not sure the tone of my post came through or not (a bit early in the morning in these parts).
my understanding was:
chin-ups: less back and more bicep. especially the way most people do them. making the exercise easier.
pull-ups: more back and less bicep. the wider the grip the harder it is on the back.
so generally speaking… if you want to use more back and less arms / shoulders in rowing movements you should use more of a wider pull-up grip rather than a narrower chin-up grip. if you have problems with your arms / shoulders taking work away from the back then you should adopt a wider pull-up grip (and suck up being weaker at it for a while).
and aim to pull your elbows down on the movement - like you said recently in another thread.
i got the sleepy lat thing, i’ve realized. had been doing my pulling movement with a chin-up grip - because i wanted to get stronger at pulling (i’m a fairly weak female). but since i’ve come to realize my lats aren’t doing much of anything i was thinking the thing to do was to start doing rows with a wider pull-up grip (including inverted rows for the horizontal plane) and suck up being weaker. have ordered some resistance bands for some help since i don’t reckon i can do a wide-grip pull up yet…
Chin ups work your biceps and back. I do not consider that a great movement for biceps…at least not if you want really big ones. You won’t find many pros doing chin ups for biceps. TONS do pull ups for the lats though.
A wide grip is also not necessary even though I do both (about 4 sets of lat pulls downs at shoulder width) and then LAST IN THE WORKOUT I will do however many sets I feel of wide grip pull downs.
yeah. my chin-ups are very much a however the hell you can haul your ass over the bar kind of a movement (though i refuse to kip or otherwise look like a crossfitter being tasered - thanks farmerbrett for the expression there). not a very controlled movement with respect to targeting anything in particular, though. hoping that my recent resistence band order will help sort that out for me so i can focus on muscular contraction for the movement and experiment with different grips.
so sounds like pull-ups really are very good for the lats indeed. just what i need
and i’m guessing inverted rows are similarly good with similar grip for the horizontal plane?
(am still working on lowering the bar then i’ll work on raising my feet then i’ll work on adding a load)
They do for me, of course people should try both to see what works best for them.
Anyways, I’ll get some pics of my back. I do find it a bit silly though that I need a pic of myself to post perfectly good advice.[/quote]
it is mechanically weird, though. because of facts to do with physiology and where muscles attach to bones etc. if you do a google in site search of pull-ups / chin-ups there are a lot of articles that explain the different recruitment you can expect from different grips in a way that makes anatomical sense. which i’m not at all sure that you do…
it is mechanically weird, though. because of facts to do with physiology and where muscles attach to bones etc. if you do a google in site search of pull-ups / chin-ups there are a lot of articles that explain the different recruitment you can expect from different grips in a way that makes anatomical sense. which i’m not at all sure that you do…
[/quote]
…I don’t need to be an expert in physiology to know how my body feels when doing a particular movement.
Might be a bit weird but I could never really feel my lats doing pulldowns. That is until I actually put my feet flat on the ground and sat like you normally do in a chair with knee pads right on my thighs. I would usually do pulldowns like you would a dip with your knees bent and your feet just dangling behind you, then one day I just changed my legs so I was sitting regularly, world of difference, could be all mental though but I can feel my lats working now so its good.
your lats aren’t strong enough for pull-ups so you feel better recruitment on chin-ups where they are happy to play along whereas they opt out on pull-ups?
like how i get better glute / ham involvement when i do my GHR’s assisted since they will play along rather than unassisted where they simply bail for fear of tearing?
(i’m not questioning your experience of what is going on with your muscular recruitment. i’m just saying that given facts about physiology it is weird that that is what you experience. and… to my mind anyway… that deserves explanation)
Honestly I do chin-ups over pull-ups just because of personal preference. I don’t have a really great back like a lot of members of this site, but for ME, chins-ups > pull-ups. I just get a better contraction and they are easier on my shoulders.
Chins easier, so you can do more of them, they enable greater range of motion, you get better peak contraction. I don’t see why people think they’re inferior for lats.
There’s actually a HS machine in my gym which mimicks supinated grip chinups. My weapon of choice for lats. You can maintain perfect execution throughout the set, able to squeeze and hold the peak contraction, eliminate all momentum, and use relatively large weights. Sumthing like this:
They give stretch too… I think they’re great at isolating the lats, and I don’t get too much bicep stimulation from them, so they’re a must do…
I’ve often heard the statement “the wider your grip, the wider your back’ll grow”… so, one can see lot of guys doing pulldowns with grip that makes snatch-grip look narrow compared.
Pullups just give me sore teres majors. (Which a lot of people would mistake for sore lats)
Chinups can be great for lats, especially if you aren’t doing them for your biceps, but actively trying to get those elbows down and back. I think the lats are in a better position to pull, the arms don’t have to flare out awkwardly like they do in pullups, you’re not as limited by how weak you are at the top and since you can use more weight there’s more room to get stronger. Feels better on my wrists too.
Just because the biceps can help more doesn’t mean you have to let them take over. (As shown by my small arms and slightly better back)
Pullups just give me sore teres majors. (Which a lot of people would mistake for sore lats)
Chinups can be great for lats, especially if you aren’t doing them for your biceps, but actively trying to get those elbows down and back. I think the lats are in a better position to pull, the arms don’t have to flare out awkwardly like they do in pullups, you’re not as limited by how weak you are at the top and since you can use more weight there’s more room to get stronger. Feels better on my wrists too.
Just because the biceps can help more doesn’t mean you have to let them take over. (As shown by my small arms and slightly better back)[/quote]
I agree with this I always get a better stretch and contraction in my lats with a supinated and neutral grip than with a pronated grip. With a pronated grip, I feel more in my teres major and mid traps.
With all the talk of pullups and chinups, I just feel for bodybuilding pulldowns are superior for back development. It is easier to add weight and you can also get a lean back a bit to pull from a better angle. I will go six months without doing any pullups, just your typical back exercises with pulldowns in place of pullups, and I can jump on a pullup bar and do over 20 pullups EASY at BW of 215.
There are many many successful bodybuilders with huge backs that don’t do pullups and chinups.
[quote]Maiden3.16 wrote:
With all the talk of pullups and chinups, I just feel for bodybuilding pulldowns are superior for back development. It is easier to add weight and you can also get a lean back a bit to pull from a better angle. I will go six months without doing any pullups, just your typical back exercises with pulldowns in place of pullups, and I can jump on a pullup bar and do over 20 pullups EASY at BW of 215.
There are many many successful bodybuilders with huge backs that don’t do pullups and chinups.[/quote]
Agree completely. I don’t do pull ups, deadlifts or chin ups and I don’t see many here with a back bigger.
I know Vic Martinez does pull ups though as do some others…but the way some people write here, you would think you couldn’t get big without those exercises.
[quote]kakno wrote:
Lots of guys who are big don’t do them, but it seems like a lot of them used them quite a bit to help build the initial size, no? [/quote]
I used to do them. In fact, we would walk into the gym and before we did anything else, we would challenge each other to see how many we could do. Why? Because would looked bad ass doing them and all eyes were on us anyway because we had some size on us and the three of us looked a lot alike.
It was a game of pushing ourselves that helped build that base of strength and mass. had I not trained with them, I probably never would have benched 405 because I was honestly scared of the weight…until one of the other guys did it…then I had a challenge.
I don’t like backing down from challenges.
As far a what really made my lats stand out like they do now…it was heavy pull downs with a hold at the peak contraction.
I haven’t done pull ups in a long time aside from one “local strong man” contest I did around 2000.
Why do you care about “feeling” your lats? If you’re extending your shoulder, your lat is firing regardless of whether you’re aware of it. If your lats didn’t fire, you’d be helpless/disabled in everyday life.
[quote]belligerent wrote:
Why do you care about “feeling” your lats? If you’re extending your shoulder, your lat is firing regardless of whether you’re aware of it. If your lats didn’t fire, you’d be helpless/disabled in everyday life.[/quote]
maximal development??? -_-
