Chins - Best Grip For Lats?

Which grip or method of chin/pullups is best for lats?

I’ve been doing semi-wide palms facing away, non supinated. Just want to make sure I shouldn’t be doing them another way.

thanks

[quote]Rugby_Owns wrote:
Which grip or method of chin/pullups is best for lats?

I’ve been doing semi-wide palms facing away, non supinated. Just want to make sure I shouldn’t be doing them another way.

thanks[/quote]

All grip variations work the lats, just with emphasis on different portions of the muscle. Why limit yourself to only using one grip? Why not use a bunch of different grip variations?

[quote]Sentoguy wrote:
Rugby_Owns wrote:
Which grip or method of chin/pullups is best for lats?

I’ve been doing semi-wide palms facing away, non supinated. Just want to make sure I shouldn’t be doing them another way.

thanks

All grip variations work the lats, just with emphasis on different portions of the muscle. Why limit yourself to only using one grip? Why not use a bunch of different grip variations?[/quote]

Exactly.

You have to mix it up every few weeks!

A Shoulder-Width Neutral Grip or slightly wider that shoulder width neutral grip pull-up allows me to use the most weight.

I think the wider you go, the more upper-back and traps/rhomboids you use whereas the narrower you go the more lats you use.

I’d have to say that shoulder width neutral is probably the best for Lat-Isolation because it’s most akin to a Pullover.

I always maintained that the wider the grip, the less lats and more inner back you were hitting. CLoser grips will make you feel a much better stretch at the bottom part of the movement.

S

correct me if im wrong but i have different view - when you do a pull-up, you use combination of your back and your arms to lift yourself up.

Now, when your grip is pronated, your arms are at disadvantage compared to a supinated grip(my analogy would be like comparing reverse grip curl to a regular or hammer grip curl, you can only lift so much less with the reverse) - therefore forcing you to use your actual back alot more during the pull. For example randomguy#21 is doing chin-ups(supinated grip), during the actual pull his back is contributing 60% of the work and his bicep+forearm is doing roughly 40%(numbers are made up to illustrate the example). Now keeping the same grip width, he switches his grip to pronated and now since his bicep is at a disadvantage its mostly his forearm helping his back. In this case its 80% of the load goes on the back and 20% on arms. Thus, youre able to do less pronated pull-ups compared to chin-ups or neutral grip pull-ups. (hammer grip will yeild you the most pull-ups, yes ?)

Your body composition ofcourse comes into play, length of limbs/torso and development of certain muscles… short arms + strong biceps + neglected back, you’d have to work hard to make a strong muscle-mind connection with your back in order to work it during chin-ups.

[quote]Drivethruhero wrote:
correct me if im wrong but i have different view - when you do a pull-up, you use combination of your back and your arms to lift yourself up.

Now, when your grip is pronated, your arms are at disadvantage compared to a supinated grip(my analogy would be like comparing reverse grip curl to a regular or hammer grip curl, you can only lift so much less with the reverse) - therefore forcing you to use your actual back alot more during the pull. For example randomguy#21 is doing chin-ups(supinated grip), during the actual pull his back is contributing 60% of the work and his bicep+forearm is doing roughly 40%(numbers are made up to illustrate the example). Now keeping the same grip width, he switches his grip to pronated and now since his bicep is at a disadvantage its mostly his forearm helping his back. In this case its 80% of the load goes on the back and 20% on arms. Thus, youre able to do less pronated pull-ups compared to chin-ups or neutral grip pull-ups. (hammer grip will yeild you the most pull-ups, yes ?)

Your body composition ofcourse comes into play, length of limbs/torso and development of certain muscles… short arms + strong biceps + neglected back, you’d have to work hard to make a strong muscle-mind connection with your back in order to work it during chin-ups.[/quote]

I had a nice long detailed post written to this post that I just lost to cyberspace, so I’ll try to sum it up really quickly.

You are not necessarily wrong, but it depends on:
-the individual
-the context

Since this is the “Bodybuilding” forum, then I assume that Rugby is talking about a Bodybuilding context (using specific movements to build specific muscle groups). From that standpoint then pull-ups (all variations) should be done with focus to make the lats/back do the vast majority of the work, while the arm flexors will do very little (probably 80/20 or 90/10).

IMO people who try to take a “short cut” by only doing one exercise and trying to build multiple muscles with it aren’t really doing themselves any favors (from a bodybuilding perspective anyhow).

It’s like, I can pound a common nail and a screw with a hammer, but it’ll take me a heck of a lot longer and I’ll end up doing not nearly as good a job of either, compared to if I used a framing hammer and an impact driver (tools specifically designed for the purposes of the tasks at hand).

The same could be said of trying to build biceps and back by only doing chins. Sure you might do both to an extent, but you won’t do either as well as if you did an exercise specifically for your back and one specifically for your arms. A very simple real world example of this are Bodybuilders.

If doing just chins to build both back and biceps were indeed a more efficient and effective method, then Bodybuilders would have long since caught on to this and you’d see the vast majority of them doing so. It’s not like chins are a newly developed exercise and Bodybuilders just haven’t had the chance to discover their bicep developing ability.

Yet just about every single Bodybuilder out there (whether clean or not) uses direct arm work (curls) to build their biceps. Heck even Strongmen (Mariusz is a good example) use curls to build their biceps, and they really only care about performance.

Just my two cents.

aye.

haha i missed the entire point of my post. All of that was basicly to say that pronated grip pull-ups would work your back more than chin-ups/neutral grips.