up bar for 30 seconds with good form. But don't jump the gun and start here. You must build the capacity to hold the chin over the bar with the correct form.
It would help if you started by building both the strength and awareness of shoulder depression. From the bottom of the chin-up, you must learn to move from a passive hang into an active hang; this is achieved by shoulder depression. You must then maintain the shoulder depression as you bend the elbows and pull the chin above the bar. You must maintain the shoulder depressing as you lower back down to the active hang and relax into the passive hang.
Elevated shoulders in the chin-up:
Increase the chance of shoulder injury
Decrease the force production of the large back muscles
Look silly
If you fail to depress the shoulders at the start of the chin-up, you fail to activate the back's larger pulling muscle. You place the majority of the load into the much smaller biceps muscles.
Can you biceps curl your bodyweight? I don't think so!!
If you're failing to depress the shoulders, you're trying to do a chin-up with your biceps.
3 Steps to building strength and awareness in shoulder depression:
Step 1: Active Hang
Hang from a pull-up bar with a supinated grip, the elbows locked, and the shoulders depressed as hard as possible.
Step 2: Passive Hang
Hang from a pull-up bar with a supinated grip, the elbows locked, the shoulders elevated, and the head pushed forward of the arms.
You might be tempted to skip this one because it looks so easy. But the passive hang will:
Improve shoulder mobility by increasing shoulder flexion
Improve shoulder external rotation by stretching the shoulder's internal rotators. These muscles are often tight, and this limits our upper body strength.
Improve supination by stretching the biceps and the muscles of the forearms. We often have tight supinators because we spend a lot of time on the computer or our phones in a pronated wrist position.
Many people will find the passive hang difficult and need to spend more time in the active hang before they can comfortably perform the passive hang.
Step 3: Moving between the passive and active hang
Every repetition of the chin-up must start in a passive hang and then move to an active hang before flexing the elbows and pulling with the biceps.
If you bend the elbows before you depress the shoulders (active hang), you will struggle to depress the shoulders. By contracting the biceps first, you actively pull the shoulder into protraction, making it a lot harder to move the shoulder into depression.
If you depress the shoulder first and then pull with the biceps, you move the shoulder into depression and have a greater chance of resisting the bicep’s desire to pull the shoulders forward.
This is one of the reasons why I HATE BANDED CHIN-UP. The band offers the most assistance at the bottom of the chin-up, allowing you to move out of the passive hang without building any awareness or strength in shoulder depression.
Using the band MASSIVELY decreases your potential to build strength in the back's larger pulling muscle. Even if you depress the shoulders, the band assistance is so great that you're not lifting your bodyweight. Take away the band, and you'll have little shoulder depression strength. You depend on your smaller biceps muscles to do the work.
THE BAND IS COUNTERPRODUCTIVE TO BUILDING THE STRENGTH YOU'RE GOING TO NEED TO GET YOUR FIRST CHIN-UP.
You might get your first chin-up by training with a band, but I bet it won't be a full range-of-motion chin-up that starts in a dead hang and touches the chest to the bar. I also bet you will have trouble getting more than one rep.
If you take the time to build scapular depression strength, you will have a much greater chance of performing a quality chin-up. When you get your first rep, it won't take long to get your second, third, fourth and fifth rep.
This is just part one of a series of videos we will publish about building chin-up strength.
Give it a try, and let us know how you go.
Remember, don't break yourself. Make yourself.
If you’re serious about building a solid foundation of upper body pulling strength and working toward your first chin-up, you might like to check out the TSTM Skill-Based Programs.