The chin up is one of the best exercises there is. It builds real strength, power and awesome muscle growth. However, many people struggle with the chin up as it can be quite hard to do. This post will show you how to improve your chin ups and take them to all new heights.
How to intensify your chin ups and pull ups
Improving your chin ups is about doing a few things differently. It is a combination of techniques and tricks that will get you over the line and help you move towards new muscle gain. The most important things you need to do are:
- Learn the correct technique
- Learn how to “cheat” correctly
- Learn how to add intensity
This post will look at all three of these crucial elements.
1. The correct chin up technique
As I always say, if you have poor weight lifting technique you will have poor muscle gain results. The chin up is no different.
Quite often at the gym I see people pumping out chin ups so fast I wonder whether they feel the burn at all. They have no idea which muscle it is working and are obviously missing the point.
When you do the chin up you need to have a shoulder width grip with your palms facing towards you. The repetition needs to be done at a snails-pace; super slow and very controlled. Make sure you pull yourself up as if your elbows were doing the work. This helps you to isolate your lats.
Finally, make sure your have a full range of motion; letting yourself stretch all the way down and pulling yourself all the way up.
2. How to “cheat” correctly with the chin up
Cheat reps are quite famous in bodybuilding circles. Many professional bodybuilders use cheat reps to help them fire over a plateau. This is quite a good technique but it is not without its dangers.
Cheating implies one crucial thing - you are breaking your perfect technique. And any time you break your technique you are in danger of injury because the exercise technique is designed to be safe and effective. However, a proper cheat set can shock your muscle into some new growth.
So, how do we do it properly?
Firstly, do not do it very often. Once a month is enough. Any more than that and you run the risk of corrupting your long term lifting technique.
Secondly, you need to do it in a controlled manner. Do not compromise your lifting technique so much that other muscles come into play and you end up doing yourself an injury.
Thirdly, use tried and tested methods of “cheating”. Pro bodybuilders have the cheating down to a fine art and are more than happy to share their secrets.
The reason we cheat with chin ups is so we can learn to add more weight to the chin or so we can pump out a few extra reps. To do this we need to strengthen the muscles by giving them something new to do. The best way to cheat with the chin up is to perform half reps where you just do the top half or the bottom half of the motion while adding weight to your waist or feet. Or, you can do a super slow repetition where you do the decline motion over two minutes. This is full on!
3. Adding intensity to the chin up
If you want to add intensity to the chin up you need to start adding weight. Everyone at the gym can bang out 20 or 30 chin ups but not many of them can do 10 with a weight disc strapped to their waist. This is the real test of strength and it is this method that will add on some real size. There is no way around it.
Conclusion on chin ups
Start adding weight to your chin ups today. Keep your technique controlled and very slow and you will start to see some crazy growth in no time at all.
