Most bodybuilders will agree on the fact that wide grip chin ups are highly effective for building back thickness and width like no other movement. However, a large percentage of these bodybuilders will also have a laundry list of excuses why this exercise isn’t for them. Maybe they can’t “feel” the movement how they’d like. Maybe they believe they’re too heavy. Maybe they just don’t like to feel weak and exposed as they struggle with four reps while 155-pound runners in the gym are able to knock out triple the number of repetitions (or more!) in a single set. Whatever the case, bodybuilders wary of this movement will propagate a number of fallacies to help justify their avoidance of this exercise. It’s time to dispel these myths!

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If you want to place well in bodybuilding shows at any level, you’re going to need to develop an impressive back. To do so, you’ll need to stimulate the thousands upon thousands of muscle fibers in the back using a variety of approaches to what is essentially a single movement, the lat bar pulldown. The stance and hand positioning we employ can change our results. Let’s learn more.

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The back is a tricky muscle group. With body parts such as chest, shoulders, or thighs, a wide variety of repetition ranges is essential for stimulating growth throughout all the muscle fibers. While it is true that the back does contain its fair share of slow and fast-twitch muscle fibers which are indeed stimulated through different repetition ranges, much of the actual definition seen in the back, such as the desired “Christmas Tree” effect in the lower back, is attributed to low body fat and water deprivation. When it comes to training the back for mass as well as shape, heavy compound movements are the way to go.

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When one talks of great backs in the history of bodybuilding, Lee Haney and Victor Martinez come to mind as two of the best. Both men were blessed with wonderful genetics and trained very hard, but they trained very intelligently as well. They both attested to the importance of using chin-ups, or wide-grip pull-ups, in their back routine. They knew this movement worked like none other, and the results that they saw were undeniable, and in the case of Lee Haney, still discussed decades later.

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