What's up, guys?
Jeff Cavaliere, ATHLEANX.com.
So we know that the pullup is one of the best bodyweight exercises that you can do.
But did you know that the chin up is one of the best bicep exercises you can do?
A lot of you probably do know that, but I will tell you this: unless you're focusing
on the three tips I'm going to show you today you're probably not getting the most out of
this exercise and for those that didn't think it was all that great for biceps, you'll immediately
start thinking differently because these three tips are easy to do and you're going to feel
it a lot more.
Firstly, what's the chin up versus a pull up?
Well, the chin up is underhand grip, the pull up is overhand grip.
That's the end of the beginner lesson here.
Now, with the chin up what you want to do is focus firstly on how you grip at the bar
because a lot of us grab the bar and then do our chin up.
We pull ourselves up and down, okay?
You can be more specific though.
How do you be more specific?
By focusing the grip through just these two fingers: your ring finger and your pinky finger.
When I grab the bar, if I grab with those two fingers first and leave my thumbs off
the bar and then just wrap the other ones around what I get is the ability to pull down
through just those two fingers as hard as I possibly can.
I get an increased activation of the bicep because if I were to not have this bar blocking
my way and blocking my ability to pull down it would actually turn my wrist into supination.
These come down, it turns my wrist into supination.
We know that supination here at the forearm is going to more actively engage the bicep
just by doing that.
So we're isometrically engaging supination by pulling down as hard as we can.
You'll be able to feel the difference right away when you do that.
Next step, you want to make sure that you're aware of how much you're flexing at the elbow
because we know that the bicep is an elbow flexor, but do we want to do our chin ups
really tight in here like that?
Or would we be better off having more separation, more like a 90 degree angle here at the arm
and the elbow before we do them?
The answer is: more of a 90 degree angle.
Now why is that?
Well, we know we have sufficient tension here on the bicep, and yes, you can get a little
bit more by closing down on it a little bit more, but not when you consider the final
thing I'm going to tell you here.
That is, in order to get the maximum contraction of the bicep and feel this chin up even more
you can do something – a little tweak – to get some additional shoulder flexion.
We know the bicep crosses the shoulder, too.
That doesn't just act at your elbow, but it also acts at your shoulders – the shoulder
flexor.
We can get our shoulder into more flexion by dipping our head under the bar.
Before you start saying "Jeff, behind the head?!
That's terrible!
You can never do behind the neck things!
That's terrible!"
No.
There's a big difference between doing 'behind the neck pull downs' in which the vulnerability
of our shoulder right here is really exacerbated, versus having our elbows in front of our body
and then getting our elbows up.
This is a much more stable position for the shoulder than this with our hands all the
way back.
We've done far less strain to the anterior capsule in our shoulder.
So what you do is, get in this position and as we're getting into our chin up, the head
gets underneath.
Now as we come up and squeeze we have more shoulder flexion here relative to what we
had before.
Here my shoulders and elbows especially are pointing down.
Here, when I'm up at the top, my shoulders and elbows are pointed up more with the flexion.
So back to the point about the amount of flexion you want in your elbow.
By backing off just a little bit to 90 degrees you've allowed for a really tight contraction
because you have some elbow flexion, you do have some supination force, and you do have
some shoulder flexion, but you don’t have something called "active insufficiency" where
you go to full range on every single one all the way up to here and then try to go to flexion.
You'll actually weaken your bicep contraction a little bit just by virtue of the fact that
this muscle crosses multiple joints and there's not enough length to allow for tension across
all those joints.
You back off just a little bit, you do the three tips I showed you here, and you will
feel the most intense contraction you've ever felt on a chin up and I guarantee you you'll
get much more out of the exercise.
So there you have it, guys.
A bodyweight exercise for your biceps that requires just a pull up bar.
You can get one at any sporting goods store for $15 and hang it up in your doorway.
The bottom line is, you don’t even need that.
I tell you guys all the time.
You can build muscle – a lot of muscle – with just your bodyweight alone if you know how
to train it.
Our ATHLEAN0 program, 6 weeks long, we show you how to do it without anything.
Not even a pull up bar.
Nothing.
It's called No bands, No bars, No bench; nothing at all.
You can find that over at ATHLEANX.com.
If you've found this video helpful make sure and give me a thumbs up and let me know how
many of these have you not been doing and when you do try them out, how much more do
you feel it?
All right, guys.
I'll be back here again real soon.
See you.