December 1, 2009 | 
Author You probably already know that I am a huge fan of chin ups, and pike chin ups are my new favorite variation. Aside from being quite demanding on the abdominals and hip flexors, they change your center of gravity, thus changing the muscle recruitment in your back and arms. Pretty neat and pretty tough.
Pictured in the video is Ben, a friend of mine and strongman in the “Scrawny” division. Ben is on a quest to throw 90 miles per hour, and he leaves it all in the weight room every time he trains.
Note that in this video, Ben is using a pull up grip, which is perfectly OK, but this video isn’t actually depicting pike chin ups, rather pike pull ups. I failed even notice this until my college strength coach, Fred Cantor, called me out on it. Sorry for any confusion!
Dan,
Regular chin ups and pull ups are plenty challenging for me right now, but I look forward to trying this variation when I get good at the regular ones.
But maybe I’m making my chin ups more challenging that they should be. When I do my regular chin-ups, I lower myself until my arms are dead-straight. When I fatigue, it almost always occurs just as I start to pull myself up. If I can just get a bit of bicep flex, I can often complete the next rep. I see that Ben isn’t lowering himself down quite so much – his elbows remain fairly flexed at the bottom of his pull-ups. Is his form correct, and mine unnecessarily challenging? Or should I keep trying to do chin-ups with complete arm extension?
Nope – Ben is the one at fault here, but not really; pike chin ups create so much tension on the lats, because the hips are flexed the whole time (and the lats originate at the hips), that it’s extremely difficult to relax the arms enough to achieve full extension. If you can get to the top of a regular chin up, try bringing your legs up then lowering yourself – you’ll quickly understand why he couldn’t keep his arms straight.
Reaching full, relaxed extension on the lats is crucial to the chin up – your lats won’t get nearly as big or strong without it.