Straight elbows or slightly bent at bottom of chins?

[mikeylikey]

In SS:BBT the section on bicep curls states that there is no need to extend the arms completely straight at the bottom as the biceps can't really work in this position and it makes the exercise unnecessarily hard.

Would this logic transfer to Chins as well? Leaving the arms bent at say, 150-160 degrees at the bottom rather than dropping till they are completely straight? Or are there other factors involved which makes it advantageous to get a full elbow extension?

Maybe I should just ask Rip but I have a feeling it's a pretty dumb question.

[MazdaMatt]

I would say it comes down to your preference on how strict you want it. When i do chins I COMPLETELY hang relaxed between reps. My shoulders go up to my ears and my arms are straight. I like to think this is 100% strict.

[LudwigVan]

The Beast Skills guy says it's important not to relax your shoulders at the bottom of a chin. See this page, about 1/3 of the way down:

http://beastskills.com/OneArmPull.htm

I'm not sure it makes sense, but there you go.

[MazdaMatt]

Interesting.

[Ian Kovtunovich]

I kind of waffle on this myself. Sometimes I get near the bottom and I'm feeling good and I fire off the next one before full extension. Sometimes I let myself go all the way to shoulders-up. I find a side effect of not going to full extension is that you are on muscle the whole way, and they seem more tiring to me, even though it's not quite as full a range of motion. Then again, going to full extension does make it feel like a loooong way back up to the bar. Shit, maybe chins are just fucking hard for me and they make me hate no matter how I do 'em.

[Sami]

I do both and change it up for different stimuli.

I discovered one thing I probably shouldn't do again, top-half partials. Ouch, they fucked with my elbows a lot. I did about 10-12 in a row where I didn't extend my elbow past 90 degrees. I did a few more sets of 5-8 reps like that. Did a couple of 3 rep sets with a backpack full of books strapped to either my front or back.

I just wanted to hit the top half with a bit more intensity, but my elbows complained. To be honest, I'm just doing these out of boredom more than anything. I can only do 8 strict dead hangs right now, so don't need anything fancy.