TacticalBarbell.com

Sorry for the newb-ish question guys, but what are the advantages and differences of one over the other, if there are any?

Chins up - palms facing you. Pull ups - palms facing away. Chin ups allow the use of more weight and a greater range of motion. Pull ups may be more specific to other activities like climbing. I don't think there are any really big differences in outcomes. But some people find one feels better on elbows, shoulders, and that individual difference is probably the most important.

Agreed, I switched from pullups to chinups because my elbows started to hurt. Haven't had any problems since.

Personally I prefer chin ups. There is some difference, but I think it's a matter of personal preference and what causes you the least injury. People spend too much time debating this when it's really quite inconsequential.

This might interest you:

http://www.rookiejournal.com/the-final- ... page1.html
https://www.t-nation.com/training/insid ... -exercises

I think I did post this article before.. I have learned a lot from it at some point of my life.

http://ericcressey.com/strength-trainin ... -essential

It is an easy choice for me. Chins with parallel or angled fat grip. Safe for elbows, shoulders and scapular area. Being able to go heavier than PU comes as a benefit. Personally, I can't keep it for too long due to old shoulder/elbow issue. So I am doing chins for every other block or so. Cycling it with rowing.

Here's a pull-up puzzler. I recently put up a multi-grip pull-up bar. Previously I have done my pull-ups almost exclusively with a medium width, overhand grip. I've been wonder whether for the sake of elbow health, I should cycle through the various grips during my WPU sets. My fear is that I would lose the GTG magic by working through different grooves.

Thoughts?

J-Madd wrote:Here's a pull-up puzzler. I recently put up a multi-grip pull-up bar. Previously I have done my pull-ups almost exclusively with a medium width, overhand grip. I've been wonder whether for the sake of elbow health, I should cycle through the various grips during my WPU sets. My fear is that I would lose the GTG magic by working through different grooves.

Thoughts?

JMadd, I have done a couple variations on this theme. I have had times when I alternated from set to set between pullups and chinups. I actually had better performance, as in got more reps during a workout, it seemed easier overall. I've never had a situation where I could consistently rotate between more than two in a workout so can't speak to that. I also had a couple years where I would switch every couple weeks rotating through overhand, underhand, and parallel. I did not see any downside to this approach. When doing TB I have had weeks where due to station availability I have had to do one kind one day and another the next time. Again if there was a downside it wasn't apparent.

My guess is that if you lost anything trying this, you'd recover it pretty fast going back to normal. So I don't see much risk in trying it.

TBPenguin wrote:

J-Madd wrote:Here's a pull-up puzzler. I recently put up a multi-grip pull-up bar. Previously I have done my pull-ups almost exclusively with a medium width, overhand grip. I've been wonder whether for the sake of elbow health, I should cycle through the various grips during my WPU sets. My fear is that I would lose the GTG magic by working through different grooves.

Thoughts?

JMadd, I have done a couple variations on this theme. I have had times when I alternated from set to set between pullups and chinups. I actually had better performance, as in got more reps during a workout, it seemed easier overall. I've never had a situation where I could consistently rotate between more than two in a workout so can't speak to that. I also had a couple years where I would switch every couple weeks rotating through overhand, underhand, and parallel. I did not see any downside to this approach. When doing TB I have had weeks where due to station availability I have had to do one kind one day and another the next time. Again if there was a downside it wasn't apparent.

My guess is that if you lost anything trying this, you'd recover it pretty fast going back to normal. So I don't see much risk in trying it.

Thanks TBPenguine. It sounds like the stakes are low, so this might be worth a try.

Something else to consider is most test for LEO/Military are always pullups.

Chin ups are definitely the easier variation for me personally, but I always do pullups in my training for the above reason. I also like to do my pullups with different grips and on different surfaces when using them as a conditioning exercise, but always similiar when doing them weighted for strength. I like to remove the possibility of not making the reps due to grip for my strength work.