We find one of the most common things women want to ultimately achieve when they begin a strength training program is to be able to do a chin up. Often, it’s the number one goal but can also feel quite intimidating and highly unachievable.
In this blog, we’ll provide you with some techniques to help you to achieve a chin up and therefore accomplish that goal a lot sooner. We’ll also look at whether it’s a strength or mobility issue that may be preventing you from being able to achieve this goal. Often we think it comes down to pure strength but getting into the correct position is also crucial. With the right tools, being able to perform this movement will become highly achievable.
What does a poor chin up look like?
Before we discuss what you can do to help you achieve a chin up, let’s first look at what constitutes a poorly performed chin up.
Unfortunately, we see a lot of poorly performed chin ups within the fitness industry that is jeopardising the health and structural integrity of the neck and shoulders. Sometimes getting your chin over the bar just for the sake of getting your chin over the bar is going to do more harm than good. This can cause external rotation in the shoulder joint and therefore causing you to over activate your upper traps (upper back and neck muscles) instead of using your lats and mid trap (mid back) to achieve the movement properly.
If the upper traps are being used to perform the movement then that could be an indicator that an upper spine or shoulder mobility issue exists. It could also mean that the correct muscles aren’t being activated.
Watch Full Video Here
So how do we fix this?
Let’s have a look at some mobility drills to loosen the thoracic spine (mid spine) and release the anterior deltoids (front of shoulders), pectorals (chest) and biceps (front upper arm) before exploring an activation drill to assist with using the correct muscles to perform this movement properly. We will then follow with some regressions to help you build the necessary strength required to perform a chin up.
Mobility drills
- Kneeling thoracic mobility drill
This is a great drill to increase mobility through the thoracic spine. Begin by kneeling on the floor, leaning over and placing your elbows on a box in front of you with your hands placed behind your head and palms together. Keep your legs at a right angle, tuck your hips under just a little and keep your back neutral or even in a slight posterior position and your neck neutral too. From here, you want to drop your chest slightly to increase the stretch in the thoracic spine area. You’re not going to get a lot of movement here because you’ve taken out the lumbar and you should be able to feel a nice stretch throughout the lats and triceps with this drill as well. Hold the position for about 60-90 seconds.
- Seated shoulder stretch
This is one of the best shoulder stretches around and excellent for loosening up the anterior delts and pectorals region. It’s also great for lengthening out the long head bicep and forearms so basically everything that could be prohibiting you from achieving your chin up. With this stretch, sit on the floor with your arms stretched out behind your back and your legs stretched out in front. You want your palms on the floor with your fingers facing away from the body and ideally have your pinkies touching each other. Not everyone has the mobility to achieve this position so just get your fingers as close to each other as you possibly can. Once in this position, try to move your bum forward . This may be a little, or it may be a lot just depending on where your current mobility is at. Try to come in and out of this stretch slowly and again, try and hold for about 60-90 seconds.
Activation drill
- Passive / active hang
Often, when insufficient strength is the issue, we find that the bicep and upper traps are used to achieve the movement with the mid traps not being used anywhere near as much as they should. To activate this area so you’re able to use it in the chin up, try doing this simple drill. Hang from a bar with your arms fully straightened and with your deltoids (shoulders) and/or your biceps touching your ears. Allow your body to just hang. This is what is known as a passive hang. From here you want to pull yourself up just a fraction into an active hang but without bending your arms and using your biceps to do so. Pull yourself up by recruiting your mid traps, lats and rhomboids then lower yourself back down into the passive hang. Repeat this about ten times. Going from a passive hang to an active hang is actually what the start of a chin up should look and feel like.
Regressions
- Bands
Using bands to perform a chin up with full range of motion is a great regression and gives you a good overall picture of what your chin up would actually look like if performed unassisted. When going through the movement, make sure your elbows are tucked in, your chest is nice and high and your lats are switched on without overacting through the upper traps.
- Focusing on the eccentric
Another way to regress the chin up is to focus on the eccentric. The eccentric component is the lowering phase of the movement. To perform the eccentric component, grab yourself a box high enough that you won’t need to jump too far to get yourself straight into the top of the movement. Next, jump up and hold yourself there making sure your shoulders are kept down and from here, you’re going to slowly lower yourself down to a full extension. After this, jump back onto the box and perform the lowering movement again remembering to keep the shoulder blades down, the mid traps activated and making sure the movement is controlled.
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
And there we have it guys. To re-cap, we have a couple of mobility drills to ensure you’re achieving correct positioning for a chin up, an activation drill to enable you to use the correct muscles for the movement as well as a regression or two to help improve strength. Have a go at working on these and you’ll achieve what you previously thought was unachievable in no time. Let us know how you go!
P360 Co – Founder Jason Clark
Facebook – Perform360
Instagram – Perform_360
Snapchat – Committed_jay