I'm not plugging Jason Blaha, but what he says in this video has got me convinced.



In short: wide grip pullups give the same amount of back development as close grip pullups, but you get less bicep development.

WTF is the point of doing wide then?

negged for stupidity

Neutral grip are goat IMO

If one works 90% back, and the other is 50/50, which one is better for developing just back?

Why the **** you care about your biceps if you are doing pull ups mate? Do chin ups after you do your pull ups if you care so much about working your biceps .

They both work the back equally. It's just one works the biceps more. (Close grip)why do wide grip pullups and a bicep exercise if you could just do close grip pullups and get the same effect in a shorter time?

for real they are. less wear on joints.

Only do neutral grip crew.

Better on the shoulders.

When you read this, it makes sense to your brain?

I can't do wide grip, it hurts my shoulders and doesnt feel good. I do neutral grip. i get a click eventually on left shoulder doing wide.
I helped alleviate that by using straight bar, and not curved. However, neutral/straight is goat for me.

These statements don't reconcile. Overall work performed by the muscles is an equation.

Work = Mass * Gravity * Height

If x amount of weight is lifted against gravity a distance of y, then z units of work were performed, so if the biceps are contributing to the amount of work, then they are also contributing to the amount of force (which the back would have been contributing alone with the wider grip).

only wide grip you should do is on a lat pulldown

That is funny because it looks like you linked a vid and plugged him?

IRL if your biceps do more work in a pull movement your back is doing less work. 'Work' isn't defined by a magical opinion, do a search on the internet for work+physics. When possible use basic factual information instead of opinion.

Oh is that your secret to success?

It should be obvious to a thinking human being how dumb this is

Yes, and here's why.

With a closer grip, you are in a stronger, more natural position (ever wonder why some people get shoulder pain from wide grip? We're not meant to pull ourselves up with our hands way far apart)

Imagine you need to pull yourself up onto a ledge. Are you going to use a narrow grip, or a wide grip?

A narrow grip puts you in a stronger line of pull, and through a longer range of motion which means you're getting more of a growth stimulus. So you can use more weight.

If you're pulling 90 pounds with your back and 10 pounds with your biceps on wide grip.

If you're pulling 90 pounds with your back and 30 pounds with your biceps on close grip.

Is the back getting worked any less on close grip?

No.

Cause mechanically they aren't exactly the same movement. It's like saying you get more benefit from doing narrow grip bench instead of wide grip bench. To me they are both equally good tools to emphasize certain muscle groups. Do both.

What is your goal here. Why are you doing pull ups in the first place? Is it mainly for lat development? It is for me. Wide grip is done so you can reduce the involvement of other muscle groups to further work your lats.

I thought wide-grip pull ups are the only ones to do.

You do have to go ALL THE WAY up (and pull your chin above the bar‒or touch the bar to the back of your neck) or they will be worthless though. If you don't go ALL THE WAY down, they can be worthless too. There are two major motor functions to the muscle fiber. Stretching out to push, and contracting in to pull. If you don't utilize a full range of motion (if you don't breach peak range of motion), then guaranteed some of the muscle fibers aren't getting one or the other activation‒and they need to get both. Using less weight keys in here, when-and-where it enables you to breach full (or peak) range of motion, where otherwise you would come up short.

I'd also like to chime in that wide-grip pull-ups are actually an isolation for the back and lats. The reason for this is because as the arms stretch out, it takes other muscles out of the equation so they can't contribute as much. The amount of resistance doesn't change, so any support taken out of the equation, has to be picked up by the remaining muscles directly involved. It's simple physics‒and is how all isolation works.

For example, when you supinate your wrist in a curl, the muscles at the connective portion of the wrist stretch out, and are removed as stabilizers to enact dynamic exertion (the stretching out to push). This stabilizer load has to be picked up, where the tension shoots down to the bicep, and is picked up by the initial portion of the bicep that connects to the elbow and forearm.

All isolation works like this. Try this example. Stick your arm out in front of you, now tension every other muscle in your upper carriage, before you pull your arm up for a curl. Now pull your arm back as far as you can, and tuck it to the side of your body, and tension every other muscle you can. It's a difference you can feel. There's almost nothing to tension while the arm is tucked to the side of the body, meaning the bicep will be working at its most isolated potential.

When you pull your arm up between the two positions, you might also notice that when your arm is tucked to the side of your body, it enables your bicep to work through a longer range of motion. Whereas when the arm comes forward, the range of motion is shortened. This shortened range of motion stunts the activation on the fibers, and is rooted in the mechanics of how the bicep and the tricep are connected through the forearm. As your arm comes forward, the tension wraps around the forearm, and then stretches the tricep intuitively from the elbow. It's all downhill from there.

Here's another example. Stick your arm out straight in front of you and tense your chest. Now bend your elbow up. It's a difference you can feel. The new-age pec-deck machines that utilize a straight arm movement do not isolate the chest as much as the old-school L-shaped movement ones do. This means less isolation, which means that the chest doesn't get to work to its max potential, which means your time is wasted and your development comes out stunted using the new-age pec-deck machines.

Isolation is one of the greatest fundamentals of bodybuilding science. You're taking one muscle, and you're working it to its complete exhaustion. That's how peak development is achieved in each muscle, and the more isolation you can put into your exercises, the more well-developed they will make you. Nearly every exercise has some way to isolate the target muscle. Knowing what trajectory that is, or what equilibrium you have to position yourself at, or how strictly you might have to work among those two mediums, are a few of the keys to achieving that isolation.

pull ups is mostly your back tho...

I do wide grips, super slow and controlled as a warm up or warm down.



Close grip when I do weighted or chin ups for weighted.

Wide grips are hard on your shoulders, but the notion OP suggests defies physics for body weight pull-ups.

I think it's kinda like regular deadlift compared to sumo and I think it does make sense. Still considering it though. But with wide grip, less range of motion and you don't have to contract as much with your arm, so less bicep work. Imagine it as pulling your elbows down. Just put your hands up like you're about to do a wide grip pull up and then do like you're doing the pull up. Then repeat that as a narrow grip. Very short range of motion for wide. Really, with wide all you're doing is putting the elbows down and your elbows are just about level with your shoulder. With narrow, your elbows are higher up and you will have to pull-up to where they are level with your shoulders and then continue on.

thats our boy hemingway

I prefer chins, I can move more weight for more reps that way. Also if I don't have time for arms isolation I can pretty much do CGBP, Weighted Chins, maybe a Shoulder Press and GTFO.

It doesn't. Unless you can do like twice as much weight (total, not added) with the closer grip pull-up than wide grip then it obviously is mathematically unfeasible.

hmmmm...who should I take lifting advice from, maybe this guy?



.....or maybe this guy?





Negged for actute idiocy.

It does though.

Say you can do 5 wide grip pull-ups, but you can do 7 close grip.

That's an extra 40% volume, AND through a longer range of motion.

Keep in mind the biceps are a smaller muscle.

That is one of the dumbest posts I have ever read.

You really don't think new data on exercise science has come out since the 70s!?

Also I guess it's impossible to know about things that aren't in line with your goals. Must mean I don't know what a squat, bench press, or deadlift is because I'm not a powerlifter.

Negged.

Shove your data up your ass srs.

I (and hundreds of thousands of other people) have been doing wide grip pullups for a lifetime.

They are a tried and tested method for creating width and lat flare.

Do you honestly think in over 25 years of lifting I've not tried every style imaginable?

And then pricks like you come on here, with no avi, and post a thread about some neckbeard that looks like he's never lifted a weight in his entire life, and claim he's the messiah of muscle?

Fuk you millenials.

I am going to ban youtube in my house srs.

The argument isn't that they don't work for building lats.

The argument is that they're inefficient, and you're leaving free curls on the table by not using a narrower grip.

Ever heard of "getting results in spite of, not because of"?

Non-negotiable.