Why Chin Ups are better than Curls

[Emomilol]

First of all, I enjoyed all of your books and if the introduction to SS:BBT were wallpaper, I'd wallpaper my room with it.

I will read PP again, but if "my" explanation for this example is correct, I think I understand some of what you mean by working the whole body as a system:

Curls are inferior to chin ups in increasing the size of the biceps muscles, not necessarily because you lift more weight doing chin ups, but (given that the biceps exert the same amount of force in the two different exercises) the exercise that utilises the most muscles will be better at disrupting homeostasis, and will therefore be better at stimulating growth in general.
That is to say: curls utilise "only" the biceps muscles, which does not stress the body enough to disrupt homeostasis and therefore spur growth even if the biceps muscles themselves are under the same amount of stress in both exercises.

Does this -- if it is correct, or even if it isn't --- mean that doing squats (high bar, with no arm involvement) will, to some extent, make your biceps stronger/bigger?

Thank you for your time.

[Mark Rippetoe]

I have never said that curls are inferior to chins for increasing bicep size. That would be wrong, and we'd be proceeding from a false assumption.

[celconicuzn]

Emo,

Stating that chins are more useful for bicep growth than curls is like saying the highway is more useful to get somewhere than taking country roads to the same destination. This is highly individual and circumstantial comparison.

High-volume, high-rep curls will give the biceps quite a lot of sarcoplasmic hypertrophy, and the majority of people training are going to have a hard time fitting high-volume, high-rep chins into a program with lots of squats, pushes and pulls. Without adequate recovery/genetics/Vitamin S, most people would probably not fair so well as to use chin-ups for maximum biceps potential.

Ideally you should use them both in conjunction with one another. Focus on getting your biceps strong with medium rep sets of chins and use high-rep, high-volume curls to give them the epic peaks and swollen hollister sleeves.

[Albert1]

I have been training following Rip's advice for about 4 months (just started intemediate level) One day I decided to experiment and try exercises I have done in a while (back when I used to do the typical bb split) just to see if there was any carry over from my strength gains on the big lifts. I did barbell rows and what used to be challenging before felt like a light warm up. I did leg presses and did what used to be my top weight without much effort. I finished by doing curls and something similar happened. I was able to keep my body tight effortlesly and curl the bar with great ease. My body felt like a bench. No arching my back, no swinging, none of the problems I used to have. I could concentrate on curling and then it all made sense. I figure, it makes a great deal of sense to get as strong as possible, since the stronger I get, the easier an exercise like barbell curls would get and the most I would get from it. So why bother with them now?

[JLascek]

More importantly, if chins are done in a program (novice or intermediate, but for most people novice), then the arms will increase in size as body weight increases.

[celconicuzn]

More importantly, if chins are done in a program (novice or intermediate, but for most people novice), then the arms will increase in size as body weight increases.

Unfortunately this is extremely hard to convince a novice to believe after having to also convince them that their abs will return eventually, if they care by that time..

[zzt]

There is an article out there somewhere, which examines a study regarding neuromuscular activation of various arm exercises. Chins toped the list from memory. Also, I read some years ago that exercises which involve moving the body through 3 dimensional space (i.e. Squats, Chins, Dips etc) induce a much higher level of neuromuscular activation than exercises where just the limbs are moving and the body is fixed in position.

[JLascek]

Unfortunately this is extremely hard to convince a novice to believe after having to also convince them that their abs will return eventually, if they care by that time..

I've never tried to convince anyone that their abs will return.

[Emomilol]

Just to be clear: I'm not doing, or interested in doing, curls and could not care less for the size or look of my biceps (or "pecs" or "abs", for that matter).

I have never said that curls are inferior to chins for increasing bicep size. That would be wrong, and we'd be proceeding from a false assumption.

I apologize if I somehow put words in your mouth. "Chins are better than curls for increasing biceps size" is the conclusion (I think) from my (hopefully, but you seem to diasgree) correct argument. It might very well be that I misunderstand quite a few things and that my whole argument is nonsensical.

So why bother with them now?

I wont. This is only hypothetical.

Stating that chins are more useful for bicep growth than curls is like saying the highway is more useful to get somewhere than taking country roads to the same destination. This is highly individual and circumstantial comparison

I'll construct a specific case, then: we have Joe who has been doing SS for some time. The novice effect has worn off. Someone Evil has tricked Joe into reading bb.com, and now he wants to add some epic peaks to the chick-magnets. If he were to do one exercise only, would he do better choosing chins or curls?

My answer is this: both chins and curls work the biceps. The difference being that curls work the biceps only, while chins also work a few other muscles. Given that the bicep is a small muscle and that Joe is not doing any other work no matter how much he curls, he will not disrupt homeostasis (or disrupt it only very little) and therefore not spur growth/strength increase. The chins may or may not work the biceps muscles as hard, but because chins also work many othe muscles it will be better at disrupting homeostasis and therefore spur growth/strength increase. (This, more or less, is my understanding of "Working the whole body as a unit." "Holistic" word-use is something I'm immediately sceptical of, as it is something usually found in eastern psuedoscientific exercise philosophies, but I expect this -- like everything else from Rip & Kilgore -- is solidly founded in reason and experience and I'd like to understand it.)

I assume this might change if Joe were doing e.g. SS, because we would not need to take into account the need for the exercise to disrupt homeostasis, as this is done excellently by the program. The best exercise here would be the one putting the most weight on the biceps, I think.

Again, I hope both the question and the answer is legitimate and that I'm not wasting anyone's time.

[Mark Rippetoe]

My answer is this: both chins and curls work the biceps. The difference being that curls work the biceps only, while chins also work a few other muscles. Given that the bicep is a small muscle and that Joe is not doing any other work no matter how much he curls, he will not disrupt homeostasis (or disrupt it only very little) and therefore not spur growth/strength increase. The chins may or may not work the biceps muscles as hard, but because chins also work many othe muscles it will be better at disrupting homeostasis and therefore spur growth/strength increase.

To begin with, let's not construct weird scenarios to deal with -- we're not going to be on a deserted island with our CD player and only 3 CDs, so we don't have to choose which ones to take. We get to do both exercises if we need to, so we will, especially if we're intermediate trainees like you suggest. The disruption of homeostasis already occurs with successful training, which we're still doing. So if you want big arms and you've trained through the novice phase when they're growing accidentally anyway, you curl the barbell because it lets you stress the biceps more specifically. You do this precisely because it doesn't spread the work around a bunch of other muscles. Let's not be complicated and philosophical when we're just training arms.