Why is my upper back being unresponsive to chin/pull-ups

[Star_Scream]

After taking a long hiatus from lifting and being ill for 6 months I've decided to get back into lifting. To my suprise some muscles haven't atrophied much, if it all, while others have significantly. Pecs, lower back, and stomach stayed in relatively good shape, upper back and legs went to shit. Anywho, I've started up again and I've decided I'm going to get back into lifting like I was before my hiatus. I've been doing chin/pull-ups (primarily the ones where my palms are facing away from me) to hit my upper back rather heavily and have so far, despite using creatine, glutamine, and taking whey protein haven't made any gains in about 3 weeks. 0. Can still do the same amount of unassisted chins/pulls as I could despite improvement in other areas like benching, squating, etc. I also am feeling the muscles in my upper back contract so I'm pretty sure I'm doing the exercises correctly. It occurs to me that even when I could clean the most I ever could in high school, which was 190, I still couldn't do very many chins/pull-ups. Any ideas?

 

[Witchblade]

Pullups don't work your upper back, except your posterior deltoids. Try rows.

 

[Star_Scream]

Pullups don't work your upper back, except your posterior deltoids. Try rows.

Palms facing away from me and pulling up isn't working my upper back? Are you sure? This seems to go against everything I've known about pulls/chins. Also, I can feel the muscles in my upper back contracting, particularly my traps.

 

[NordicNacho]

how many sets, reps you going at what weight. pull ups and chin ups are like a upper body squat it works everything.

 

[kcoleman]

how many sets, reps you going at what weight. pull ups and chin ups are like a upper body squat it works everything.

You do a lot of pullups/chinups, your lats will grow. Need rows to hit your upper back.

 

[NordicNacho]

butterflies do it too. but it hurts some peoples wrist. I do dumbell rows puts a lot less stress on lower back

 

[Star_Scream]

how many sets, reps you going at what weight. pull ups and chin ups are like a upper body squat it works everything.

I can do 5 unassisted chins at this point. After that I just go a machine, the ones that help you a bit, and take of enough weight to where I can do 12 reps. The more I experience failure the more assistance I use. I usually go for 8 sets.

 

[Double D]

Pullups-Back Width

Rows-Back Thickness

 

[goob]

I found doing lat pulldowns helped my chins/ pullups a lot. 4 weeks of 2 sets widegrip, 2 sets closegrip, 2 sets underhand grip once a week did the trick for me.

 

[Plateau_Max]

Rows, close and wide grip are the best for the erector spinae and a little for the traps and lats. Pullups will work your lats but if you can only do 5 then don't be so worried they're not doing you any good.

If I were you I'd concentrate more on doing lat pulldowns for working the lats. It doesn't work your core as much as a pullup since you're sort of "locked into place" so to speak, but you'll be able to put more strength into moving the weight than staying balanced. Once you're able to pull more than your body weight on the lat pulldowns several times, then go back to pullups and see how you do.

 

[CowPimp]

I like using chinup/pullup ladders. If you can do five unassisted, then start with doubles. Basically, throughout your workout, you hit sets of doubles so that by the end, you will have done a significant number of chinups. Do this more than one day a week. Here's a sample program:

A1 Squat
A2 Military Press
A3 Chinup Ladder

B1 RDL
B2 Planks
B3 Chinup Ladder

C1 Farmer's Walk
C2 Pushdowns
C3 Chinup Ladder

So, assuming you do 3 sets of all these exercises, you will have done 18 chinups by the end of the workout. Once you can do doubles throughout, try to move to triples. You may not be able to get 3 chinups on every set throughout the whole workout when you try to move up, but keep working at it until you can. One of my clients went from doing about 8 chinups to failure to hitting 13 chinups over the course of 6-8 weeks or so. He had been resistance training for over 5 years by this time, so these were not newbie gains.

 

[vortrit]

I like using chinup/pullup ladders. If you can do five unassisted, then start with doubles. Basically, throughout your workout, you hit sets of doubles so that by the end, you will have done a significant number of chinups. Do this more than one day a week. Here's a sample program:

A1 Squat
A2 Military Press
A3 Chinup Ladder

B1 RDL
B2 Planks
B3 Chinup Ladder

C1 Farmer's Walk
C2 Pushdowns
C3 Chinup Ladder

So, assuming you do 3 sets of all these exercises, you will have done 18 chinups by the end of the workout. Once you can do doubles throughout, try to move to triples. You may not be able to get 3 chinups on every set throughout the whole workout when you try to move up, but keep working at it until you can. One of my clients went from doing about 8 chinups to failure to hitting 13 chinups over the course of 6-8 weeks or so. He had been resistance training for over 5 years by this time, so these were not newbie gains.

I might have to try that. It seems like it would make a workout more interesting.