Building Your Own Gym - The Essentials: Car/RV Living Edition

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Welcome to Part 4 of the "Building Your Own Gym" Series. This series will focus on the top 5 items I believe are best for creating your own "gym" based on your individual situation. As the title indicates, part 4 in this series is focused on best equipping the fitness needs of those living their best lives on the road, in their own cars or RVs (or any other vehicular device).  1.  Kettlebells: Incredibly versatile, a kettlebell is an absolute game-changer for your fitness if you love to travel and are living out of your RV or car. Living in your car/RV necessitates that you take maximal advantage of your space.  Kettlebells take up very little space and are extremely fun for training.  Buying one kettlebell will absolutely suffice for your nomad training. A single kettlebell will allow you to do any unilateral pressing and rowing movements for building your upper body, while also allowing for kettlebell swings, goblet squats, cleans, and snatches for training your l...
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Chinups Versus Pullups: Which One Is Better For You

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An age-old question in the fitness world. "The chinup or the pullup: Which will help me build more muscle?" You can search the internet and see tens of hundreds of articles written on the subject. The answer is it depends on your goals. 

Both exercises are fantastic and both focus on training muscles within the anterior and posterior muscles of the upper body. Due to their differing grip positions, however, each exercise emphasizes those muscles in different proportions.


THE CHINUP:

When performing the chinup, an individual grips the bar with his or her palms facing him or herself (think of performing a bicep curl with a barbell. This grip position). This is called a supinated grip. This supinated grip allows for greater activation of the anterior upper body muscles versus the pullup's pronated grip. The biceps, chest, abdominals, and obliques will all be emphasized more in the chinup versus the pullup. 


THE PULLUP: 

When performing the pullup, an individual grips the bar with his or her palms facing away from himself or herself (think of when you were little and climbed across the monkey bars on the playground). This is called a pronated grip. This pronated grip allows for greater activation of the posterior upper body muscles versus the chinup's supinated grip. The shoulders, lower traps, rhomboids, infraspinatus muscles, and latissimus dorsi (lats) muscles will all be emphasized more in the pullup versus the chinup. 


KEYNOTE:

Many people find the chinup to be an easier exercise to perform versus the pullup. The main culprit for this is that many people have poor flexibility in their shoulders which leads to poor lat and scapula muscle activation. Because the pullup - through its pronated grip - relies more heavily on the lats and scapula (and less on the biceps) to pull an individual's chin over the bar, tight, hunched over shoulders (thank you desk, computer job) will be a greater detriment to the pullup versus the chinup. Furthermore, tight, tense anterior upper body muscles lead to lengthened, weak posterior upper body muscles - a further detriment to both the pullup and chinup, but more pronounced in the pullup exercise.


KEY TAKEAWAYS:

1. The Chinups and Pullups both work the same muscles, just in different proportions of emphasis2.

2.The Chinup places greater emphasis on working the anterior upper body muscles - the upper chest,      biceps, obliques, and abdominals

3. The Pullup places greater emphasis on working the posterior upper body muscles - the shoulders, lats, scapula, infraspinatus, rhomboids, and lower/mid traps

4. Inflexible shoulders lead to weaker posterior upper body muscles. Work on better mobilizing your shoulders 

5. The chinup's supinated grip places less stress on the shoulders versus the pullup's pronated grip. If you have poor shoulder mobility, work on your fixing your mobility, and know that the chinup will feel better on your shoulders versus the pullup

6. Both chinups and pullups are fantastic exercises. Barring injury, why exclude either? The best option is to include them both into your workout regime and reap the benefits of both!



Looking to purchase a bar to start working on your pullups and chinups at home? Look no further than Rogue Fitness. Rogue offers a wide array of pullup/chinup bar options. They offer ceiling-mounted bars, wall-mounted bars, bar attachments for power racks, as well as the recent release of their "MIL Pullup Station", a stand-alone pullup/chinup station. Invest in yourself by investing in the best with Rogue Fitness. They truly set the standard.





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