Weighted Chins – Take It Slow
- Updated: January 30, 2013
If you can do good chins with your bodyweight, you should start out by adding just 5-10 pounds and stick with that for a few weeks, then go 15, 20, 25, etc. It’s like anything else.
Unless you’re well over 6 feet tall and have arms as long as a chimp, you shouldn’t be gripping the bar at the very ends. Going that wide cuts your range of motion too short, and also puts your biceps in a very weak position— which would cause them to fail really fast, long before the lats got a damn thing out of the chins. Try gripping right where the bar bends on both sides, which should be about shoulder width. Your biceps will be in a stronger pulling position to assist the lats, and your range of motion will be complete.