Chin up guidelines for first timers (or those struggling to do them)

I'm a female struggling to do my first pull-up. Will doing the pulldown machine help at all? 

Eccentric bodyweight lowerings are a technique I like and do teach to assist an athlete break through to being able to do the chin up. Here are some more options, if for whatever reason this isn’t working.

• Assisted lifts : Work the lowering, and have someone lift your body or assist you lift your body during the concentric. This gives you exposure to the concentric phase. The challenge is ensuring progression over time. Ideally you use the same lifter each time, and they are conscious to reduce their contribution ever so slightly from week to week.

• The pulldown machine : is an option, and in theory should bring you closer over time to being able to do a chin up if you progress up in load on the lat pulldown. The limitation of this lift is the transfer from this to chin ups – the lat pulldown involves you pulling the bar to you, where the chin up involves you pulling the yourself to the bar – and this subtle difference is enough to make the transition not as easy as you may hope. (makes you wonder how a Swiss ball ‘balance’ drill is going to transfer to a land based athletic or human movement!)

• The assisted chin up bar : this challenges in specificity and transfer is to some extent negated or reduced by using the machine that is like a chin up, but has the ability to alter your bodyweight and make the chin up movement possible. Despite the enhanced specificity, the challenge I feel comes in you being able to push yourself adequately on this machine to develop the strength for the sticking point in the chin up lift. This may be a function of this lack of intensity on this machine or it may be simply a psychological barrier – what ever it is, it results in less than perfect transfer to the free body chin up.

• Grip : selecting the best grip is critical in learning or developing the ability to chin up. ALWAYS commence with the reverse grip, or palm facing head. The next progression may be to neutral grip (palm facing each other), and finally to overhand grip.

• Aggression : I have come to believe that one of the greatest differences between men and women in strength training is aggression, and it’s impact on the ability to lift with intensity. This impacts on load ability. I have worked with a lot of female athletes, although not as many as the males, and have seen the full spectrum. The one that taught me a lot about aggression in strength training was an multiple Olympic swimming rep that could rep with 20 kilograms around the waist in the palm forward chin up grip!  So, ladies, be prepared to get cranky! Especially in the bodyweight lifts that may have a significant physical or psychological sticking point!

• External load in the chin up : if doing bodyweight eccentric lowering doesn’t result in the full rep ability, extend this method to additional external weight during the lowering. Basically looking to extend your eccentric strength even further, with the hope that this will raise the threshold of concentric strength.

• Mix techniques : you don’t need to rely on one technique only. Provided you are not overtraining, consider mixing the options. For example, you might do the following :

1. B/weight eccentric lowering + assisted lift

2. When you are not able to contribute at all to the concentric phase, go a few more reps eccentrically with bodyweight

3.  Then go the lat pulldown or assisted chin bar and do some full cycle (eccentric+concentric) reps.

Whether you do these as a tri-set or as standard sets in this sequence is dependant on other variables. Both methods have application.

Finally, I counsel you on the recovery ability of the lats. I find that they don’t recover as fast as some smaller muscles (which is no surprise if you respect the generalized theory that the bigger the muscle the longer the recovery time needed; and because the lats are one of the biggest muscles in the body).  So don’t over do the workout, and review your frequency of exposure between training days in light of this possibility.

© Ian King and King Sports International, Inc. This article is not to be reproduced in part of whole in any format without written permission of the author.

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