Band Resisted Chin-Ups

Scott Andrew Birdby Scott Andrew Bird
Filed in : exercises
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Band resisted chin-up
Band resisted chin-up.
I noticed this exercise (well, the pull-up version) featured as the 'Exercise of the week' in the current EliteFTS newsletter. The first couple of reps was enough to ensure I was hooked.
Bands and chin-ups

On the rare occasions bands make their way onto the chin-up stage it's usual to have them helping out in some way. Whether looped around the bar or simply helping to offset your bodyweight, they're usually somewhere near the top of the rack/chinning bar.

Switching things around - affixing them to the rack's base or low pins - feels quite strange at first, as your path is suddenly controlled. I've never learnt to be an acrobat, but I imagine it's a similar feeling stepping into the training harness for the first time.

Where do you put the bands?

After a bit of experimentation I ended up with the combination shown in the picture. This involved two bands (Iron Woody blue bands in this case) which were looped around low pins in the rack. The other end of each band was looped over a weight belt, which held things in place nice and firmly. This provided around 12"-14" of motion; easily adjusted by moving the pins to a higher or lower setting.

Further thoughts

Surprisingly, this is reasonably fast to set up. It's certainly simpler than repeatedly donning a chin/dip belt, as there isn't much tension in the bands in the bottom position.

For the first session I kept things to the recent pattern of heavy triples; I'll adjust this once I see how things feel tomorrow.

A similar setup would probably work just as well for hanging leg and hanging knee raises. They're up next.


Scott Andrew Bird

Scott Andrew Bird is a writer, photographer and a guy who just loves this stuff. He's been at home in front of a computer for more years than he cares to remember (OK, 29) and is now making amends for years of many mistakes noted in the De-constructing computer guy articles (part 2) on T-Nation.

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