So we know that the pullup is one of the best bodyweight exercises that you can do. But

did you know that the chin up is one of the best bicep exercises you can do?

A lot of you probably do know that, but I will tell you this: unless you're focusing

on the three tips I'm going to show you today you're probably not getting the most out of

this exercise and for those that didn't think it was all that great for biceps, you'll immediately

start thinking differently because these three tips are easy to do and you're going to feel

it a lot more.

Firstly, what's the chin up versus a pull up? Well, the chin up is underhand grip, the

pull up is overhand grip. That's the end of the beginner lesson here. Now, with the chin

up what you want to do is focus firstly on how you grip at the bar because a lot of us

grab the bar and then do our chin up. We pull ourselves up and down, okay? You can be more

specific though.

How do you be more specific? By focusing the grip through just these two fingers: your

ring finger and your pinky finger. When I grab the bar, if I grab with those two fingers

first and leave my thumbs off the bar and then just wrap the other ones around what

I get is the ability to pull down through just those two fingers as hard as I possibly

can.

I get an increased activation of the bicep because if I were to not have this bar blocking

my way and blocking my ability to pull down it would actually turn my wrist into supination.

These come down, it turns my wrist into supination. We know that supination here at the forearm

is going to more actively engage the bicep just by doing that.

So we're isometrically engaging supination by pulling down as hard as we can. You'll

be able to feel the difference right away when you do that. Next step, you want to make

sure that you're aware of how much you're flexing at the elbow because we know that

the bicep is an elbow flexor, but do we want to do our chin ups really tight in here like

that?

Or would we be better off having more separation, more like a 90 degree angle here at the arm

and the elbow before we do them? The answer is: more of a 90 degree angle. Now why is

that? Well, we know we have sufficient tension here on the bicep, and yes, you can get a

little bit more by closing down on it a little bit more, but not when you consider the final

thing I'm going to tell you here.

That is, in order to get the maximum contraction of the bicep and feel this chin up even more

you can do something – a little tweak – to get some additional shoulder flexion. We know

the bicep crosses the shoulder, too. That doesn't just act at your elbow, but it also

acts at your shoulders – the shoulder flexor. We can get our shoulder into more flexion

by dipping our head under the bar.

Before you start saying "Jeff, behind the head?! That's terrible! You can never do behind

the neck things! That's terrible!" No. There's a big difference between doing 'behind the

neck pull downs' in which the vulnerability of our shoulder right here is really exacerbated,

versus having our elbows in front of our body and then getting our elbows up. This is a

much more stable position for the shoulder than this with our hands all the way back.

We've done far less strain to the anterior capsule in our shoulder. So what you do is,

get in this position and as we're getting into our chin up, the head gets underneath.

Now as we come up and squeeze we have more shoulder flexion here relative to what we

had before. Here my shoulders and elbows especially are pointing down. Here, when I'm up at the

top, my shoulders and elbows are pointed up more with the flexion.

So back to the point about the amount of flexion you want in your elbow. By backing off just

a little bit to 90 degrees you've allowed for a really tight contraction because you

have some elbow flexion, you do have some supination force, and you do have some shoulder

flexion, but you don't have something called "active insufficiency" where you go to full

range on every single one all the way up to here and then try to go to flexion.

You'll actually weaken your bicep contraction a little bit just by virtue of the fact that

this muscle crosses multiple joints and there's not enough length to allow for tension across

all those joints. You back off just a little bit, you do the three tips I showed you here,

and you will feel the most intense contraction you've ever felt on a chin up and I guarantee

you you'll get much more out of the exercise.

So there you have it, guys. A bodyweight exercise for your biceps that requires just a pull

up bar. You can get one at any sporting goods store for $15 and hang it up in your doorway.

The bottom line is, you don't even need that. I tell you guys all the time. You can

build muscle – a lot of muscle – with just your bodyweight alone if you know how

to train it. Our ATHLEAN0 program, 6 weeks long, we show you how to do it without anything.

Not even a pull up bar. Nothing. It's called No bands, No bars, No bench; nothing at all.

You can find that over at ATHLEANX.com. If you've found this video helpful make sure

and give me a thumbs up and let me know how many of these have you not been doing and

when you do try them out, how much more do you feel it?

All right, guys. I'll be back here again real soon. See you.