Starting Strength, 3rd Edition - Mark Rippetoe [172]
Chin-ups are a better introductory exercise than pull-ups, and perhaps a better exercise altogether because they involve more muscle mass. We’ll use a bar set at slightly above the level of the up-reached fingertips while we’re standing flat on the floor. When you are hanging from this level, your toes should just touch the floor. This is, of course, an ideal height, and your equipment may be lower or higher. The crossbar at the top of a power rack works well, as might a bar set high in the rack pins. If you are fortunate enough to train in a gym enlightened enough to have provided chin bars, enjoy them, for they are not common. A bar that is 1¼ inches in diameter feels the best in most hands, unless they are unusually small. But it is not hard to make do, and most training facilities will have a place for the innovative trainee to chin.
In the chin-up grip, your palms are facing you, about shoulder width apart. Grip width can vary several inches depending on elbow flexibility; the more easily the hands can supinate, the wider the grip can be. The wider grip increases supination and biceps involvement. The wider the grip is, the greater the external rotation of the humerus is. The closer the grip is, the more internally rotated the humerus, the more abducted the scapulas, and the less involved the scapula retractors and posterior delts are. Grip width may not be a practical variable to manipulate due to the joint stress it causes at the extremes of wide and narrow, but since grip width affects the way the shoulders interact with the load, some shoulder injuries can be affected by grip width. A shoulder-width grip is good for our purposes and presents no problems for most people. Chalk makes for a better grip and fewer calluses, and using it is a necessary. A knurled or rough bar destroys the hands and therefore adversely affects the rest of your training.
The movement itself is obviously simple: take your grip, and pull your elbows “down,” which results in your leaving the ground. Each rep starts from a full stretch at the bottom, with elbows straight and scapulas stretched up, and is complete when your chin clears the bar. A more honest approach might be to touch your chest to the bar, but we’ll count the rep if your chin clears the bar with your face forward, and your head not back. Try to stay as close to the bar as possible. The Gold Standard rep is done from a dead hang, with a slight pause at the fully stretched-out bottom. It is terribly common to see partial chins, which should be called “foreheads” or “nose-ups” and are usually accompanied by less-than-straight elbows at the bottom. For a high-rep set, you can use a stretch reflex at the bottom as long as the bottom is actually The Bottom. In this case, breathing will consist of a quick breath at the top of each rep. For a higher-rep set to failure (maybe 12 or more reps), you’ll find that the first two-thirds to three-fourths of the set will be rebounded, and the last reps will be done from a dead hang as you take a couple of breaths between reps at the bottom. The same rules apply to pull-ups, if you decide to do them.
Cutting the rep short at either the top or the bottom is as bad as squatting high: the primary benefit of the exercise lies at the ends of the movement. The bottom stretches out the lats, and the first shrug of the stretched-up scapulas down is all lats and upper back muscles. The finish at the top is biceps and triceps, and a completed rep means you have moved your body a constant, measurable distance through space. Each rep is therefore the same, and your effort becomes quantifiable, not just a flailing-around in the air.
But what if you can’t do a complete chin-up? Lower the bar a little (or raise the floor, possibly an easier thing to do, artificially) and use a jump to get the movement started until you’re strong enough to do it strict (Figure 7-38).
Figure 7-38. The jumping chin-up, used to strengthen