How To Do Your First Chin-Up (And Then 5 More!)

If you’ve been struggling to get your first chin-up, I’ve got you covered in this article.

I’m going to go over the exercises you need to do, exactly how to do them and outline how to progress each one until you can do your first chin-up.. and then 5 more!

First, a disclaimer..

If you’re overweight, you’re probably going to need to lose some body fat before you can do your first chin-up. 

Chin-ups are a measure of your strength-to-weight ratio. The more body fat you have, the harder it is going to be to perform them.

I’m not saying you need to be absolutely shredded to be able to do a chin-up, but if you have a decent amount of body fat to lose, prioritizing your diet and focusing on losing body fat will need to be your first step to performing a chin-up.

If you fall into this category, I’d encourage you to read some of my articles on nutrition and fat loss.

With that being said, you don’t need to wait until you lose weight to start strength training! You can still use the exercises and progressions in this article to get stronger. Just know that until you lose some weight you might not be able to do your first chin-up.

Let’s get started!

The perfect chin-up program

While I would love to create the perfect chin-up program that will help everyone, the reality is it’s just not possible.

There are just too many factors involved with programming to design one single program that will work for everyone.

Additionally, some people are going to progress much faster than others.  

With that being said, I think laying out some general guidelines and progressions that are tried and true will help you out much more.

If you want me to do all the work for you, and design a program specifically designed to get you to do your first chin-up, you can apply for coaching to see if we’d be a good fit for each other.

Otherwise, keep reading to find out how to do your first chin-up!

Chin-up grip positions

There are three different grip positions you can use when performing chin-ups. 

Pronated refers to your palms facing away from you. These aren’t really chin-ups, these are called pull-ups.

This is the hardest variation, mostly because your biceps can’t help you very much. Your lats are going to have to do most of the work here.

Supinated means when your palms are facing towards you. These will be easier because you can use your bicep muscles to help your lats.

Neutral grip chin-ups are when your palms are facing each other.

These are the chin-ups we’re going to focus on. I like neutral grip chin-ups the best because they generally feel better on your wrists, elbows and shoulders. They are also a nice mixture of lats and biceps.

If you have access to a neutral grip chin-up bar, use it for all the chin-up exercises below. If you don’t, you can use a supinated grip. 

Chin-up progression

I’ve broken the exercises in this article into three categories:

Primary Movements: These are exercises you would do first in your workout, with full rest between sets. The reason you are going to do these first is because they are going to help you do your first chin-up the most! They look the most similar to chin-ups and they are going to directly work the muscles directly involved with chin-ups.

When progressing your primary movements, I would recommend sticking with the same exercise until you’ve reached the standards outlined. It might take you only a few weeks, or it might take a few months.

Supplemental Movements: These exercises are meant to help improve your primary movements. You should do your supplemental exercises after you’ve done your primary movements. They are usually performed with higher repetitions than your primary movements. Supplemental movements also train the muscles involved during a chin-up, but they might work them in a slightly different position or at a different angle.

To progress your supplemental movements, I would recommend sticking with the same movements for 4-8 weeks at a time. You want to use them long enough to see progress, but not so long that they lose effectiveness. Try to add weight or make your supplemental movements harder each time you perform them.

Accessory Movements: These are meant to help improve your supplemental movements, and usually isolate the muscles that help you perform chin-ups. 

You can swap out your accessory movements every 4-8 weeks. 

Primary movements

Isometric chin-ups

Even though you’re not able to do a full chin-up just yet, you’ll be able to hold yourself at the top of the chin-up for a brief period of time.

When a muscle is contracting, but not moving, it is called an isometric contraction.

During this chin-up variation, your lat and upper back muscles will be contracting but not moving.

Start by jumping up to the chin-up bar, like I am in the video. You’re not going to do the actual pulling up part of the exercise because, well, you probably wouldn’t be reading this article if you could 😉

Start with 3-5 sets of 3-5 reps with a 5-10 second isometric hold, performed 1-2 times per week. Here’s an example of what a progression over 4 weeks might look like:

Week 1: 3 x 3 reps w/ 5s ISO holds 

Week 2: 3 x 3 reps w/ 5s ISO holds

Week 3: 4 x 3 reps w/ 5s ISO holds

Week 4: 4 x 4 reps w/ 5s ISO holds

For the next 4 week phase, you could keep the isometric chin-up in your program, but again try to increase sets and reps.

Work up to being able to do 3 sets of 3 reps with a 10s isometric hold.

Eccentric chin-ups

The next exercise we’re going to go over is the eccentric chin-up. Eccentric refers to the lowering part of the chin-up. 

Why are we focusing on the lowering part of the chin-up?

By simply lowering yourself under control, you’re going to build a ton of strength in your lats and upper back muscles. These muscles are responsible for pulling your body up in a chin-up. 

I still want you to jump up to the bar here on each rep. Make sure you use a box that’s high enough.

You’re going to lower yourself under control for the given time on each rep. Do your best to not swing around as you lower yourself!

Do 3-5 sets of 3-5 reps with a 3-5 second eccentric lowering 1-2 times per week. Here’s an example of what a progression over 4 weeks might look like:

Week 1: 3 x 3 reps w/ 5s ECC lowering 

Week 2: 3 x 3 reps w/ 5s ECC lowering 

Week 3: 4 x 3 reps w/ 5s ECC lowering 

Week 4: 4 x 4 reps w/ 5s ECC lowering 

Work up to doing 3 sets of 5 reps with a 5 second eccentric lowering.

Band assisted chin-ups

When strength training, there is a variable called volume. Volume refers to the amount of total work you’re doing with any given exercise. 

For example, let’s say you perform 3 sets of 10 reps of chin-ups. 

Your volume for that training session would be 3 sets x 10 reps = 30 total reps. 

Volume is an important training variable that you need if you want to make progress. If you didn’t need volume, you’d be able to do 1 set of 1 exercise and see great results!

If you can’t do any chin-ups yet, it’s going to be really hard to get enough volume to get better at them.

The solution?

Band assisted chin-ups! Because the band stretches, it’s going to help you the most at the hardest part of the chin-up (the bottom) and help you the least at the easiest part of the chin-up (the top).

Band assisted chin-ups will help you get the volume you need to make progress. Perform 3-4 sets of 6-10 reps 1-2 times per week.

To progress band assisted chin-ups, keep using a thinner and thinner band until you’re able to do chin-ups without one!

Supplemental movements

TRX or barbell inverted rows

The TRX straps are one of the most versatile pieces of equipment in the gym. They can be used for your upper body, lower body, core, and everything in between.

If you want to get your first chin-up, you’re going to want to include TRX rows in your program. The great thing about using the TRX is you can adjust the angle of your body to make them more difficult or less difficult, depending on how strong you are.

Even though TRX rows work more of your upper back muscles than chin-ups do, they will still help to strengthen your grip and lat muscles to a degree.

If you don’t have access to TRX straps, you can set up a barbell in a rack and perform barbell inverted rows. 

Both of these exercises are a great way to add pulling volume to your program, which will help you get your first chin-up.

Do 3-4 sets of 6-10 reps 1-2 times per week.

Single arm dumbbell rows

I’ve heard some coaches say you shouldn’t train with weights until you’ve mastered bodyweight exercises like push-ups, chin-ups, and single leg squats.

This is a pretty dumb rule.

Think about it. If you’re not strong enough to do chin-ups, why wouldn’t you use some dumbbells to help strengthen the muscles in your back so that you can eventually do chin-ups? 

Single arm DB rows are a great way to strengthen your lats and upper back. Because you’re doing these one arm at a time, you can work on any imbalances you might have.

Supinated lat pulldowns

The “lat” in “lat pulldowns” is short for latissimus dorsi, and it’s the muscle that’s most responsible for helping you get your first chin-up.

Lat pulldowns are another great way to get pulling volume into your program so you can get your first chin-up.

Perform 3-4 sets of 6-10 reps 1-2 times per week.

Accessory movements

Curls for the girls

It turns out curls aren’t just for getting girls after all. If you’re serious about getting your first chin-up, doing bicep curls will help you get there.

Why?

Because the biceps help the lat muscles in the chin-up. They aren’t the muscles doing most of the work, but they do help the lats to pull your chin over the bar.

While any type of bicep curl can help you get your first chin-up, there are three in particular that will help the most.

I want you to go heavy with hammer curls! Don’t worry about making these perfect. A little bit of cheating here is okay.

Because your palms are facing each other here, you’ll be working a bit more of your forearm muscles. Your forearm muscles play a big role in helping you grip the bar burning chin-ups.

These were named after strongman George Zottman. He was known for his giant forearms, which is what these curls target! 

Do 3-4 sets of 6-10 reps 1-2 times per week.

Core

Strengthening your core is going to help get you strong enough to do your first chin-up. 

Being able to keep a tight core position will help make sure you aren’t wasting energy moving around under the bar. When your core is strong enough to keep your entire body tight, you can put all your energy towards pulling yourself up.

The front plank is the first progression of a group of exercises called anti-flexion exercises. 

Your core muscles connect your upper body and lower body together. One of the roles of your core muscles is to keep your lower back from extending. 

These are harder than the front planks because now there’s some movement involved. As your arms move out in front of you, your core muscles have to work a lot harder to keep you from extending and rounding your lower back.

These are the final progression of the anti-flexion exercises. This also happens to be the position your body is in while you’re doing your first chin-up!

Next up we have the first progression of anti-lateral flexion exercises. These exercises are meant to help resist lateral movement, which is another job your core muscles need to do.

Just like the stability ball rollouts, now we’re adding some movement here which is going to make these much more challenging.

The final anti-lateral flexion exercise in our progression is the suitcase carry. These are also going to work on grip strength, which will help you get your first chin-up.

Now what?

Congratulations, you’ve gotten your first chin-up!

Now what?

At this point, most people hop on a chin-up bar every time they go to the gym and try to do as many chin-ups as they can.

This won’t be very effective, because you can only do 1 chin-up! Eventually, you might be able to get to 2 or 3 chin-ups this way, but let me show you two methods that will work much better and faster..

Chin-up EMOM

The first method is called an EMOM set. EMOM stands for Every Minute On the Minute.  

You’re going to grab a stopwatch and do 1 chin-up every minute at the top of every minute. Take complete rest for whatever time is left in the minute. 

Try to do anywhere between 5 and 10 minutes. You can work to increase the time each week, so your workout over 4 weeks might look something like this:

Week 1: 6 minutes (6 total chins)

Week 2: 6 minutes (6 total chins, could not get 7)

Week 3: 8 minutes (8 total chins)

Week 4: 9 minutes (9 total chins)

Once you’re able to get between 12-15 minutes, you can move on to the next progression.

Chin-up cluster sets

At this point, you should be able to get at least 2-3 reps of chin-ups in a row. You can now progress to performing cluster sets.

Cluster sets allow you to get more chin-ups during your workout. Each set is made up of smaller mini-sets, where you take a short rest between reps.

To perform a cluster set, you’re going to do 1-3 reps, rest 10 seconds, repeat that for 3-4 mini-sets, then take complete rest (2-3 minutes) and repeat that for 3-4 total sets. 

Similarly to the EMOM workout, you want to slowly increase the amount of chin-ups you’re doing. An example over 4 weeks  where you increase your total number of chin-ups each workout can look something like this:

Week 1: 3 x 1-1-1 cluster sets 

Week 2: 4 x 1-1-1 cluster sets

Week 3: 3 x 1-1-1-1 cluster sets

Week 4: 4 x 1-1-1-1 cluster sets

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Wrapping up

This article should give you all the tools you need in order to perform your first chin-up. 

Make sure you use good technique with every exercise, and don’t rush through the progressions! It takes time for your body to build the strength you need in order to do your first chin-up.

Let me know if you have any questions in the comments below!