In this post I’m going to explain about what to do if you can’t get chin ups. Whether you’re a client or you are in the gym doing this yourself, you might not be able to do chin ups right off the bar.

Generally we put in chin-ups on our light pulling day, so we can’t add weight to the bar. We’re running novice linear progression (NLP) on our deadlift, which we can’t add three days a week because it’s getting too taxing. So what you do is you pull out that middle day, (generally if you’re running a Monday-Wednesday-Friday, you’re going to pull out that Wednesday) and then you’re going to supplement a light pulling whether it’s chin ups, cleans… You’re going to pull out that middle day, that Wednesday for instance, and you’re going to add some chin ups as a supplement. So chin ups are very good light pulling exercise. So we’re going to add in chin ups.

Now let’s say for whatever reason you’re either too weak or you’re overweight, you can’t do a full chin up. This is the progression Coach Rusty from Wichita Falls Athletic Club likes to use to get people to be able to do chin up. If you’re overweight, you’re going to have to lose weight. That’s the only way. If you’re a real heavy person doing chin ups is going to be real hard. But this method is for the people that are just a little too weak that aren’t used to that movement. Coach Rusty likes to run them on a progression on the lat machine.

The lat machine they have in Wichita Falls Athletic Club goes up in 10 lbs increments. Some lat machines go up in 5 lb increments. If they do, you can typically run this cycle a little bit longer. But what we like to do is to find a weight that the client or whoever you´re training, you yourself… can do a full range of motion. That’s fully extended arms all the way to the chest that they can do for a 3 x 5. And you don’t want it to be too challenging at first. You want to make them work but you don’t want them to be grinding on the first day. And then, that next week we go up 10 lb, and the next week we go up 10 lb. So we’re doing 3 x fives just like a normal linear progression: 10 lb, 10 lb, 10 lbs…

Once that last rep starts getting grindy, or their technique starts changing, or they start heaving the bar… whatever it is, then we prefer to add a rep instead of adding weight. So, let’s say the sticking point is 80 lb. Instead of doing a 3 x 5 at 80 lb, we’re going to do a 3 x 6 at 80 lb, a 3 x 7 at 80 lb, a 3 x 8 at 80 lb… Generally, once they can do 3 sets of 8, we can go ahead and add the weight and drop it back down to a 3 x 5. So now we are doing a 3 x 5 at 90 lb, 3 x 6 at 90 lb, 3 x 7 at 90 lb, 3 x 8 at 90 lb, and then we can go up to 100 lbs and reset the rep scheme.

Run this as long as you can. Once this starts tapping out at the very least, the client or yourself should be able to control your weight on the bar. Once that happens, there’s an entire different progression that Rusty likes to use. If they still can’t get that first chin up but they can control their weight, there’s different things that we can do to get them to do that full chin up. So we would go ahead and run this progression.

Remember, we’re doing full range of motion chin ups. That’s all the way to straight arms, touch the chest, and back to straight arms. Because that’s the same range of motion you’re going to be using on the chin up bar.

Whenever you are strong enough to control your bodyweight on the chin up bar, you need to start practicing your chin ups even if you can’t do a chin up. There’s a couple ways to do that.

• One way is by the negative. If you’re by yourself, if you don’t have anyany help, get a box, put it underneath you, get it to where you can reach up and grab the bar. You’re going to jump up, touch your chest to the bar and you’re going to hold yourself that in that position. You’re going to squeeze in that top position and then you’re slowly going to lower yourself. Very slowly. Keep the same consistent speed until you get to full extended arms and you’re going to jump again, touch your chest, squeeze and slowly lower yourself again. We would start off with like a 3 x 3, and then a 3 x 4 and 3 x 5. You do these and if you need to add in some lat pulls, and you’re going to be doing chin ups of no time again as long as your body weight is under control. It’s going to be hard to do this if you are overweight.
• Another method that Rusty prefer and this is because he´s a coach and he can assist people with this. He uses this with the kids a lot because kids can normally get their chin ups pretty quick. They don’t have to spend a lot of time on this or do negatives. It’s just an assisted chin up. To do an assisted chin up you’re going to go into the bottom of the chin up. Someone’s going to take their hand and put it right in the middle of your back, and just basically just help you get to the top. And then they’re going to let go, let you control yourself down and then get you back up to the top. This is the best way to get people to start their chin ups after they are strong enough to control their bodyweight. Again, everybody doesn’t have somebody to help them out, so you might have to just do negatives. But if you do, this method is going to be the best way to do it. If you do these and you keep practicing, you’ll end up getting your chin pretty quick.

Bibliographic references:

• Starting Strength. (2025). From Lat Machine to Chin Ups [Video file]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/FTaQzUzEKpI?si=JLsPqABJX4kU9V57
• Starting Strength. (2025). Developing Strength for Your First Chin up [Video file]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/Snf7idYOTOc?si=kLmR4Kummn_xcPIG