Chin-Up vs Pull-Up: What Your Palms Change, Chin-Up Form, and Which to Start With (2026)

2026.9.30

A chin-up is the version of the pull-up where you grip the bar with your palms facing you and pull your body up. The chin-up vs pull-up difference starts right there: the bar and the sequence of the movement are nearly the same as in a pull-up, where the palms face away, but turning your palms toward you also changes where your elbows travel, and people usually take a different hand width too. This post covers what those differences change, how far the research actually goes, which one to start with, and what a camera-based rep counter looks at when it counts, regardless of grip.

What strictly counts as one rep, along with kipping and half reps, is covered separately in the pull-up form post. This one sticks to what changes when the grip changes.

Chin-up vs pull-up: palms, hand width, and elbow path #

A chin-up uses an underhand grip, palms facing you. A pull-up uses an overhand grip, palms facing away. NASM (the National Academy of Sports Medicine) adds hand width in its guide for trainers: a chin-up grip is typically shoulder-width or slightly closer, and a pull-up grip is usually a bit wider than shoulder-width.

The elbows travel a different path too. The ACE (American Council on Exercise) exercise library tells you to drive your elbows straight down toward the floor in both movements. For the chin-up, it has you keep your elbows in front of your body. For the pull-up, it has you keep them lined up with the sides of your trunk, at the 3 and 9 o'clock positions.

In those same ACE guides, the instructions for the starting position, the pull, and the lowering are the same for both movements once you set aside palm direction and elbow position. Both guides tell you to wrap your thumbs around the bar, keep your wrists in a straight line with your forearms, keep your shoulders pulled back and down, and avoid swinging your body as you pull up. Hand width is a difference NASM describes, not ACE.

Chin-up vs pull-up muscles: two studies say different things #

Whether grip changes which muscles you use has been studied with electromyography (EMG). Electrodes on the skin pick up a muscle's electrical signal, and the result is written as a percentage of the signal you produce while holding a maximal effort in place (a maximum voluntary isometric contraction). The two studies below do not reach the same conclusion.

In the Youdas study, the latissimus dorsi (lats) came in at 117 to 130% across the three exercises, the highest range of any muscle measured. What the abstract reports as a statistically significant difference by grip is the pectoralis major and biceps (higher in the chin-up) and the lower trapezius (higher in the pull-up). In the same study, the elbow joint moved through an average of 100.6 degrees in the chin-up and 93.4 degrees in the pull-up.

The only difference between grips that the Dickie abstract reports is that the overhand grip produced higher middle trapezius activity than the neutral grip. No difference between the underhand grip (chin-up) and the overhand grip (pull-up) is reported in the abstract.

Both studies took a one-time EMG measurement. Neither had people train with one grip and then compared what had changed afterward. So these results cannot tell you that "chin-ups develop this muscle more." What they can tell you stops here: in one study, biceps and pectoralis major signals came out higher in the chin-up, and in the other, the grips came out similar.

Chin-up or pull-up: which one to start with #

NASM's guide says chin-ups tend to feel easier for most people, and that the pull-up is the more challenging of the two for most. The same guide says harder doesn't mean better, and that the choice should depend on whether you can do it with good form and which muscles you want to emphasize. The reason NASM gives for chin-ups being easier, help from the biceps, fits the Youdas study above but not the Dickie study. The most direct answer to which one is easier for you is the number you actually get when you try.

So here is the order for choosing.

1. If you can't do a single bodyweight rep, the order of steps matters more than the grip. The steps from hanging to bands are in the post for when you can't do a pull-up, and how to pick a band thickness is in the pull-up bands post.
2. If you can do a few, try each grip and start with the one where you get more reps with good form.
3. Once you pick one, count with that grip for a while. When your count mixes grips, it's hard to tell whether you've improved since last time.

If you count with the app, this choice carries into your prescription. The PULL UP KING level test takes the number of reps you did in one set, going until you couldn't do another, and it does not ask which grip you used. At one or more bodyweight reps, your starting level is the one whose first-set prescription is closest to 75% of that number. At zero, you start at level 1 of the band phase. The first set is set at 75% because you need to hold something back on the first set to fill the remaining four.

The prescription comes from a count that doesn't know your grip. If you take the level test with chin-ups and then do your sessions with pull-ups, the prescription is set to your chin-up count. If your numbers differ between the two grips, do your sessions with the grip you tested with, and the prescription will match your real count from the very first session. If you miss the prescription, it does get adjusted later on: miss it twice at the same level and you repeat that level, and fail to clear a level twice in a row and you drop down a level. Those rules are laid out in the pull-up program post.

Chin-up form: only what changes from the pull-up #

NASM writes that both movements reward the same fundamentals, and ACE's two guides give the same movement instructions (starting position, pull, lowering) apart from the hands and elbows. So this section covers only what changes for the chin-up.

Hands: palms facing you #

Grip the bar with your palms facing you. Going by NASM's guide, your hands usually sit about shoulder-width apart or slightly closer.

Elbows: in front of your body, driving toward the floor #

As you pull, drive your elbows straight down toward the floor while keeping them in front of your body. Bringing the elbows to the sides of your trunk, at 3 and 9 o'clock, is the position ACE gives for the pull-up. How to stop your body from swinging is covered in the pull-up form post.

The app's camera watches your chin and the judging line, not your grip #

PULL UP KING has no setting to choose between chin-ups and pull-ups, and nothing in its counting code reads which way your palms face. What the app looks at is the position of your face (nose and ears), shoulders, elbows, and wrists, which is why it asks you to keep all of them in the frame. Each wrist is picked up as a single point, and a point on its own can't tell which way the palm is facing.

The wrists are used to draw lines. When a set starts, the average position of both wrists gripping the bar becomes the bar on screen, and the line joining the points a quarter of the way from each elbow toward its wrist becomes the judging line. In the app's own words, it is a dashed line just below the bar, around elbow height. Your chin is estimated as a point a set distance below your nose. When your ears are visible, that distance is 0.6 times the distance between your nose and ear.

One rep is one round trip: your chin rises above the judging line, then comes back down a set distance below it. Both the top and the bottom are confirmed over two consecutive frames, and coming back down without ever reaching the top does not count. The rule is the same with an underhand or an overhand grip, with a band or without one. On the other hand, the app does not judge whether you used momentum or whether your arms fully straightened at the bottom. And because the judging line sits below the bar, a rep where your chin stops a little short of the bar still counts once it crosses the line.

The line is below the bar on purpose. The app's explanation is that camera angle and joint detection carry some error, so judging exactly at the bar would throw away reps that were done properly. The judging line is set again at the start of every set from that set's wrist and elbow positions, so if you switch grips from one set to the next, there's nothing to change in the app. Put your phone on a stand in portrait, two or three steps back from the bar, so everything from your face to your wrists fits in one frame.

FAQ #

Do chin-ups count as pull-ups? #

It depends on the standard you count by. A standard that specifies an overhand grip, like the U.S. Naval Academy's Candidate Fitness Assessment, does not count chin-ups. PULL UP KING doesn't tell the grips apart and counts every rep where your chin crosses the judging line the same way. When you keep your own record, stick to one grip so you can compare against your last count.

Are chin-ups easier than pull-ups? #

NASM writes that chin-ups tend to feel easier for most people. The EMG research, though, splits between a result where muscle signals differed by grip (Youdas et al.) and one where they were similar (Dickie et al.). The most direct way to find out which is easier for you is to count how many you get with each grip.

My elbows or wrists hurt when I do chin-ups #

This post can't tell you the cause. If it hurts, stop there for the day. NASM also says that if shoulder or elbow pain, numbness, or tingling persists, you should not train through it and should see a physician or physical therapist instead.