Starting Strength

delts are. Grip width may not be a practical variable to manipulate due to the joint stress it causes at the extremes of wide and narrow, but since grip width affects the way the shoulders interact with the load, some shoulder injuries can be affected by grip width. A shoulder-width grip is good for our purposes and presents no problems for most people. Chalk makes for a better grip and fewer calluses, and using it is a necessary. A knurled or rough bar destroys the hands and therefore adversely affects the rest of your training.
    The movement itself is obviously simple: take your grip, and pull your elbows “down,” which results in your leaving the ground. Each rep starts from a full stretch at the bottom, with elbows straight and scapulas stretched up, and is complete when your chin clears the bar. A more honest approach might be to touch your chest to the bar, but we’ll count the rep if your chin clears the bar with your face forward, and your head not back. Try to stay as close to the bar as possible. The Gold Standard rep is done from a dead hang, with a slight pause at the fully stretched-out bottom. It is terribly common to see partial chins, which should be called “foreheads” or “nose-ups” and are usually accompanied by less-than-straight elbows at the bottom. For a high-rep set, you can use a stretch reflex at the bottom as long as the bottom is actually The Bottom. In this case, breathing will consist of a quick breath at the top of each rep. For a higher-rep set to failure (maybe 12 or more reps), you’ll find that the first two-thirds to three-fourths of the set will be rebounded, and the last reps will be done from a dead hang as you take a couple of breaths between reps at the bottom. The same rules apply to pull-ups, if you decide to do them.
    Cutting the rep short at either the top or the bottom is as bad as squatting high: the primary benefit of the exercise lies at the ends of the movement. The bottom stretches out the lats, and the first shrug of the stretched-up scapulas down is all lats and upper back muscles. The finish at the top is biceps and triceps, and a completed rep means you have moved your body a constant, measurable distance through space. Each rep is therefore the same, and your effort becomes quantifiable, not just a flailing-around in the air.
    But what if you can’t do a complete chin-up? Lower the bar a little (or raise the floor, possibly an easier thing to do, artificially) and use a jump to get the movement started until you’re strong enough to do it strict ( Figure 7-38 ).

    Figure 7-38. The jumping chin-up, used to strengthen the lifter for a complete chin-up later.

Be sure to lower yourself under control to get the most out of the negative, and always use only as much jump as necessary. Or you can use resistance bands in the rack until you are strong enough to do the movement with only a jump. The ability to do an honest chin-up may be beyond some novices at a heavier bodyweight, and if you cannot do a good strict rep at all, it will be best to wait until your lats and arms are stronger from deadlifts and presses or until your bodyfat comes down enough to permit you to handle your bodyweight effectively on the bar.
     

    Figure 7-39. Chin-ups assisted by the use of resistance bands in your handy-dandy power rack.

    Kipping chin-ups and pull-ups are gymnastic derivatives of the jumping version. The kipping version uses the momentum of a slight swing preceding the pull, when the swing is converted into an upward roll of the hips, translating the swing energy into upward movement. The kip distributes the movement over more muscle mass, using the abs, hip flexors, and lower back in addition to the lats and arms, so that more muscle mass is used in the exercise and more reps can be done. Strict chins and pull-ups concentrate the effort on less muscle mass and work it harder.

    Figure 7-40. The kipping pull-up.

    Kipping chin-ups and pull-ups have proven themselves to be useless as a way to strengthen the strict versions of the movement, and in the absence of enough strength to do the strict versions, they have proven to be dangerous for shoulder health. Resist the temptation to jump on any bandwagon that encourages short-term gratification at the expense of long-term progress. Many people who can do 15 kipping reps cannot do 2 dead-hangs, and have made no progress on their dead-hangs since they started cheating the movement with the kip. If you want to use