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Why pull-ups are harder than chin-ups
The difference isn't just your grip. Why the pull-up is genuinely harder — the handicap of the grip, the scapula, and rotation.
Published
by Adarsh Gopal
The pull up and the chin up are not just different in how you grip or hold the bar.
The grip itself produces a handicap in the pull up.
Palms facing away (the pull up) makes it harder for your lats to move the shoulder blades.
Palms facing you (the chin up) makes it easier for your lats to move the shoulder blades.
What does that mean?
While doing a pull up or a chin up, this giant muscle called the latissimus dorsi, along with many smaller muscles, works to move your shoulder blades (the scapulae) closer together and down as you rise towards the bar. They move up and apart as you lower back down.
With a wider grip, your shoulder blades start further apart, making it harder to pull them down and together. On top of that, the palms-away grip biases your shoulders towards internal rotation, so you have to fight to keep them rolled back (externally rotated) the whole time.
With a narrower grip and your palms turned towards you, that same grip biases your shoulders towards external rotation. The rolled back position of the shoulder means the lats have an easier time moving the shoulder blades down.
But easier is not better. The pull up is considered a more optimal way to train your upper back for two reasons:
Less bicep involvement means more upper back work.
The harder position makes your lat carry a bigger share of the work. The easier chin-up hands more of the job to the biceps, so the lat gets more of a break.
If you are having a hard time picturing this, I don’t blame you.
A simpler way to think about it: the lats have a harder time moving the shoulder blades when the hands are wider and the grip forces you to fight for external rotation. That’s the pull up.
A closer or palms-towards-you grip gives you that rotation for free, so the blades glide down and together more easily. Same goes for a neutral grip.
This is the reason people have a much harder time doing a pull up than a chin up. The wider, palms-away grip starts the shoulder blades further apart and forces them to travel a longer arc to reach the bottom, down and together. While the chin-up’s narrower, palms-towards-you position shortens that path.
Any good program will feature both.