How to Do Chin-Ups and Pull-Ups with Perfect Form

In this video, I'm going to show you how to unlock super strength on your chin-up. Stick around to the end of the video to learn which hand position affects your back and what muscles are being worked the most. Who am I to make such claims? My name is Mark Ottobri. Best chin-up is at a body weight of 88 kilos with 62 kilos attached with perfect form. I'm also the owner of Enterprise Fitness, trained world champions, Olympic athletes, Commonwealth Games gold medalists, world leaders, and tens of thousands of people to transform their physique. When we talk about the chin-up, usually we are talking about our hands being supinated in position pulling. When we're talking about the pull-up, we're usually talking about our hands being pronated. Think pronation. Our hands being in this position pulling up. They're really the two differences between a chin-up and, and, uh, pull-up is our hand position. It's really two parts that allow me, done with speed, that allow me to get such a significant weight up to the bar, and that is the depression of my lats, the extension of my thoracic, and the rapid pull of my arms down into my underpants. What I'm teaching you here translates to all pull-ups, chin-ups, it translates to everything. So the first thing is we're going to depress. So tuck, see, and I want even more, right? Even more, right? And I'm going to get you to relax again. So I want you to really pull everything down, pull everything down, go, go ahead, pull everything down, pull, pull, pull, pull. Now I'm going to do that one more time. Now as you do that, I want you to pull everything down and extend your spine, extend that vertebra up into your sternum. So pull everything down, pull, pull, pull, and extend and extend and extend really high. Okay, that's the first part of your chin-up. So you're going to do that, you're going to depress, you're going to extend. Once you've hit that, I want you to pull as hard as you can up to the bar. Off you go. So pull down, pull down, extend. Now pull, pull, pull, pull, pull, and pull yourself up more. Now you can see, okay, I want you to touch that bar as you do it. Touch the bar, touch the bar. That's more, more, more, more. So there's a little weakness at that end point because Kay's not quite fully touching at that end point. I really want him to. So get right up, right up. And this is common experience for a lot of people when they start doing chin-ups like this. However, in my experience of training thousands of clients, is their strength goes up dramatically when they get this right. Just do one more. Goes up dramatically. So what most people would do is they're going to pull their arms forward. Now I'm just going to demonstrate just to save Kay's arms a little bit, right? So on this one, you can see when I'm in this position, I'm depressing and then I'm pulling. You can see at the top how high I'm coming. Now I'm going to add some speed to it, right? So see, I pull all my way through. The other thing is— I should note, the other thing on a chin-up, the end position is made up of two things. Your arm needs to be locked. If you do not lock your arm at the end of the chin-up, it is not the end of the rep. So your elbow needs to be locked. The other thing that needs to happen to make it the end position of the chin-up is is you need to pull your head through. Okay, so the lat needs to stretch all the way through. That is the end position. So the reason why we want to do this is we want to enhance the range of motion. Again, the purpose of training is to enhance physical strength, is to build end range of strength in all movements. That's what's going to translate to a stronger and better and more athletic body. Again, if you look at me here, no swing, no kipping. End position, pull. End position, pull. In position, pull. And you can see I'm going to break it down a little bit slower. You can see how I pull. You can see that. Now, the best way this is explained is I'm doing a chin-up without breaking my arms. So my arms are not bent in this position. So again, I'm depressed through my lats, I extend through my thoracic, and then I pull myself up. And ideally, you don't break your microphone as you're doing it. So how does this translate to us adding load to the chin-up. In exercises, the only thing that should change between you doing it with a lightweight versus a heavyweight is the speed in which you do it at. So in other words, this should look exactly the same unloaded or bodyweight to you doing your max chin-up with weight in your hand or weight on— weight around your waist. So off you go. Okay, let's have a look at how you do this. All the way through and pull and really get yourself up there. So all the way Pull, pull, pull, pull, pull right up. That's the end position. I just want to anchor that in for you, right? So get that in position. Good. And just do one more. Now I'm always going to ask the client, an athlete, for more. And the reason why I want more range, I want more strength, is it just creates more stability, which creates more output. So we've demonstrated how to do things with the neutral grip. I'm going to get Kay to do supinated grip or semi-supinated because this is what this chin-up bar allows. So when he's doing this position, what you can really see is you are going to get a lot more mid-back, right? We are— got a little bit more assistance through the biceps. Go through, go through, up, okay, up we go. But the technique stays the same. So just do one more rep so the folks can see. We're getting a little more mid-back with this position, right? And up we go, perfect. When we're going wide, for some folks they might not— because they're weak through the thoracic extended position, they may not be able to get that full accessory, but we are enhancing lats. And you can see in this position where he's at this one, we're using a lot more lats when we're wide. And that's why for a lot of people it's harder because the thoracic extension, it's a harder piece to couple together with that lat depression. Not impossible, but harder and more difficult, requires more strength. So if we're basically using that neutral supinated, we're going to be using neutral, we're going to be using a lot more of the back, we're going to be using mid and the lats in that neutral position. In the supinated position, we're going to use a lot more mid-back. When we're in that pronated position, that pull-up position, we're going to use a lot more lats. If you're working with, say, boxers, canoers, or people who need super strong lats to prevent spinal rotation, pronated chin-ups is a great exercise that you want to include as a stable base of that program, as well as to build a bigger back. The easiest grip of all is always going to be your neutral grip, and that's going to enhance the lats, and it's also going to bypass a lot of the grip issues that people experience. So if we've— we're new to chin-ups and we want to start somewhere, we're going to look at neutral. Then we move to semi-supinated, which is this one here. Then we would move to fully supinated, then we would finally move to pronated. And the wider we go on the pronation, the more lats we're going to be working, which does— depending on what sport you're training for— does have specific case use as well.