A coach breaks down chin-ups as a scapular retraction movement, not an arm exercise. The key is the initiation drill: lock your arms straight and drive your shoulder blades down without bending your elbows. Master a front lever and you'll have the strength for chin-ups.
A lot of women really struggle with doing chin-ups, but what are some training tips that you could share that you've helped your female clients with?
With females, uh, with anyone, I think the first thing you want to consider and understand is that the chin-up isn't an arm exercise, it's a scapular retraction exercise. So there's kind of like, I would say, 3, maybe 4 phases to a chin-up. And whenever teaching a skill, you've got to break down the So there's the initiation of pull. So you should be able to develop a lot of power and speed from the initiation of pull. And what I mean by the initiation of pull is I want you to think about this as locking your arms, keeping your elbows straight, and then doing a chin-up. You're not allowed to bend your arms. That is the articulation of your scapula. Now, if you were to continue to do that and keep your body straight, you would turn that into a front lever. So obviously, if you can do a front lever, you'd be more than qualified to have the strength to do a chin-up.
