Gary Gibson
12-20-2009, 10:45 AM
With the meet kiboshed on account of a snowy act of God--and with my travel plans delayed for a couple of weeks--I decided to train lifts I'd been ignoring.
Blowdpanis' vids inspired me to try my hand at weighted chin ups. I used to be quite obsessed with these and with the one-arm chin up. I even managed a one-arm chin up here and there back when I weighed ~150. But since I've started powerlifting competitively, I've let the chin up slide off my plate.
I've trained weighted chins only very sporadically since 2005. The last time I tried them at all was many months ago. I decided to start with a max test. I ended up getting a not too hard rep with 100 lbs (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bHq0Et0-xU) and then failing miserably with 115. Not too shabby. In fact, my chin up strength seems to be exactly where I left it (100 + 165 = 115 +150). I thought it would surely have degraded by now.
I suspect that my bench training has kept all my chin up muscles in shape. The biceps do assist the pecs in shoulder adduction during the bench (and this contribution increases as the grip gets wider and the elbows flare more) while the triceps assist the lats in shoulder extension during chins/pull ups. So there is indeed carryover between the two movements though they exert force in opposite directions.
(As a side note, I also recently tested my strict barbell curl and was able to curl more weight--with no body English--than I ever have before in my life...even though I almost never curl and have only chinned a few times this past year.)
If this is the case, then it's especially frustrating that my (standing) press doesn't correlate with improvements in the bench press. I focus much of my time on the bench press because I have to do it in competition. I've discovered, however, that carryover between the two presses isn't nearly as direct nor does it manifest itself anywhere near immediately. (I've recently added another 10 lbs to my bench and found my standing press has decreased since I last trained it.)
The matter here is that the two presses are more different than they are alike even though they sort of look the same. The bench press relies on a lot of technique--much more than the average trainee realizes--while the standing press requires tremendous torso strength--again, much more than the average trainee realizes. I'd go so far as to say that the standing press is more a torso developer than it is an arm and shoulder developer. Anyone who has achieved great standing press prowess will attest to this; the enormous upper body strength developed by the bench press won't mean a thing in the standing press if the strength of the torso is not sufficient.
Blowdpanis' vids inspired me to try my hand at weighted chin ups. I used to be quite obsessed with these and with the one-arm chin up. I even managed a one-arm chin up here and there back when I weighed ~150. But since I've started powerlifting competitively, I've let the chin up slide off my plate.
I've trained weighted chins only very sporadically since 2005. The last time I tried them at all was many months ago. I decided to start with a max test. I ended up getting a not too hard rep with 100 lbs (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bHq0Et0-xU) and then failing miserably with 115. Not too shabby. In fact, my chin up strength seems to be exactly where I left it (100 + 165 = 115 +150). I thought it would surely have degraded by now.
I suspect that my bench training has kept all my chin up muscles in shape. The biceps do assist the pecs in shoulder adduction during the bench (and this contribution increases as the grip gets wider and the elbows flare more) while the triceps assist the lats in shoulder extension during chins/pull ups. So there is indeed carryover between the two movements though they exert force in opposite directions.
(As a side note, I also recently tested my strict barbell curl and was able to curl more weight--with no body English--than I ever have before in my life...even though I almost never curl and have only chinned a few times this past year.)
If this is the case, then it's especially frustrating that my (standing) press doesn't correlate with improvements in the bench press. I focus much of my time on the bench press because I have to do it in competition. I've discovered, however, that carryover between the two presses isn't nearly as direct nor does it manifest itself anywhere near immediately. (I've recently added another 10 lbs to my bench and found my standing press has decreased since I last trained it.)
The matter here is that the two presses are more different than they are alike even though they sort of look the same. The bench press relies on a lot of technique--much more than the average trainee realizes--while the standing press requires tremendous torso strength--again, much more than the average trainee realizes. I'd go so far as to say that the standing press is more a torso developer than it is an arm and shoulder developer. Anyone who has achieved great standing press prowess will attest to this; the enormous upper body strength developed by the bench press won't mean a thing in the standing press if the strength of the torso is not sufficient.