Making the transition from chin-to-bar pull-ups to chest-to-bar pull-ups

[Ross Hunt]

I read CFJ #8 to discover that I'd been doing pull-ups wrong my whole life. :sad:
I've been doing pull-ups chin to bar. I know that if I want to get a muscle-up, I need to start doing them properly. How should I go about switching my pull-up style? I can't yet do a chest-to-bar pull-up, but I can do 14-15 chin-to-bar pull-ups, so my uneducated guess is that my problem is more lack of practice in the proper groove and ROM than sheer weakness (although there's plenty of the latter, too).
Should I continue doing workouts with chin-to-bar pull-ups, while practicing chest-to-bar lockoffs and negatives to extend my ROM? Or should I use JS bands to whole workouts of chest-to-bar pull-ups?

Thanks,

Ross Hunt

[Brian Lawyer]

Originally Posted by Ross Hunt

I read CFJ #8 to discover that I'd been doing pull-ups wrong my whole life. :sad:

Chin to bar is not necessarily bad form. Some proponents of strict dead hang pullups consider it cheating to arch your back and bring chest to bar. They suggest pulling elbows straight down to ground and bring chin just above bar is correct form for strict dead hang. I had a post on here a couple years ago talking about that.

I just had my first experience today with kipping only chin to bar. Traditionally when I do a Fran I always do chest to bar. Or at least the first 21 are usually chest to bar and the last 9 or usually just barely getting chin to bar. Today I had my first experience with Eva. Eva consist of 150 pullups over 5 rounds. As a result I thought I would just try kipping only chin to bar from the very beggining. It is so much easier only going chin to bar and I noticed from several CF videos chin to bar seems to be the norm for most met-cons. However, isn't this contradictory to Crossfits full ROM philosophy. I did note that at the games a couple years ago Chest to Bar Fran was protocol....So what gives, Chin or chest?

[Greg Privitera]

Definitely add them as soon as you can. If you can do 14-15 chin-to bar, I bet you can do at least a single with just the momentum from an explosive pull out of the bottom.

Might want to add in some bodyweight (supine) rows to a barbell too to develop some of the muscles used to complete that range of motion.

[Brian Lawyer]

Originally Posted by Ross Hunt

...I've been doing pull-ups chin to bar...

Here is the link to my thread a couple years ago entitled "Pulling Chest to Bar = Compensation"

WFS
http://www.board.crossfit.com/showthread.php?t=39829

[Blair Robert Lowe]

Ross, are you talking about kipping or dead hang pullups?

If it's kipping, getting better at kipping, increasing your grip strength and your metcon ability will increase your numbers. However, if it's kipping it probably will have nothing to do with increasing your likelihood to make a muscle-up on rings.

My numbers of kipping pullups using a butterfly kip have increased mainly by working the BFK more and not getting out of habit and just the overall volume of BFK PU. If I don't work BFK PU for awhile, my numbers go way down. If I don't work metcon for awhile, the numbers go down as well.

As a gymnast, I dislike seeing strict arched pullups. I see them all the time by most of our kids. Very few kids of ours can do them or do them with a nice hollow, round back. This is all about the strict pullup towards muscle-up on rings. I'm talking about the girls as well, but whatever since I don't coach them, I don't make it a point to argue about as a lot of their S&C programming is retarded in the first place.

If you are merely satisfied with a kipping muscle-up, sure arching chest to bar is fine. It looks like *** on strict pullups though.

If you want a strict beautiful muscle-up (on rings), ya gotta pull nipples to rings with a sunken, hollow chest in a false grip. Strict MU on bar is pretty gnarly if done without any kip unless you start with wrists on top of the bar but arching probably helps to get through the hard transition.

When I wanted to get back my MU, I was around your number of chin to bar dead hang PU so I switched to hollow chest to bar pullups to nipples on the bar or false grip pullups on rings as deep.

However, with the numbers I was working to do them with relatively perfect form, it wasn't enough to increase my general pullup strength. It was more skill work.

[Daniel Schmieding]

I'm going to go ahead and give you a simple answer:

Lean back while you pull.