Haven't performed a single pull-up/chin-up in my entire life

[Ryan82]

Fair enough. But my opinion still stands. When I commenced my NLP back in 2011 (or maybe it was earlier?) I did it out of the brown book and I dont remember chins being programmed so early, although of course they were accessory exercises. I just didnt do them. Others mmv, but fair enough - YNDTFP if you hold off on chins.

Rip: were chins programmed into the NLP back in the days of the brown book? I lost my brown book so I cant check.

I do agree with you that getting strong in the 4 main lifts is top priority. Probably not the end of the world if you don't do pullups/chins. Looks like you got strong enough in your experience.

A case has been made in the starting strength doctrine that most people would be better served programming them in at some point during ssnlp. I would also argue that you would be harder to kill if you can do pull-ups.

[VNV]

To the OP,

In my 30s (early/late? I forget) I couldn't do a single clean chin. That changed dramatically as my strength increased and body comp improved with training. I'm going on 50 now, and have never chinned as well as I do now (reps across sets). My frame is different from yours (5' 7", ~ 200 lbs), so ymmv. Still, be patient and committed to the long-term. Give yourself years. A coach would probably get you there sooner/soonest; but you'll do it on your own as well, with time.

[Erik Y]

I think there’s also a question regarding to what extent training chins requires doing chins. I actually took chins out of my programming recently in order to save time (work reasons) after doing them really consistently for months in order to make sure my upper body strength was tracking with my rising body weight. Recently, I had some extra time in the gym and decided to try some chins for old times’ sake. Despite having gained several pounds, I found I was able to do exactly the same sets and reps as before.

I figure there’s some skill-specific adaptation that happens, but if I could go back in time to when I was thirty pounds lighter and couldn’t do one chin-up, I think I’d take them out of my programming until my deadlift got significantly over body weight. I spent a huge amount of time working on them so that I could do them, but really I was just weak.