Assisted Chins..any good?

Degsy

been doing these for a while now and enjoy em quite a bit,however i find they really take it out of you and was wondering are they worth while even bothering with?

leggit

Degsy wrote: »

been doing these for a while now and enjoy em quite a bit,however i find they really take it out of you and was wondering are they worth while even bothering with?

as long as you're enjoying and progressing with them?

How long is a while?
Once you're doing 15 you should lower the assitance, or get rid of it altogether.

Dermighty

I was doing assisted pull ups until I started training with a partner who could spot me. I'm assuming assisted chins and pull ups are similar enough, never did assisted chins.

The assisted ones are good, I found there was a little less focus on bracing your core when pulling up so I tended to have a worse form when doing assisted pull ups.

Once you're getting the full range of motion and you can feel like you're working then it has to be good.

Negatives also help a lot, do them at the end of your assisted sets, or do them on their own instead of assisted sets.

Degsy

leggit wrote: »

How long is a while?.

A year and a bit..i've been focusing more on form lately so i've dropped teh number of reps.

leggit wrote: »

Once you're doing 15 you should lower the assitance

Same with all excercises,no?

rubadub

Degsy wrote: »

Same with all excercises,no?

Not the exact same. If you were doing say a bicep curl you start off with light weight and increase so you should be using pretty much all the same muscles. With assisted chins it would be more like buying a 15kg dumbbell and having some sort of band contraption hanging down to help you lift it at the start -it is not ideal and probably works different muscles. So some might recommend getting rid of assistance on chins once you can do a low number of reps, while they might not recommend adding weight to other exercises so early.

I have read a fair few tips on chins and most say to avoid assistance machines, I think they do not work stabiliser muscles or something. I have seen many here recommend bands as assistance though, probably since they are more unstable and more similar to what you experience with normal chins.

When I was starting out I just did negatives and would highly recommend them. If you have rings you can adjust them to a perfect height so you need no box to step on. or if you have 2 adjustable webbing straps you can hang a barbell or wooden pole between them from a normal chinup bar so it is like a trapeze bar and set it to your ideal height.

Once I could do a few chins I would keep at the negatives, like do maybe 2-3 real chins and tag a few negatives on the end of the set.

Mellor

Degsy wrote: »

Same with all excercises,no?

If it was an assistance machine, then yeah its the same as a direct load. 20kg on the cable is 20kg through out the movement.

But if the assistance was bands or a friend spotting, the assistance is greater at the bottom (depending on how the spotter does it I suppose), so its more like benching with chains, or reverse band pulls etc. So I'd narly treat is as a separate exercise.

DamienH

rubadub wrote: »

I have read a fair few tips on chins and most say to avoid assistance machines, I think they do not work stabiliser muscles or something. I have seen many here recommend bands as assistance though, probably since they are more unstable and more similar to what you experience with normal chins.

Pretty solid advice. That's how I got to do a chinup. I used those assitance machines for a while but they didn't really do much as far as getting an actual chinup.

If you're very overweight you'll have to get a pretty thick band, and just put your knee into it.