Weighted Chins

BY Jim Wendler

I like them. I’m not voting for them in the next    “Five Awesome Exercises” election but they certainly have their place. I’ve championed chin-ups for years, mostly    because they’re great for the upper back, lats, and arms. And because you can do them anywhere – chin-up bar, top of the  Smith machine, scaffolding, top of the monolift, playground  equipment, etc.
Weighted chins are a good idea IF you can do them, and even then    you still need to keep bodyweight chins as part of your training  (unless you can bang out multiple sets of 20 with good form). And  if that’s the case, gain some weight! Now of course there are people, usually some sort of Lifting Forum Queen, that would like to point to the VERY strong Konstantin Konstantinovs and tell me how wrong the prior statement is.  But you can’t use the exception to prove the rule.  And you just proved yourself to be unreliable and weak.
If you want to add some weighted chins as part of your training repertoire, start light and see how you do. Make sure you use something that doesn’t allow the weight or dumbbell to swing too much when you do them. I recommend a good chin/dip belt or    simply get a piece of chain and hang it from your lifting  belt.
Harry Selkow at eliteFTS.com has a great chinning program that’ll increase your weighted chins AND your bodyweight chins. My approach is simpler. One day I’d do bodyweight chins for 50 or more total reps. The next chin-up day I’d do a couple sets of weighted chins, either multiple sets at a given weight (for example 5 sets of 6 reps with 45 lbs.) or work up to an  all-out set with the heaviest weight I can handle.
As much as I love doing chins, they’re still not squats, presses, cleans, and pulls. They’re great to do, but I’m not going to lose sleep if my strength on these goes up and my chinning strength remain stagnant.
You can’t sleep with all the women in the sorority, so just be happy you got some trim.