Placeholder Image

Subtitles section Play video

  • What's up, guys?

  • Jeff Cavaliere, ATHLEANX.com.

  • So the differences between pullups and chin-ups have been covered already on this channel.

  • There's a big difference.

  • However, it gets even deeper than that.

  • There's actually a difference in the grip and the width that you take on that bar that

  • will determine what muscles of your upper body that you're working.

  • So I wanted to give you a little cheat sheet on how to determine what part of your upper

  • body is working during either a narrow grip, a neutral grip, or a wide grip on a chin-up,

  • or a pullup.

  • I could show you, actually, very, very easily because I can break out a muscle marker to

  • do this.

  • Now, follow the path here.

  • It actually gets pretty easy, and I'm going to break it all down for you.

  • So we're going to talk about, here, a narrow grip on a pullup.

  • Then we're going to go to a shoulder width grip on a pullup here, and then we're going

  • to go to a wider grip on a pullup.

  • Then we're going to flip our hands around.

  • So we're going chin-up now, this way.

  • Again, wide, and then we're going to g into a shoulder width grip, and then nice and narrow

  • hands right next to each other.

  • What happens is, it actually travels in a lopp, in a circuit.

  • So my hands are narrow right here.

  • I'm actually working right here through my forearm, down through the brachial radialis,

  • and through here.

  • Now as I start to spread them out this will start to now travel a little bit more up my

  • arm, but it's not going to go bicep.

  • It's going to go more of the brachialis beneath the bicep.

  • So now we're in here with that shoulder width.

  • Now as I continue to go wider, we all know because we've probably felt it a million times,

  • what it starts to do then is it goes down and back here into the lat.

  • Now, if I take my wide grip and I flip it around hereso now we're going underhand

  • it's still the lats, of course, but what we're going to do is, we're going to now have

  • it shift up into the rotator cuff.

  • Why?

  • Because we're taking our hands, we're externally rotating our shoulders here so we're getting

  • some of that help from the rotator cuff to be able to do that.

  • So it comes in through here, gets the help.

  • Now as I start to narrow it out, bring it back into the shoulder width a little bit

  • more it travels back, up, and around and then down here on the bicep.

  • So now this side.

  • Then as I go in even narrower all the way into here, the tendency is to start to really

  • pull this way and curl.

  • So now of course you start to get some of the forearm flexors on that side, too.

  • So you can see that it kind of made its own circuit right here on my arm.

  • That's kind of what happens.

  • Now, it's not an isolation because every time we do a different grip width we're actually

  • getting all the muscles I had mentioned to kind of work together, but you can favor one

  • area over the other.

  • That can be very, very important for reasons like and injury, or a strength deficit.

  • Guys don't have the strength to do a lot of pullups, but they can do chin ups because

  • they get the assistance of the biceps.

  • So let's look at that one more time and see those different grips in action.

  • You could see here now, I start again narrow grip pullup.

  • Again, we know that's working the backside of the forearm mostly.

  • We're basically doing a reverse curl just like this, right?

  • I'm pulling myself to the bar that way, as opposed to pulling the bar up this way.

  • Then as we go up and widen out just a little bit more to shoulder width, now we're doing

  • basically a hammer curl.

  • We're doing this.

  • Pulling ourselves up that way, expect we're actuallyinstead of pulling the dumbbells

  • up this way.

  • So we're doing a hammer curl working the brachialis.

  • Then we get nice and wide.

  • Now we know that we're working here the lats.

  • You can see as I do it here, the lats are fully engaged.

  • Of course, yes, the same muscles that we talked about before are also working, but the focus

  • is shifting away from them.

  • Then we flip underhand.

  • We're going that wide grip chin-up that I already talked about.

  • That's the rotator cuff in action helping us, of course, with the last and the biceps

  • too.

  • But we can shift that focus on the biceps to assist the lats as well.

  • Then finally, we go really, really narrow and again, we can still work the lats also.

  • Remember, never an isolation, but we're also going to get a little bit more of that tendency

  • to pull with the forearms when we're in this tight.

  • So we're going to work more on those forearm flexors.

  • The last thing I'll say, guys, I mentioned it before.

  • If you have brachialis pain, right, that makes it impossible for you to do pull ups, or brachial

  • radialis pain that goes right down into your forearm as well; you can't do pullups.

  • It hurts like hell.

  • If you flip around and do a narrow grip chin-up you'll see that it actually is a lot easier

  • for you to do that, and it still allows you to hit the lats in a different way that doesn't

  • make you have to avoid the exercises altogether, and avoid that muscle group altogether.

  • So you can see, knowing the difference between the different grips is going to come in handy

  • for you.

  • At any point in time in your trainingwe know when to program those.

  • There are times when I don't want to hit your forearms.

  • I want to make sure I'm shifting more of the focus to your lats, or I might want to get

  • the rotator cuff involved a little bit more because I know you don't train it enough.

  • We try to program all these variations into our programs to make sure that you're hitting

  • the muscles the right way at the right time.

  • If you're looking for a program that lays it all out for you, puts the science back

  • in strength, then head to ATHLEANX.com and get our ATHLEANX training program.

  • Again, muscle markers, if you like them, make sure you leave your comments below.

  • I'll make sure I'll do more of them if you want me to do those.

  • I have no fear to draw all over my body.

  • No problem.

  • This shit comes right off.

  • All right, guys I'll be back here again in no time.

  • See ya!

What's up, guys?

Subtitles and vocabulary

Click the word to look it up Click the word to find further inforamtion about it