Chin-ups, Pull-ups, What's the Difference?

 What is the difference? Does doing one or the other really matter? There are differences and doing one or the other does matter. It’s in how the exercises engage, strengthen, and develop different groups of muscles. These are two movements that challenge you to lift your entire body weight to complete. Not push-ups. Not lunges. There are others, yes, but chin-ups and pull-ups are probably two of the most widely recognized and hardest to perform.

I am sure that most of us are familiar with lats and biceps; however, each exercise brings different muscles into play in different ways. Additionally, there are a number of smaller supporting muscle groups that come into play for each exercise, too.

Both are compound exercises, that is they involve multiple muscles at one time. In each you are going to pull your chin up over the bar. In many standards, clearing the bar with your chin is adequate, for a deeper and more functional range of strength bring your shoulders up to bar height.

The differences between the two begin with the grips. Pull-ups are overhand, palms facing away from you while chin ups are underhand with your palms facing you. The most complete range of motion is from arms being completely straight to elbows directly under your shoulders. This would be with the bar at about your shoulder. This fits with the definition as set by the American Council on Exercise.

Grip width can be changed to change the angles at which you are working the muscles. A wider grip is generally more difficult than the standard shoulder width grip. A narrower grip engages other muscles making this grip a bit easier.

Pull-ups hit a number of muscles. The largest of which is the latissimus dorsi or lats.

In the forearm the muscles worked are the brachialis and bracioradialis. These two are near the elbow. They help to stabilize and move the forearm.

Of course, the biceps are engaged in this.

Chin-ups engage more muscles than pull-ups. There is overlap. Chin-ups involve the lats, brachialis, and brachioradialis muscles. They also involve biceps, as do pull-ups; however, chin-ups activate biceps to a greater degree. Additionally, if you lean back a little at the top of the movement you can activate more of the muscles in the scapular (shoulder blade region).

By leaning back, pinching your shoulder blades tightly together, and bringing your sternum up to the bar you can best complete the scapular muscles.

The more muscles you engage the better the exercise event is going to be. Consequently, the better your results will be. Make it a point to change your grip in order engage more muscles and from a variety of directions.

Here are some of the government and military standards as a baseline:

US Army Rangers minimum of 6 in 2 minutes

US Secret Service is based on age with no time limit;

                20-29 – 7

                30-39 – 6

                40-49 – 4

                50 and up – 2

                Women of all ages have to complete 2

Marines range from a minimum of 3 to maximum of 20

Neutral Grip

Grip width aside, there are a number of variations on forms. By changing the style or form you use you can avoid boredom, continually surprise your body and keep it growing, and challenge yourself. Since you are already familiar with chin-up, pull-up, and varying the width of the grip on these, let’s take a look at some of the others.

Neutral – Using parallel bars, like on monkey bars, so that your palms are facing each other.

            Commando – Similar to the Neutral, but with a single bar. One repetition counted by pulling your to touch each shoulder once to the bar.

Behind the Neck – This should only be attempted if your shoulders are strong enough to support you through the entire movement, otherwise you are liable to tear or strain the tissues in and around the socket joint of your shoulder. Take a wide grip on the bar. When you pull up lean forward so that the bar goes behind your neck. It should touch you neck on the trapezius as far down to your shoulders as you can manage without straining your shoulder joints.

Other than those, there are cheat techniques like kipping to assist in getting more reps out than you could normally do. While those kinds of cheats are fine, I don’t use them. Here at the Basement Gym there isn’t the physical room for that. I have to curl my legs up at my knees as the ceiling is barely seven feet. I do, however, use negatives to burn out when positive muscle failure has been reached.

Pull-ups and chin-ups, like push-ups, lunges, jump squats, and squats, can be done most anywhere. All you need is a place to put up a proper bar. In addition to my basement area, I have one of those doorframe contraptions that holds itself up. It also has two handles for the neutral grip that are good for dips. This thing is worth more than its weight in gold. You can find one for around $20 at most large department stores and outlets.

2017 January Tabata Challenge Week 1 Tally

This marks the end of the first week of the 2017 January Tabata Challenge. It has been great for me! I am enjoying an increase in capacity to do push-ups, pull-ups, and ab work. My squats, which were not so bad have gotten much better. I am feeling great! Everyone around me has noted that my attitude has improved tremendously. Why wouldn’t it? Exercising beats out every pharmaceutical on the market for lifting people out of depression, improving one’s outlook on life, and increasing the brain’s production of positive endorphins. This also, by the way, positively impact the hypothalamus, located in the amygdala. What? Where? Why? These organs in the brain are the center of our emotional states.

In short, depression will affect the amygdala. Over time, the amygdala shrinks. This makes it way more difficult to get out of depression. Enter anti-depressant drugs. Do they make us feel better? Yes, but they do nothing for the amygdala. It is far better to repair the damage done. Exercise helps in this endeavor.

Enter our Tabata Challenge. Not only are we all burning massive calories during the workout, but for up to two hours after the workout we are burning calories at an accelerated rate. The rate of burn will vary based on your body size and body fat percentage, but most studies show that our after burn effect can last for up to two hours and burn an additional 225 calories. While that sounds great, and I do like those numbers, yes, they could be more impressive; however, what nearly every study has forgotten is the anaerobic impact that this training has on us.

By building muscle we are increasing our resting metabolism. This increase in our metabolism when we are not training burns more calories. Muscles urn calories in order to exist and move. One pound of muscle is going to burn around six to 10 calories to remain healthy. That is quality calories. This also includes training to keep those muscles, right? Right!

Tabata drills are burning up our glycogen at an accelerated pace while doing them. We get to enjoy an after burn. AND we have some more muscle to gobble up a few more calories while bopping about during the day. Think about all of those mundane things each of us do. Walking about the office, yard work, chasing the kids about the house & getting them to school, shopping, and whatever else you may have on your list. All those activities now use more calories because you have more muscle to take you through them. How cool is that?

Anyway, truth time … my bodyweight at the beginning of the week was 240 pounds tonight, after my PT session is … 236 pounds. This week I have dropped 4 pounds. None too shabby for one week. Woo-hoo!!

So, how about you? How have you progressed this week?

Changes

     Pressed for time? Want to work out, but not sure what to do to get the best bang for your buck? Looking to improve your muscle strength and cardio? Looking to make changes:? Changes for the better? Changes to loose that fat? Changes to get stronger?

     This week I will address these questions and provide a simple routine that will work the largest muscle groups, the greatest amount of supporting muscles, and get your heart pumping. There are two aspects to weight loss and fitness that we need to address. Those two are cardio and muscle mass and how they impact your weight loss goals.

     What is your metabolism? Your metabolism is the rate at which your body burns calories. It changes its rate throughout the day and throughout our lives/ It varies also based on whether you are man or woman. Men tend to have a higher metabolic rate than women of the same age. Sorry, ladies, it's nothing personal.

     Age related changes also occur. At a point in our lives we start losing muscle mass and start putting on fat due to changes in metabolism. At around 25 our bodies change. Our metabolism does a downshift. It begins to slow down at a rate of 2%, or maybe a little more, per decade. If we do not make appropriate changes to our input or output, we will gain weight.

     That works out like this. A man eating 2,000 calories a day and maintaining a healthy weight up until 25 os going to have to make one of two changes after age 25. He will either have to take in 1,960 calories per day or burn 40 to 50 more calories per day. A woman of the same age eating 1,800 calories at the same age would need to make a change that looks like 1,764 calories or burning off 36 to 45 more calories per day.

     In a nutshell, that is how to address your weight gain by adjusting your diet. But, who really wants to eat less and less over the course of their life? I mean, really? Slowly cutting your intake down to cheese and a slice of sausage on a cracker? That's no way to live. Besides, calorie reduction sends the body into a starvation response. This response takes muscle tissue for the calories necessary to keep functioning. Not good.

Effecting Changes in Your Metabolism Through Exercise via Cardio and Building Muscle

     Essentially, we burn calories every time we move. But, I am not going to go into that minutia. I am, however, going to look at the cardio aspect of weight loss. Aerobic activity, an exercise that gets us breathing heavy and our heart pumping for an extended period of time, is going to use fat stores while exercising. Here's how that works.

     Muscle glycogen, which stores energy, is broken down into glucose. This glucose goes through the process of glycolysis, a determined sequence of ten enzyme-catalyzed reactions, that reults in pyruvate. This pyruvate then reacts with oxygen to release CO2, water, and release energy. In the case of a lack of oxygen and an increasing intensity in the workout, lactate builds up in the muscles. This causes muscle soreness and, if goes too high, can also cause vomiting.

     When glycogen levels in the blood stream fall, the liver releases glucose. Fat is then used at a higher rate in order to fuel the aerobic pathways.

     Studies show that 65% of your maximum aerobic capacity is going to use the most fat stores possible for the duration of your exercise period. Calculating your VO2, the amount of oxygen you take in compared to the amount you exhale, is beyond the scope of this particular piece. So, we will revisit that another time. Still, you should be breathing heavy, but not so much that you can not talk to your training partner. Think about singing cadence. If you are breathing to hard to sing a few lines of running cadence then ease back on the throttle, you are going to hard. If you exercise too hard your body will keep burning glycogen and not the fat.

Cardio/Aerobic For Fat Loss

     Cardio/Aerobic is no longer just running forever. Interval style training is the preferred method for fat loss. Intervals combine muscle building, intense activity, and getting your heart and lungs working well above normal. But, we'll get to that later.

     If cardio/aerobic is not the greatest for fat loss, why do it? What's in it for me? There are several reasons why this is an important activity to include in your training. It lowers your risk of cardiovascular disease. It floods your brain with chemicals that improve functions like memory, problem solving, and decision making. It spurs the release of “feel good” hormones into your brain.

     If, like me, you take part in other physical sports like grappling and kick boxing, you need that aerobic capacity to outlast your opponents. Running is still one of the best ways to get that. Jumping rope is a close second, not to mention the coordination and balance training you get with this. I love jumping rope!

     Movement is great! Keep moving and you are burning more calories with each movement. Cardio is not just laps on the track, but a mix of sprints, squat thrusts, push ups, pull ups, and other body movements that can be mixed in between the sprints. Exercises that are done in such a way so that your heart rate and respiration are elevated, hence aerobic.

     That being said, let's address the muscle building aspect of this.

Muscle Building For Fat Loss

     Resting metabolism burns 30% of the calories taken in over the course of the day. Increasing the resting rate by increasing the lean muscle mass increases the resting metabolic rate. Scientist know that a modest increase, such as 2-3%, in our resting metabolism could end up reversing the age related fat and weight gain.

     How we will do that is by improving the quality and quantity of lean muscle in our bodies. Yes, we. I have a routine at the end of this article that I am doing right now, and enjoying thoroughly. The challenge that I am inviting you to accept is to complete three months.

     Anyway, the goal is to increase our resting metabolism by increasing our quality of lean muscle and the density of that muscle. The reason is because that muscle requires more calories to exist. Muscle burns 6 calories per pound for its existence. If you increase your bodyweight by 10 pounds of lean muscle that means that you will burn 60 extra calories per day. I wish that it were more, I really do. Still, that's 60 calories right off the top. Fat, on the other hand, takes only 2 calories per pound to exist.

     What this means is more lean, solid muscle will require the consumption of more calories just to exist. This is why building muscle is so important to the weight loss process. Now, keep this in mind about fat and muscle; being denser than fat, muscle weighs more. While you train and are building lean muscles you may see an increase in weight.

     To the left you see what five pounds of fat looks like compared to five pounds of muscle. I think that clearly illustrates it.

    Below is a bodyweight routine that you can do just about anywhere that has a place to do pull ups. I use pull up handles that I an hook on a bar that is on the back of the bleachers at the local high school, there are several parks and playgrounds nearby.

Routine: Level 1 3x (24 minutes), Level 2 5x (40 minutes), Level 3 7x (58 minutes)

Each set is one cycle through. Start with Pull Ups, select one of the 3 cardio choices and stick with that choice for the duration of the workout, and do each event for 1 minute. Each cycle is 8 sets with 30 seconds rest between each exercise.

Pull Ups

Jump Rope, Jumping Jacks, or Running in Place

Push Ups

Jump Rope, Jumping Jacks, or Running in Place

Bicycle Crunches or Sit Ups

Jump Rope, Jumping Jacks, or Running in Place

Squats

Jump Rope, Jumping Jacks, or Running in Place

     The first month we are doing this challenge is Level 1. The second month is Level 2. The last month, Level 3. Time durations are listed above at 24, 40, and 58 minutes.

     There is a very specific reason behind the choice in selecting the exercises for this routine. The cardio events are outstanding at getting and keeping your heart rate at a good level. Pull ups, push up, and squats are the exercises of choice because of their being compound exercises. That is to say, they involve more than one joint and more than one muscle group.

     

These particular selections will hit practically every muscle in your entire body. We are all getting a head to toe work out that is effective and efficient. It will turn your metabolism into a fat burning furnace and give you the lean, muscled body you want.