How to Progress Your Chin-Ups for A Strong Upper Body

Whether you want your first or your fifteenth, getting a chin-up right matters. Here’s everything you need to know about technique, plus our expert tips for putting one of the hardest back exercises out there on easy mode. 

What Are Chin-Ups?

Chin-ups are a bodyweight exercise that involves pulling your chin above a bar using a supinated grip. This exercise can be performed assisted (with bands or boxes), weighted, or with bodyweight alone.

Before we dive into the how-to, let’s talk muscle. 

Muscles Worked During Chin-Ups

Like any good back exercise, chin-ups work the muscles in your back synergistically. Putting aside the “chin-ups vs. pull-ups” debate for a moment, both movements (and most variations) work these muscles:

• Latissimus dorsi: Your lats are the prime movers in any chin-up variation, pulling your arms down toward your sides.

• Teres major & minor: These muscles help pull your shoulder blades down on every rep.

• Trapezius: Your traps help finish each rep of chin-ups by performing scapular retraction.

• Biceps brachii: Most chin-ups are done with an underhand grip, giving your biceps great leverage to bend your arm.

How To Perform Chin-Ups With Perfect Form

When it comes to chin-ups, you get out what you put in. Master your form and you’ll find the reps come easy. Swinging and sloppy reps will only get you so far. 

Here are the steps to a picture-perfect chin-up. All you need is a stable bar to hang from that’s high enough so your legs can hang straight, or you can bend your knees and cross your ankles. 

• Step 1: Grab ahold of the bar with a shoulder-width, underhand grip, and hang from it. The supine hand position, or “palms up,” gives you better leverage and helps your chin clear the bar without having to lift your body quite as high.

• Step 2: Brace your core and stop any bodily swaying.

• Step 3: From here, pull yourself up by driving your elbows down toward your pockets.

• Step 4: Keeping your arms tucked to your sides, pull up until your chin is just higher than the bar, then slowly lower yourself back down.

Chin-Ups vs. Pull-Ups

Let’s tackle the big question: Chin-ups vs. pull-ups…which is better? Or, more importantly, what are the differences that matter? 

Form & Technique

Both exercises require you to start from a “dead hang” position with your arms straight. The primary difference is grip. Chin-ups are performed with a supinated, or underhand grip, while pull-ups use a pronated, or overhand, grip.

Muscle Activation

Factors like grip width, hand position, and execution affect which parts of your back and arms work hardest—this is true for both the chin-up and pull-up. 

Generally speaking, chin-ups will hit your biceps and lats harder due to the tucked arm and underhand grip. Pull-ups engage more of your upper back muscles like your traps and rhomboids, while not requiring as much of your arms. 

Difficulty & Progression

For almost everyone, an underhand chin-up will be significantly easier than an overhand pull-up. Here’s why:

• The supinated grip gives leverage to your biceps, making it easier to bend your arms.

• Similarly, a shoulder-width grip with a tucked upper arm provides ample leverage to your biceps.

• The range of motion for chin-ups is shorter than pull-ups.

How To Choose: Chin Ups or Pull Ups?

Despite differences in technique, the chin-up and pull-up are pretty similar overall. Both are fantastic back exercises and both develop robust, functional fitness. That doesn’t mean you need to do both on a regular basis, though.

Do chin-ups if…

• You’re working toward your first rep of either. 

• You want to work your biceps as well as your back.

Do pull-ups if…

• You’re trying to emphasize your upper back.

• You have limited shoulder mobility.

Chin-Up Mistakes to Avoid

As a bodyweight exercise, chin-ups lack the customization of, say, a lat pulldown machine. Meaning you can’t just lower the weight to help you finish your set. 

Chin-up form mistakes like using your legs or failing to control bodily swaying only make this problem worse and may be inhibiting you from making progress altogether. These are the errors you want to avoid: 

• Swinging: Sloppy reps will cause your body to sway back and forth as you build momentum. Go slow and controlled, and keep your core braced. 

• Leg kicks: Fight the temptation to kick with your legs to generate a bit of power.

• Elevated shoulders: At the bottom of the chin-up, your shoulders should be elevated up by your ears. As you lift yourself up, pull your shoulders down away from your head. 

• Wide grip: Gripping too wide can cause shoulder discomfort if you’re using a supinated palm position. Keep your hands at shoulder width or slightly narrower. 

Chin-Ups: Beginner-Friendly Progressions

Chin-ups have a surprisingly high barrier to entry. Heavier individuals may find them nearly impossible, while younger and lighter people, often have much less trouble. If you’re still working up to your first rep but can’t quite get there, you need a variation that meets you where you’re at. 

Here’s a beginner-friendly chin-up progression—you can start with dead hangs or jump in wherever is appropriate for your skill level: 

1. Dead Hangs

If you’re starting from scratch, you’ll need to build up endurance in your hands, forearms, and shoulders. 

What to do: Grab the bar with your preferred grip and hang motionless with your arms straight. Hang for time and work up to 60 seconds in a single round. 

2. Machine Assisted Chin-Up or Lat Pulldown

Once you have the grip strength to bear your own weight, you’ll need to strengthen the muscles in your back that perform the chin-up. If you have an assistive machine, go for it, but a lat pulldown will work in a pinch. 

What to do: Perform sets of 5 to 10 reps with moderate weight (or assistance if using the pull-up machine) and focus on controlling the motion from start to finish. 

3. Chin-Up Negatives

Dynamic strength training exercises have two distinct phases; concentric, or lifting, and eccentric, or lowering. The negative eccentric portion is much easier, and is a good place to start performing real chin-ups. 

What to do: With assistance from a partner or by standing on an elevated surface, start at the top of a chin-up and slowly lower yourself down over a period of 5 to 8 seconds. Perform several negatives back-to-back with brief rest in between. 

4. Band-Assisted Chin-Ups

Resistance bands provide elastic assistance to your body, giving you a jump-start when you perform chin-ups. However, they don’t take all the work out of the equation.

What to do: Tie one end of a long resistance band to the bar you’re using and step both feet into the other end. Hang normally and use the bar’s elasticity to propel you upward at the start of each rep. 

5. Jumping Chin-Ups

Similarly to a band, jumping to start your chin-ups gives you a bit of extra kick that can make the rep feel much easier. If you don’t have a resistance band, these are great to pair with chin-up negatives as well.

What to do: Stand under the bar and perform a vertical jump. Grab the bar and use the extra momentum to help propel you up to the top of the rep, then slowly lower yourself down. 

Advanced Variations

There’s more than one way to skin a cat, and there are more chin-up variations out there than we care to count. But if you’re banging out double-digit sets of chin-ups on the regular, you might be ready to try some of these advanced chin-up variations: 

• Weighted: Wear a dip belt with weight plates attached, or clutch a dumbbell between your ankles, to add some resistance to your chin-ups.

• L-Sit: Instead of your legs hanging loosely, lift them up like you would for a leg raise exercise and hold them parallel to the floor while you perform chin-ups to add more core stimulation. 

• Tempo: Slowing down your tempo, or the speed you’re moving, is a quick and effective way of making standard chin-ups or pull-ups more challenging. 

Training Tips to Improve Chin-Ups

POV: You recently got your first chin-up and you feel like a rockstar. What’s next? 

More chin-ups. The question is, how? Calisthenics movements which use your body as the weight don’t follow the same physiological “rules” as barbell or dumbbell exercises. 

If you’ve been approaching your chin-ups or pull-ups like you would a barbell row or deadlift and found yourself struggling, you’re probably due for a different approach. 

• Intensity: The best way to build your chin-up capacity is to stay away from failure. Once you gas yourself out, you won’t be able to get many reps at all. Leave 3 or more chin-ups in the tank on each set. 

• Volume: Your best bet is to “cluster” your chin-up training into small, relatively easy sets. If you can do 10 chin-ups, don’t try 3 sets of 10. Try 6 clusters of 5 with brief rest periods. 

• Frequency: As long as you’re not too sore, you can practice chin-ups or pull-ups up to 3-5 times per week, depending on how much volume you’re doing each day. 

• Timing: If your goal is to improve your chin-ups, do them at the start of your workout. Be mindful that it will affect subsequent exercises that involve your grip or back muscles. 

How to Progress Chin Ups

Building your chin-up game isn’t as straightforward as adding pounds to your squat or deadlift. Instead of constantly striving to do a longer AMRAP—that’s “as many reps as possible” in a single set—you want to develop your work capacity over time. 

What does this look like? Let’s say you can do five chin-ups and practice once per week. For the next month, you could try…

• Week 1: 5 sets of 3, 15 chin-ups total

• Week 2: 1 set of 4, 3 sets of 3, 2 sets of 2, 17 chin-ups total

• Week 3: 1 set of 5, 2 sets of 4, 3 sets of 3, 22 chin-ups total 

• Week 4: 2 sets of 5, 2 sets of 4, 3 sets of 3, 27 chin-ups total 

When it comes to accessory exercises, there’s nothing that works as well as chin-ups themselves. Still, here are a few exercises you might want to try depending on where your problem areas are:

• Weak finish: Try band-assisted chin-ups, or underhanded lat pulldowns with a pause at the bottom.

• Weak grip: Weighted dead hangs are great if you can hang normally for more than 60 seconds. 

• Swinging: Try hanging leg raises with a very slow tempo, or pause halfway down when descending from the top of a chin-up.

Chin-Up FAQs

How many chin-ups should I be able to do?

It depends! Lighter individuals with upper-body training experience or strong grips will find chin-ups come easily. If you don’t have much experience with bodyweight training, it’s normal to only be able to do 1 or 2 chin-ups. 

Are chin-ups better than pull-ups for biceps?

Technically, yes. Most people perform chin-ups with a supinated grip, which gives the biceps better leverage to assist with the movement. 

Can chin-ups build a big back?

Absolutely. Chin-ups (and pull-ups) are staples among bodyweight training enthusiasts and have been a staple in bodybuilders’ back workouts for decades. One caveat—if you can already perform 15-20 regular chin-ups, you’ll probably need to add weight to stimulate new muscle growth.