Pull-Up Grip: Overhand, Underhand, Neutral, Hand Width, and Thumb Position (2026)

2026.10.2

Your pull-up grip is simply how you hold the bar, and this post breaks it into three parts: which way your palms face, how far apart your hands are, and where your thumbs go. For each one, it covers what the exercise guides say, how far the research has actually compared them, and then what to check when your hands give out first.

How an underhand grip (the chin-up) differs from an overhand grip (the pull-up) is covered in the chin-up vs pull-up post, and what counts as one full rep is in the pull-up form post. This one sticks to how your hands meet the bar.

The three parts of a pull-up grip: direction, width, thumb #

The ACE (American Council on Exercise) exercise library guides for the pull-up and the chin-up list three things about your hands in the starting position: which way your palms face (away from you for the pull-up, toward you for the chin-up), a full grip with your thumbs wrapped around the handles, and wrists kept in a straight line with your forearms. For hand width, a guide for trainers from NASM (the National Academy of Sports Medicine) gives the usual range.

You can change each of the three independently. The same overhand grip can be narrow or wide, and whichever way your palms face, your thumbs can either wrap around the bar or rest on top of it. The width and thumb studies below work the same way, changing only the width or only the thumb position.

Your rep count can also change with your grip. NASM writes that chin-ups tend to feel easier for most people. So if you want to compare against last time, keep all three the same when you count.

Pull-up grip types: overhand, underhand, and neutral #

An overhand grip means your palms face away from you, and done that way, the movement is called a pull-up. An underhand grip means your palms face you, and done that way, it's a chin-up.

A neutral grip means your two palms face each other. For exercises where you hold dumbbells beside your thighs, ACE tells you to hold them with a "closed, neutral grip (thumbs around the handles and palms facing your body)." With the dumbbells at your sides and your palms facing your body, your two palms face each other.

Hang both hands side by side on a straight bar at shoulder width, and your palms can only face forward or back. When you wrap your hand around a bar, your palm ends up facing perpendicular to it. That's why you can't do a neutral grip with both hands side by side on a straight bar. If you're still choosing equipment for home, also check whether it has parallel handles that run at a right angle to the bar. How the options compare is covered in the power tower vs doorway pull-up bar post.

One study that compared all three directions is Dickie et al. (2017). Nineteen strength-trained men did underhand, overhand, and neutral-grip pull-ups plus a rope pull-up, and electromyography (EMG) was recorded from eight muscles of the shoulder, arm, and forearm. The abstract concludes that muscle activity over a full rep was similar despite the different hand orientations, and the only difference between grips it reports is that the overhand grip produced a higher middle trapezius signal than the neutral grip. Another study comparing chin-ups and pull-ups (Youdas et al., 2010) came out differently, and its results are summarized in a table in the chin-up vs pull-up post.

EMG records the muscle signal while the movement is being done, at a single point in time. This wasn't a study that had people train with one grip and then compared how their bodies changed, so these results can't tell you that one grip changes your body in a particular way.

Pull-up grip width: settle it near shoulder width #

NASM's guide says a pull-up grip is usually a bit wider than shoulder width, and a chin-up grip is typically shoulder width or slightly closer.

The wider you spread your hands beyond shoulder width, the more your arms slant, so in a straight-arm hang your shoulders sit closer to the bar. If the point you need to reach at the top stays the same, your body travels that much less distance.

Both studies below set hand width relative to shoulder width (the distance between the tips of your two shoulders). One study that changed only the width in pull-ups is Ortega-Rodríguez et al. (2021). Fourteen trained men did overhand pull-ups, once at shoulder width and once at a width each of them chose freely. The freely chosen width was 20.04% wider on average, yet maximum strength measured with added weight, reps to failure, and the relationship between power, force, and velocity all came out similar between the two conditions.

For muscle signals by width, there's a study that used the lat pulldown (pulling an overhead bar down while seated) instead of the pull-up. Andersen et al. (2014) open by noting that "it is a general belief that a wider grip activates the latissimus dorsi more than a narrow one, but without any broad scientific support." Fifteen men then did lat pulldowns with an overhand grip at 1, 1.5, and 2 times shoulder width. Across the whole movement, EMG of the lats, trapezius, and infraspinatus was similar at all three widths. Looking only at the eccentric phase, as the weight is lowered back down, the 2x width produced higher lat and infraspinatus signals than the 1x width. The heaviest weight they could lift six times was lower at 2x width (77.3 kg) than at 1x (80.3 kg) or 1.5x (80.0 kg).

To sum up: in the pull-up study, going about 20% wider left the rep count about the same, and in the lat pulldown study, a wider grip left muscle activity across the whole movement about the same. None of the studies reviewed for this post found that wider is better. Choose a hand width where you can lower all the way to straight arms and pull back up through the same range every rep. Then pick one reference point on the bar, like a seam or a marking, and put your hands in that spot every time.

Pull-up grip thumb: wrapped around or resting on top #

ACE's pull-up and chin-up guides tell you to grip with your thumbs wrapped around the handles. The "closed" in the ACE wording above is exactly this: a grip where the thumb wraps around. The opposite, resting your thumb on top of the bar instead of wrapping it underneath, is called an open grip. Thumb under the bar is closed, thumb over the bar is open.

Di Bartolo et al. (2023) compared rep counts between the two. Ninety-five physically active men who could do at least five pull-ups did pull-ups to exhaustion twice, one week apart, using each grip once in random order. The bar was 33 mm in diameter, and they gripped overhand with their hands slightly wider than their shoulders. The average was 14.2 reps with the open grip and 13.9 with the closed grip, with no statistically significant difference.

Based on the rep counts, the authors write that thumb position can be chosen by preference and for technique, and that if you're preparing for a test that specifies a grip, you should practice with that grip. They also list the limits. Only physically active men took part, so the results can't be carried straight over to women or inactive people, and since EMG wasn't measured, there's no way to know whether the muscles were used differently between the two grips.

So whether you wrap your thumb around as the ACE guides say or rest it on top of the bar, pick one and grip the same way every set. The setup section of the pull-up form post gives the same rule.

What to check when your grip gives out first #

While your feet are off the floor, with no band or foot support helping, your two hands are holding your entire body weight, because they're the only thing supporting you. So if your hands can't hold on, the set ends right there, even with strength left in your back and arms. When that happens, check three things.

Try the other thumb position. In the study above, the average counts for the two grips were similar. But a similar average doesn't mean the two grips are identical for any one person, so find out which suits your hands by switching and trying it yourself.

Look at how thick the bar is. This isn't a pull-up study, but Ratamess et al. (2007) measured the one-rep max (1RM) of 11 resistance-trained men with a standard Olympic bar and with bars 2 inches (5.08 cm) and 3 inches (7.62 cm) thick. On the thicker bars, the deadlift dropped by about 28.3% and 55.0%, and the bent-over row by about 8.9% and 37.3%, while the bench press and shoulder press showed no difference. How much the numbers dropped was correlated with hand size and maximal grip strength, and the authors suggested this was likely because pulling exercises rely more on maximal grip strength. These results can't tell you how much bar thickness changes your pull-up count. But if your hands give out first and the bar is unusually thick, or has been thickened by wrapping something around it, that's a place to look.

Do dead hangs on their own. NASM lists scapular pull-ups and dead hangs among the steps for building toward your first rep, "to build the positions and grip the movement demands." Where dead hangs fit alongside band-assisted reps and negatives on the way to your first rep is covered in the post for when you can't do a pull-up.

If your hands or wrists hurt, stop there for the day.

Change your pull-up grip, and the app still counts the same way #

PULL UP KING has no setting for choosing a grip, and nothing in its counting code reads which way your palms face or where your thumbs are. Each wrist is picked up as a single point on the screen. At the start of every set, the app draws a new judging line (a dashed line just below the bar, around elbow height) from that set's wrist and elbow positions, and it counts one rep when your chin rises above that line and then comes back down a set distance below it. It does not judge whether you used momentum or whether your arms fully straightened at the bottom. So if you change your width or direction, there's nothing to change in the app. How the line is drawn is explained in detail in the chin-up vs pull-up post.

Put your phone on a stand in portrait, two or three steps back from the bar, so your face, shoulders, elbows, and wrists are all in the frame. The wider your grip, the farther apart your wrists spread toward the sides of the frame, so with a wide grip, check first that your wrists are in the shot.

The app also has a dead hang for rest days. If you finished a session yesterday, a rest-day card appears on Home today, and you start the dead hang from there. The target is 20 seconds at levels 1 to 12, 30 seconds at levels 13 to 24, 40 seconds at levels 25 to 44, and 45 seconds from level 45 on, for 3 sets. The camera doesn't cut the set off when you pass the target. It keeps timing your hang until you let go. These hangs don't count toward your level, session count, or streak.

FAQ #

Is a wider pull-up grip better? #

None of the studies reviewed for this post found that. A study of overhand pull-ups comparing shoulder width with a freely chosen width that averaged about 20% wider (Ortega-Rodríguez et al., 2021) found similar rep counts and maximum strength, and a lat pulldown study that went out to twice shoulder width (Andersen et al., 2014) found similar muscle activity across the whole movement. The typical pull-up width NASM describes is just a bit wider than shoulder width.

Do I have to wrap my thumb around the bar? #

ACE's exercise guides say to wrap your thumbs around. But in a study of 95 men (Di Bartolo et al., 2023), there was no significant difference in rep count between the closed grip with the thumb wrapped around (13.9 reps on average) and the open grip with the thumb on top of the bar (14.2 on average). Whichever you choose, pick one and keep it the same, and if your hands feel like they give out first when you hang, try switching to the other.

Can I switch between overhand and underhand grips from set to set? #

PULL UP KING sets the judging line fresh every set, so it counts by the same rule even if you switch grips. But your count can differ by grip, and with a count that mixes grips, it's hard to tell whether you've improved since last time. If you want to compare counts, settle on one grip. How to decide which one to start with is covered in the chin-up vs pull-up post.