Keep your chin up!
I’ve pinned this article from Men’s Health to my workout board. Ah, the dreaded chinup.
I’ve never been what I consider ’strong’ in the upper body. I’m wiry and my arms are really long which means I don’t get the compressed power that some people have in their arms.
Even still, I’ve always wanted to be able to bang out a full set of 10 chinups and feel like I know what I’m doing. It’s something I’ve never been able to do.
The linked article professes to be able to change all that. I can tell you, though, from last night’s workout that the following is really, really hard for me and I didn’t want to do it…
Exercise 2: Negative chinup
For this movement, you’ll perform only the lowering portion of the chinup. That’s because studies show that focusing on this portion of the exercise can lead to the greatest strength gains.Directions: Place a bench under a pullup bar and use it to boost your body so that the top of your chest is at bar level. Then take as long as you can to lower your body (you should time yourself with a wristwatch) until your arms are straight. A key requirement: Try to lower yourself at the same rate from start to finish.
Do 2 sets, resting 60 seconds between them. When you’re able to take 30 seconds to lower your body, or your combined lowering time for both sets is 45 seconds, add a third set. This is also a gauge of your progress: If you can complete a 30-second negative chinup, you can probably perform one full chinup. Complete all your sets, and then move on to Exercise 3.
That… hurts. But I believe part of the reason I have occasional neck pain can be found in the instability I have in performing that exercise.
It’s not in the online version, but somewhere around that article in the real magazine they mention that there’s an old bodybuilder’s maxim… if you can’t do 10 chinups, then you have no business doing arm curls. The reason is that if you can’t do those chinups, you have other areas you need to work before you improve your biceps. And the chinup will work those biceps too. That really hit a mark… so I’m skipping the curls and trying to work on the chinups again.
Of course, lifting once a week, improvement will be hard to come by. And it’s not as big a priority as the running. But I really liked that article. I’d recommend Men’s Health without hesitation.
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