How to do a chin-up
- Grip the bar with your palms facing you, hands about shoulder width apart, thumbs wrapped around.
- Hang with your arms straight and your feet off the floor, legs straight or ankles crossed.
- Brace your stomach and squeeze your glutes so your body stays still.
- Start by drawing your shoulders down, away from your ears.
- Pull your elbows down and slightly back until your chin is above the bar. Your elbows travel in front of your body more than in a pull-up.
- Lower yourself under control until your arms are fully straight. Pause briefly before the next rep.
Cues that help
- "Elbows to your hips": keeps the pull coming from your back, not only your arms.
- "Chest to the bar": lead with your upper chest rather than reaching with your chin.
- "Full hang at the bottom": straight arms on every rep give your lats and biceps the full range.
- "Squeeze the bar": a firm grip helps your whole arm and shoulder work together.
Common mistakes
- Half reps at the bottom. Stopping with bent elbows is the easiest way to inflate your rep count. Straighten your arms each time.
- Swinging or kicking to get up. Keep your body still and count only the strict reps.
- Gripping too narrow. Hands right next to each other can strain the wrists and elbows; shoulder width is comfortable for most.
- Dropping fast. Control the lowering for one or two seconds.
- Elbow pain from too much too soon. Chin-ups put a lot of work on the biceps tendon; add volume gradually.
Chin-up or pull-up?
The chin-up turns your palms towards you; the pull-up turns them away. That small change shifts some of the work.
In a study of 25 young adults, the lats were the most active muscle in both versions, at a similar level. The chin-up made the biceps and chest work harder, while the pull-up made the lower trapezius work harder (Youdas et al., 2010).
With more help from the biceps, the chin-up often feels a little easier, which makes it a good first goal on the way to pull-ups. For arm size, it is one of the few back exercises that also loads your biceps heavily.
Sets, reps and weight
- If you can do fewer than 5: 3 to 5 sets of as many clean reps as you can, plus slow negatives (jump up, lower over 3 to 5 seconds).
- If you can do 5 to 12: 3 to 4 sets, stopping 1 to 2 reps short of failure, resting 2 to 3 minutes.
- If you can do more than 12: add weight with a dip belt and work in the 5 to 10 rep range.
- Progress by adding a rep to your sets before adding weight.
Variations and alternatives
- Pull-up: palms facing away. More lower trapezius, usually a few reps fewer.
- Neutral-grip chin-up: palms facing each other on parallel handles. Often the most comfortable for wrists and elbows.
- Underhand lat pulldown: the same movement on a cable machine, with a weight you choose.
- Band-assisted chin-up: a resistance band takes part of your weight while you build up.
- Weighted chin-up: extra weight on a belt once body-weight reps become easy.
Tracking your chin-ups
PushBeyond logs the reps of each set, and the extra weight if you add some, and charts the history of the exercise. Its muscle map counts the chin-up for your lats and biceps, with upper back and forearms as secondary muscles.