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Which is best for Lats development? (Pull ups vs Chin ups)


chingyvang
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A commonly asked question but I want insights from the Gymnastics community, which is better for building V shaped lats, pull ups or chin ups? And when I work my way up to front lever training, will that build my lats even more so than these two exercise?

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If you're talking singularly about that strength progression then I would say wide grip pull ups. I find chin ups tend to engage the biceps more whereas pull ups tend to use more back. The wide grip engages the lats more so.

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Joshua Naterman

I'm not sure what to say here. In the beginning I would have agreed about the chins, but not so much anymore. These days I believe it is all about the form you use. How wide are your hands in chins? Mine are shoulder width at the middle finger. How wide are your wide grip pull ups? 2x shoulders? 1.5? That difference completely changes the exercise.

If you want a good V taper you need to put more or less equal time into close and regular grip pull ups and chin ups, as well as wide grip pull up variations. The muscle activation is a bit different with each, but the way you either roll or retract your shoulders also changes the entire movement. For me, my arms have gotten smaller as my weighted chins and pulls have gotten heavier, but I am doing literally zero arm work outside of these. My giant arms came from doing high reps of the middle 1/3 of very wide grip pull ups and heavy straight arm barbell curls (heavy meaning 2 reps with my bodyweight at my strongest). Did they help? Probably. The arms, however, are still secondary to the traps, external rotators and lats in properly performed pull and chin ups.

I was simply stronger with my arms so I used them more than I should have in my pull ups and chin ups at first. When I started retracting and depressing my shoulder blades with every rep my back started getting very wide.

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Johann Wimmer

From a recent study:

LBpXv.jpg

The muscles are:

  • external oblique (EO)
    erector spinae (ES)
    pectoralis major (PM)
    lower trapezius (LT)
    infraspinatus (ISP)
    biceps brachii (BB)
    latissimus dorsi (LD

The difference in muscle activation is surprisingly small.

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Thank you all, very useful info. About that chart "Hackysack", pull ups is stated searatedly from perfect pull up? Lol

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Thank you all, very useful info. About that chart "Hackysack", pull ups is stated separately from perfect pull up? Lol
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Nicholas Sortino

By perfect pull up they mean the machine thing you hang from a pullup bar that makes you rotate as you pull, like the perfect push ups

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