What is your overall opinion of these exercises? What do you consider them best for? What do you consider the most effective ways of performing them(form, tempo, ROM, set/rep schemes)? What results have you had in the past?
As for me, I’ve never performed weighted pullups long enough to see much in the way of true results, but I think they are a great way to develop pulling power and size in the lats, traps, rhomboids, and biceps. Wide grip pronated is best for hitting the lats, in my opinion.
As for dips, I think they are possible the best upper body exercise you can do. Everytime I take a break and come back to them, I get sore from pecs to tris to deltoids to even lats. I don’t like going past where my upper arms are parallel with the floor, for fear of shoulder injuries.
My major goal is to be able to do dips and pullups with 90lbs on the belt. I don’t see how someone could attain that without developing a huge and strong upper body.
Slow tempo on dips works great if you stretch out at the bottom. I think that you can do them faster, but stretch until you hurt like hell (in a good way) at the end of each set.
Slow negatives on the chin-up are interesting because you go through about 3 zones of muscle action. You usually drop a few inches intil your arms hit 90 degrees, then you are stronger and can usually control it more, then about half way down, your lats stretch out. I’m not a chin expert though.
Also, try 1-leg squats with a slow negative and feel the pain.
I like the “impressive” factor. Doing pull-ups with a bunch of weight on you is very impressive to the average untrained individual who generally can’t even do one with BW. It’s also a great way of making BW ones easier. A 5-6 weeks of slow negative weighted chins will do wonder for your BW chins.
For form, I like hands supinated, shoulder width. Get a great stretch in the bottom, and at the top you can really squeeze the lats and feel it really way down on the side of the back. The bicep also contracts very hard that way. Of course, variety is good, but that’s my favorite way. It’s also one of the “easiest” way to do pull-ups; your wide-grip pronated way being the hardest (for me at least).
I love dips too; I remember that’s the exercise where I most noticed the effect the first time I took creatine. I had been stuck at doing 3-4 reps for weeks and after my first few days of creatine loading, I did 9 reps on my first set.
I’ve since started adding weight to my bodyweight but have temporarily backed off 'cause of a tender elbow.
I play volleyball for my school currently, which doesn’t let me lift as much as i used to, but i try to get out once or twice a week. Weighted dips and pull ups are staples of my maintenance workouts to try and keep my muscle mass during the season.
Seems to work great for me, I’m still able to whip off 8 dips with 3-45’s and 8 wide grip pullups with a 45. I can almost always feel a burn throught the majority of my upper body since doing this. I’m sure weighted dips has contributed to the size of my pecs too, a noticable difference. Plus dipping a lot of weight tends to attract attention cause a lot of people have trouble with their own bodyweight =D .
This has already been said, not only do weighted dips and weighted pull/chin-ups rule, but the “Impressive” factor is great. Chicks giggle and guys gasp when they see this going on.
I use dips and pulls in just about every one of my workouts. Two of the absolute, must-have staples, in my opinion. Just for clarification, I thought maybe we should differentiate between what exactly a chin-up is and what exactly a pull-up is, as I see the terms are being used interchangeably here. This would be quite wrong in my opinion, as I’ve always understood the two to be different. To my experience, a pull-up is performed with a pronated grip while a chin-up uses a supinated grip. Chin-ups (by the previous definition) are much, much, much easier to perform. I’ve also heard, however, that doing chin-ups over a prolonged period of time can wreak havoc on your forearms and wrists (not the good kind of pain). I could be totally wrong on this too, however, just seems like I heard it before.
I agree, chinups are vastly easier when compared to pullups. You’ll notice this RIGHT away when you start doing the two with added weight.
I haven’t noticed a problem with chinups giving you any injuries, other than over use from doing too many reps or something like that.
Though I’ve been trying to accomplish a one arm chin for a while, and I hadn’t learned proper technique on a bar -you need to lean a certain way unless you’re using a power ring or chain- and that wreaked havoc on my elbow. Pinched a nerve fucking sucked.
But You’ll increase your chin strength by just doing one arm negatives.
I’d do Weighted Pullups and One arm Negative Chin’s as far as maximal effort training with vertical pulling.
Chin-ups may be easier to perform than pull-ups, but they work your upper body in different ways and should both be performed. Chin-ups are easier on your biceps tendons than pull-ups. Because of my biceps tendon problems, I do heavy weighted chin-ups, drop the weight, and burn-out on pull-ups.
