How To Train Chin-Ups For Power & Strength Gains

So the biggest truth is that now we have atg, we can actually experiment with other methods because we have this huge foundation of ability to recover tissues and build connective tissue. I can now do all the crazy stuff that I wanted to do. I wanted to use this method from Dietrich Buchenholtz, the Innosport kind of idea. I wanted to use it back in the early 2000s, but I really wasn't ready for it in terms of training age, training knowledge, and, yeah, I was just fragile, basically, so I couldn't get it done. But now I can, because with atg, I understand how to prepare and repair connective tissues. I still have the ability to flare up and bother tendons, but I also have the ability to fix them. So these. This is my. I did a little bit before this, before I switched the camera on, but basically, yeah, now I feel like I'm pretty much ready to go into these sorts of reps. So I want to fall as fast as I can. I want to squeeze at the top and then relax, turn the muscles off, and then turn back on again quickly. So the ability. The biggest difference that Russian sports scientists found between poor athletes and great athletes was the ability to switch muscles on and off. And that's part of the reason why bodybuilders don't tend to do well in sports is because they often lack that ability to turn muscles on and off. Now, I think a lot of sports actually teach people how to do this anyway. So do we need it within our strength training? I. I don't know. I. I don't think athletes who have great abilities in these areas necessarily do need it. And I think Charles Poliquin's record stands for itself with that. You know, he had a very linear, very structured approach. Everything was kind of straight up and down. It wasn't about patterns, it wasn't about spirals and, and all sorts of neurological things that we see going on in modern trends. You know, I think there are a lot of distractions, to be honest, in the performance world. The very linear approach can certainly work. So then, you know, if, if we have that as a foundation, though, and, and if I'm actually not going out and playing a lot of sport, I'm 38. You know, the older I am and the. And. And still being able to do, you know, these sorts of movements, it really says more for my youth and, and health than just being able to do heavy reps. And my daughter's deadlifting the bar there as well with the judo belt that she wrapped around it. The judo belt I bought to do arm wrestling kind of drills, but that's probably for another video. But yeah, I think like the ability to do these drop catch reps to switch the nervous system on and off for the connective tissues to be able to handle this sort of work. Just from a pure standpoint of physics, there's an instant there where this is a really high force exercise and I could do this with, with extra weight, but you can see that in that instant where I'm stopping with that, with that heavy load, I'm probably dealing with more weight than I even do when I, when I go to a maximal single rep, chin up, you know, so you'll see my daughter's gonna deadlift here again. But yeah, I'm, I'm basically assisting myself with this bottom hand so I get a little bit more range of motion on these single arm scat pools. So I was going to do weighted, that's the, I got the weight belt there because I was going to do weighted scat pulls and I thought like, why am I going to load up to 150% of body weight on two arms when I can just do one arm? But if I do one arm unassisted, then I can't really get the range of motion that I wanted. I don't want it to be tiny range of motion single arm scat pulls for me, I'm not pulling a long way. It's a, some of the super advanced calisthenics guys can get some range of motion on that, but it's not happening for me. This is a great assistance exercise for the front lever as well. For those who are interested in the front lever, I have had full front lever a number of times. So really looking for that transition on the bar, making it feel kind of easy. They're not super draining on the nervous system and I wasn't feeling the tendons on them today. If you do have fragile tenons and you don't have a big base of kind of weighted chin ups or speed work, then it's probably not a good idea. I think like some of the big numbers that you see going up in calisthenics, it's partly because of the explosive work that they're doing, you know, so they're going across the force velocity curve and we tend not to do that very much in upper body training. Now it does exist out there. There's, you know, any number of systems in the world of strength at the moment. But if you go to the gym and even if you go and visit most sporting teams you're not going to see these repetition types now. They have been around Dietrich, Buchenhaut stuff is as I said, like early 2000s and you know, all sorts of people done all sorts of things in the time in between that I really enjoyed, you know, the sensation of this movement. So I'm going catch, release and catch there. So slightly lower finish on the top to show that I'm going to get to that top position. My guess is with the extreme tension in these movements, my guess is that I'm going to beat my old personal best of 60 kilos. Like I think it will help my top end strength. And some of you might disagree with that. And it's fine. Feel free to drop your thoughts, comments, experiences. It doesn't, it's not about that necessarily. It's not, you know, about me only being right, but it's also not about that. This is the only solution. Even if I don't get any better at maximum strength, I'm going to get better at switching the nervous system on and off, at producing a lot of force quickly. And that's what I want, you know, so yeah, that's what I'm. That's what I'm doing. So I would call most of these like drop catch repetitions. I thought I may as well play. Play where? Play around with. Doing these on with bands rather than holding on to the, to the pipe. Probably not too far off having a decent one arm eccentric. I did one, two or three weeks ago. I haven't been working on the one arm, but it's probably not too bad just based on my two arm numbers and body composition stuff at the moment. My squats aren't amazing at the moment, so that usually helps as well. But I have been working on my squats and my legs have gained some size since I was just training up in the office. One or two kilos makes a big difference when you're talking about the one arm. Chin up. So I really like this catch release. There's a bigger skill component. Obviously there's more risk to it. You know, don't try this at home if you think you're going to break yourself or you're scared of things or you, you know, want to hold me responsible for your training. I. I'm not. That's not what this is about. I'm just showing, sharing with you what I'm doing, why I'm doing it. And So I did 20 sets and I kind of like the idea of doing 20 sets. Some days I'll do 10 sets. Some days I'll do five sets, but with this sort of work, 20 sets is nice. You can see the work period is usually, you know, we've got about 4 seconds, 5 seconds on this arm, 5 seconds in the other arm. So about 10 seconds on, 50 seconds off. So that allows for quite high quality. I'm really focusing on just pulling the scap down. Yeah, building that, that big foundation of, of scapular control and strength to be able to get out of the bottom. Same kind of idea as what I was working on with the, the push. If you watched my push video, working on getting out the bottom at different weights. This one I went for the heavyweight every set. So it'd be like if I was doing, on the pushing exercise, if I was doing say 90 kilos for the little push to the chin or 80 kilos for the push to the chin in between every set of doing maybe 50 kilos on like the push press, standing press variation. So just a different way to go at it. I think you will get a similar result. You know, people talk about don't use different nervous system stimulus, you don't get as big a result. If you train slow and fast in the same workout, etc. They may be right, but they may not be as well. I think west side barbell, you know, you see those guys are crazy strong and, and fast and they mix the stimulus. And I'm not necessarily going to go break any world records. Would I experiment with just giving one type of neurological stimulus. So the DB Hammer system is if you work maximum strength, like slow strength, I think he calls it, I've forgotten what he calls it. Force, magnitude. I don't know. If you work maximum strength, then you can also work power. If you work slow strength, then you can also work power in the same workout, but you wouldn't work speed or if you work speed, then you can work power, but you wouldn't work maximal strength. That's kind of the way they, they did it. But I think if they're relatively new to you and you're not necessarily fine tuned in either of them, then you're going to get a lot of benefits out of both. Like if you play some slow piano and you play some fast piano, you still, you know, you're still practicing a lot of piano and your piano is going to get better. Um, yeah, I'm not saying they're wrong. I'm just saying that from where I'm at at the moment, I don't think it matters. And I'm probably more interested in being like a Hybrid athlete, like a rugby player, they're going to have slow stimulus when they're in the tackle and they have to keep pushing, wrestling, etc. Where it's, you know, longer. The extreme slow example would be like scrums and things like that where, you know, it's a long isometric and then there's explosive stuff as well, accelerations and, you know, near top speed running. So, yeah, this is basically how the workout went. I went up to 60 kilos on partial reps last week trying to really switch on hard. So a different sort of approach, the dead start repetitions, switching on, a little bit of easy hang finishing up. I did kind of get bored towards the end of these, I'm not gonna lie. I sort of like, yeah, just a little bit tired, just a little bit like, I don't really need more sets. So I went to the single arm hang and yeah, the kids had a lot of fun in front of me with their, with their games. So I'll show you also that dead start one maybe. Here we go. So, yeah, you see really trying to switch on hard. So this is 60 kilos. It's kind of easier because it's less range of motion, but it's also kind of harder because if I can go fast out of the bottom, then I'm losing some of the momentum that I would have had from getting really quick strength out of the bottom. And it wasn't a strong lock off at the top. But, you know, I did definitely get chin over the bar by those standards. But generally I've been getting to sort of here. So I went for a 45 kilo rep to there. I think I've done. I've done 50 to, you know, strong contact since I've had the gym again. But yeah, 55, 60s, kind of getting to my best. So close to those best sort of numbers. But that ability to really switch on fast again is an athletic ability and something that's quite important. And I do think these will help me to blast a new chin up best. That's probably it in some ways as well, but yeah. I hope you enjoyed this video. If you did get something out of it, if you got some ideas, some tips. If you do test and try some of these ideas, let me know how it goes. If you're not prepared for it, don't do it. I won't be held responsible for your training, but I would love to see you progress and experiment and learn and test ideas. Yeah, the DB Hammer stuff is difficult to find, but I guess Cal Dietz is probably the guy that's gone furthest into the DB Hammer stuff, being a friend of Chris Corfest. And Chris Corfest was a student of DB Hammer. So some of the work around those guys is really, really interesting. And I think there will be more of it come into the ATG system potentially after that first, you know, few months. So structural balance is still the key. Building tissue health and integrity. You can see that you need to have that to be able to do these sor repetitions. You know, you need that foundation of tissue health and integrity. So that's what is always going to come first. And that was the foundation of the Poliquin system. And Charles was right. But there may be something else that comes next after that. So hope you enjoyed this video, and I look forward to chatting with you soon.