However, I would say that unless you’re a very big man, you’ve probably got a half-way decent chance of getting one.  Why do I say that?  Well, I’m nothing special and I’ve got one.  I haven’t suffered particularly to get one.  It was fun training and I never really got hurt or injured. 

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98OT5UkfHRU

This isn’t the world’s greatest example of a one-arm chin because I don’t do it from a complete dead-hang and there is a fair amount of kicking on the way up!  Over the next couple of weeks, I’m going to be working on those points.  Because, hey, nobody’s perfect…

Anyway, this is my brief guide to getting a one-arm chin.  I am sure there are lots of other ways but this one worked for me.

Start with regular two-arm pull ups and chins

Grow to love regular chin ups and pull ups.  I mean really love them.  You have to create a base for your body to build on and doing them a couple of times a week just isn’t going to cut it.  For more on pull up training, check out my articles:

• How to do more pull ups
• How to do different variants of pull ups and chins

Build a great weighted chin

I think this is the key to developing both the muscular size and the tendon strength that you need to ultimately get a solid on-arm chin.  I suspect that trying from day one to put all of the stress on one arm by doing assisted one-arm chins is going to cause two problems.

• First, you are going to get tendonosis at your elbow.
• Second, you are going to struggle to use enough weight to cause hypertrophy, which means you are stuck with neural development, which is great but not as good as having both.

You can build up your weighted pull up and chin strength using a harness to hold more weight.  Check out my article on building a weighted pull up for more details.

I worked up to doing 75% bodyweight for a 3RM before I started training one-armed but I guess if you are in a hurry then 50% might be OK.  Just for clarity, that means if you weigh 80kg (175lbs) then you should be able to do three chins with 40kg (90lbs) strapped to your behind.

Start doing assisted one-arm chins

You can use a pulley system to take weight off when you start doing one-arm work.  Check out my article on how to do an assisted one-arm chin for more details on what I do and how to set up the pulley system.

I started by taking off 25% of bodyweight, which is 20kg (45lbs) if you weigh 80kg (175lbs).  I found that multiple sets of singles with a minute’s rest twice a week gave me the best results with little elbow pain.

I found that multiple sets of doubles twice a week gave me a little elbow pain but nothing major.  Triples even once per week really beat me up, though.

Keep your weight down

You have to keep your weight down.  When I start adding muscle/fat in the winter, I lose my one-arm chin immediately.  I also get my best increases in pulling strength when I cut weight.  You have to remember that this is a relative strength exercise and trying to bulk up while working for a one-arm chin is silly and will lead to pain and suffering.

Be patient

Ultimately, you just have to be patient and work hard and consistently without overdoing it.  In time, the strength will come to you.

Best of luck…

At the moment

I have some concrete goals to see me through to Easter.  They are:

• a double-bodyweight pull up;
• a 2.5x bodyweight deadlift, probably 187.5kg (415lbs); and
• bench 100kg (220lbs).

Next steps

When I set those goals, I was already thinking about using them as a staging post for bigger and better lifts by the end of 2010.  So my goal list is probably going to start with additional milestones on these lifts, as follows:

• 115% bodyweight chin (somewhere around the world record);
• 3x bodyweight deadlift, probably 225kg (500lbs); and
• 1.5x bodyweight bench, probably 112.5kg

Other goals

There are other lifts that I have been working on in 2009 that I don’t want to let go to waste.

• Pistol: I pushed to get up to a half-bodyweight pistol a while back, lifting 36.25kg (80lbs) at 72.5kg (160lbs) bodyweight.  In 2010, I would like to take this up to 75% bodyweight, probably 56.25kg (124lbs) at 75kg (165lbs) bodyweight.  To support this goal, I have been doing a lot of work capacity lifting recently, around the 25kg – 30kg mark, so I feel confident of pushing up to 40 – 45kg in the near future.  Reaching the 50kg point could be a different ball-game, though.  I dislike doing max-effort lifting with pistols as I find it’s very easy to fall out of the groove and into a deadlift-type movement. 
• One-arm chin: this is actually a very different lift from the weighted two-arm chin or pull up.  I have only recently started training it as my elbows are quite small and easily pick up overuse injuries.  In fact, I may be one of the few people in the world who resisted the temptation to train assisted one-arm chins while training weighted chins at the same time.  Since I got to double-bodyweight before trying a one-arm chin, I have proved to myself that the ability to do a double-bodyweight chin doesn’t equate to one-arm chins.  There is a lot of technique involved.  The movement is also different.  The one-arm chin is more biceps intensive.  Despite that, I’ve quickly got to the point where I can do doubles with 15kg assistance.  I would like to get reps without assistance.
• Dip: I will probably try and match anything I do in the pull up and chin department with an equal lift on my dips.  Having said that, I have no particular love for the lift, it just stops me getting horribly unbalanced.  And I don’t seem to have to work that hard at it compared with other pressing exercises.  I reckon I can improve my dip about twice as fast as my bench, which given how poor my bench is, is quite amazing to me.
• Front Lever: I keep coming back to this skill but something is eluding me.  I am confident that I have the pulling strength and the abdominal strength to get completely horizontal but I can’t seem to get it together.  I would like to spend the necessary time to learn how to hold this position for a decent interval.  The problem is that it interferes with my other lifts terribly.  It drains my upper back for pull ups and chins, destabilises me for bench and weakens my abdominals for lower body lifts.  And recently, I’ve been too tired to fit it in at the end of my workouts.
• Overhead press: I’ve been really ignoring this lift for most of 2009.  When I first started training, my thoracic immobility prevented me from lifting overhead.  I could practically feel my shoulders grinding down to dust.  As I’ve improved my mobility and focussed on abdominal strength, I’ve regained the confidence to lift overhead again.  I have no real concrete numbers to aim for at the moment as I don’t really know what I’m capable of in this lift.  It might be nice to hit bodyweight for reps for the two-hand press but I have no concept yet of whether that is 6 weeks or 6 months worth of work.  I am in most regards an unusual case, owing to my large pull up and dip numbers but small powerlifting numbers.  I actually find one-hand pressing more fulfilling and fun so I may pick a goal on that front instead.  Who knows?

Wild card goals

I haven’t been working on these goals but the thought of them makes me smile, so here they are: 

• Captains of Crush Gripper number 2.5 – this is on my Christmas list, so I will end up playing around with it, whatever else I do in 2010.
• Orang-utan hold: I noticed recently that the world record for the orang-utan hold is 1:45s.  Red rag to a bull.
• Handstand push ups: they look cool.  Enough said.
• One-arm elbow lever: they also look cool and I need something to make me progress the basic elbow lever
• Tuck planche: I keep doing the frog stand when my nephews and nieces and friends’ kids come round and they’re getting bored of it.  I need something else in my repertoire and this could be it.

There really is so much to do and so little time!

So what is this pulley system?

It’s a pulley attached to my chin up bar.  The pulley has a short length of cord running through it.  The cord has a carabiner at either end.  The system looks like this:

Close up, it looks like this:

So you can see that I have used a small piece of gear cord and a carabiner to attach the pulley to the pull up bar.  The gear cord is just tied into a loop using an overhand knot (use a double fisherman’s though, if you have space) and then looped around the bar.  The carabiner connects both ends of the loop and also fits through the pulley.

OK, so show me how it works

First, I put my harness on and attach myself to one end of the system.  Then, I hang weight plates off the other end using a sling and another carabiner.  In the picture below, you can see that I have just used 2 x 10kg plates for the purposes of this demonstration.

When you’re ready, you grab the bar with one hand.  Remember to chalk up first!  I tend to find that I get the best and most stable grip by holding the bar with my palm rather than my fingers.  So I tend to wrap my fingers quite a long way over the bar.  You shold be able to see this from the picture below.

Then you stablise yourself.  You will find that to start with you may have a tendency to swing from side to side.  This will pass with practice.  If you need some extra help to start with, use the other hand to touch the wall.  To avoid gaining to much help from this extra point of contact, try to just use your fingertips to balance with rather than gripping the corner of the wall or the door edge fiercely. 

Finally, you pull yourself up.  I find that the movement is hardest at the bottom and that once I get moving, I can generally count on making the rep.

This is a picture of me doing the assisted one-arm chin with the other hand.  Since I have space to the side when using this arm, I can put one arm out, which seems to help with balance.  I haven’t seen anyone else doing this on one-arm chins, though so it may just be the direction of force that is coming from the pulley in my set up.

If you look at the picture, you will see that the force is not directly upwards but is off to one side.  The pulley is set up this way so that the cord doesn’t try to run straight through my leg.

A final word

So that’s the set up.  I hope you find it useful.

Please bear in mind that with one-arm chin training that you are putting a lot of force through your elbows.  If you’ve got small joints, like me, then you may find that you can only train one-arm chins infrequently.

I find that once per week keeps me a long way from injury and I can probably do twice a week if I really want to.  More than that, though, and my elbows start complaining.

Eagle-eyed readers will have noted the huge number of links each week in my Don’t miss these great links! series to The Tight Tan Slacks of Dezso Ban, an old school weightlifting and strongman blog, featuring articles written (mostly quite a while ago) by some fairly huge names in the history of weightlifting and strongman.

It is probably my favorite site at the moment.

It’s not really a top 10 articles, as it’s quite hard to pull out just 10 of the articles on the site.  It’s more of a reading selection to give an idea of what is on there.  There are articles profiling some of the greats, articles with suggested mass-gaining programmes, articles about dieting down for competition, you name it, it’s there. 

And once you get into the site, it’s hard to stop.  It just sort of gets under your skin.  Next time you’re in the gym you’ll find the strange urge to do multiple sets of low reps of  single exercise before going home to drink a few pints of cream… You’ll probably notice how much my workouts are influenced by some of the programmes detailed…

***

Enough rambling! Get to the articles already!

OK, relax…  Here they are.  Enjoy them.

1. Strength Training without the use of Drugs – Anthony Ditillo: this very emotionally felt post from the author of the site describes a great drug-free lifter, Deszo Ban, and the volume-intensive strength training routine he used to achieve the significant lifts he recorded.  Interestingly for me, his preferred sets and reps routines were 8-12 sets of 3-5 reps.  You can read more about Deszo here.
2. Chins – David Willoughby: I think this is the only article on chinning or pull-ups on the whole site but it beats the hell out of just about any other post on advanced chinning training and history that I’ve ever read.  I mean, you’d probably forgive the giants of the strength world if they quietly ignored the chin, with its strong emphasis on relative over absolute strength.  This article goes quite a long way to show that the idea that your relative strength must go down as your weight goes up isn’t necessarily always true.  Interestingly, I disagree with the main point of the training section, which suggests that if you can chin 2/3 of your bodyweight then you should be able to do a one-arm chin.  I think technique has a lot to do with it.
3. Back Specialisation – Bradley Steiner: this article is a great example of one of the really practical articles on the site.  It begins with a detailed explanation of the importance of back training, goes on to explain the main muscle groups (without getting overly technical) and then moves on to a specific programme, all the while injecting humour and easy-going banter into the writing.
4. Bulk – C S Sloan: this article is a rare instance of someone (other than me, who doesn’t really count in these esteemed circles) recommending 10 sets of 3 reps for gaining strength and muscle mass.
5. Marvin Eder – Gene Mozee: this description of Doug Hepburn’s unofficial weightlifting duel with Marvin Eder will have you on the edge of your seat and some of the strength feats are inspirational.  Marvin’s ability to do 11 one-arm pull-ups at a bodyweight of 198lbs gives me hope that I can keep my relative strength as I increase in size and his squaring off with Hepburn (70lbs heavier than him) makes me think I should man up and do strongman sooner rather than later…
6. Goerner’s Deadlift Variations – Brooks Kubik: another great practical article but at the same time a hugely enjoyable history lesson in how one of the all-time great strongmen achieved their remarkable ability.  Brooks walks us through 6 variations of the one-hand deadlift that Goerner used and 12 variations of the two-hand deadlift.
7. The Hepburn Routine – Bill Starr: it is always fascinating to see the advanced routines of a truly talented lifter.  This routine, used to great effect by Doug Hepburn, is set out very clearly by Bill Starr.  I am sorely tempted to try it and see whether it works for my pull-ups or dips.
8. Louis Cyr – W A Pullum: a fun history of a great historical strongman, including insights into his early life as well as some detail about the lifts he made on stage in various parts of the world.
9. When More Training is Better – Bill Starr: I include this article mainly because I’m particularly interested in increasing my training frequency at the moment.  However, it’s also a great example of one of the articles about training theory on the site.
10. Tom Platz on Squatting: this is a lengthy and detailed interview with one of bodybuilding’s unicorns.  What are you waiting for?

Well, that’s my top 10 selection at the moment.  It’ll probably change before the next time I write about it.  Anyway, I hope you enjoy this site as much as I do.