...open chain and closed chain exercises.

(And no, this nothing to do with chains like you find on ghosts,
tires or Jersey Shore residents)...

If you're not familiar with these terms, they describe the two
basic types of movements that your body can do with regards
to resistance training. They're important to know, so pay
attention! :)

Here are the simplest ways to explain them...

Closed kinetic chain movements are exercises where your
limbs are "anchored"/stationary and your body moves.
Examples of closed-chain movements include bodyweight
exercises such as push-ups, chin-ups, squats, lunges, etc.
Closed-chain movements are generally more effective for
activating more motor units in the body (which means
more muscle fibers get activated and worked).

Open kinetic chain movements are exercises where the
BODY is stationary and the LIMBS move. Examples of these
include many free weight exercises such as bench press,
barbell rows, curls, pushdowns, etc.

What we're going to do in this technique is alternate reps
of two different for the back, targeting the two different types
of movement chains...chin-ups (closed chain) and barbell
rows (open chain).

If you're not strong enough to do chins or get more than
a few reps, you can also use Inverted Rows as well (these
are basically a bodyweight row done with the bar set 2 to
4 feet off the ground...higher is easier).

You can also use just about any other open-chain back
exercise in place of barbell rows, too (e.g. pulldowns,
cable rows, db rows, etc.). In the demo, I'm using barbell
rows in order to hit the horizontal pulling movement
pattern of the back, while the chins focus on the vertical.

To perform this style of training, you can alternate every
single rep, every 2 rep or every 3 reps or more. In the
demo, I'm doing 2 reps of each exercise before switching.
I like this method as it gives you a bit more tension on
the muscles before making the switch, so you're not
constantly switching. I've also done with sets of up 10
reps with lighter movements and it works quite well even
at that range.

Make sure you have both exercises set up so that you can
switch pretty much instantly between the two. I have the
barbell set up so that when drop off the chin-up bar, my
feet are already in position to perform the row.

So first, do your chins.



Then go immediately to barbell rows.



Then straight back to chin-ups.

And just keep going, doing reps back and forth between
the two exercises until you ALMOST hit failure on one of
the exercises (I generally recommend staying short of
failure, in most cases).

I find this alternating open and closed-chain training to
really encourage tremendous blood flow into the target
muscle group. You're basically working the muscle from
two different directions, even though you're using
similar movements.

This is not a massive strength-building technique but I
think it can be very effective for building mass...and it's
also interesting and fun to do, which is I think is a part
of training that is quite often overlooked!

And yep, you can also work it with any other bodypart...
e.g. for chest, you would do push-ups and bench press
(and it's totally fine to target the exact same movement
pattern...you're still hitting the muscles a bit differently),
for biceps, you could do curls and bicep-focused chins
(vertical body position), for triceps you could do dips
and close grip bench press.

If you'd like to see video of this technique in action,
check it out on Youtube (and be sure to subscribe to
my channel while you're there...I post a TON of training
videos just like this on a regular basis).