010 One arm chin ups

Hello and welcome to the High Performance Physiology Podcast. I'm Chris Beardsley, I'm here with my co-host Rob Mauseri and we're going to change things up today and talk about one-on chin-ups. So essentially this is not kind of going to be the same format as the previous episodes and probably the future episodes where I start talking about some physiology and biomechanics and then we start talking about the strength training programs you know that fit with that framework. We're actually just going to talk about both of our experiences in training for one-on-chins and in Rob's case also training other people to be able to do one-on-chins because that isn't something that I've my experience of. As I was just talking before the podcast night, I've done them myself. I know other people have done them and I know what their programs are like, but I've never actually trained somebody else to do one. So it's been really really interesting to hear what Rob has to say on that. So let's start out Rob. You tell us your experience because I've kind of done this talk a little day on previous podcasts before, but you tell people how you got yours for the first time and what you did to get to that point. Yes, so mine is probably a little different than most people's because I honestly didn't wind up doing anything super specific and to be clear I actually can't currently do one and haven't done them in quite a while, but when I was a gymnast we did just an insane amount of point work, point exercises, all the kind of ring work you do, all that stuff, all the point muscles, lats, everything very involved. You do tons of chin-up work, tons of pull-up work, and as a gymnast of course you're not doing tons of leg hypertrophy anything like that. So you're generally a little bit smaller legs, generally very lean, doing tons of point all day, every day, pretty much every session, and so just kind of inevitably I wound up being able to do them at a certain point when I was much younger and I kept the skill for a while and then didn't really train it for quite a bit. Interesting now and getting into it again since I'm a little older, a little bit heavier than that. So that was kind of for me and it was always a cool thing, a cool skill to do, and like you said since then I've trained point of view people to do it, you know everyone from like athletes wanting to do one, two, now if I guys just random Washington DC Warriors start off with maybe a few body weight chins and work all the way to one arm chin-up. So we can get out, we can get into that in a minute but it does also get about your experience with them. Yeah, now that's really really interesting to hear that you came to your first one arm chin in that unorthodox way because I also came to mind in an unorthodox way but mind was deliberate. So I actually wanted to test a hypothesis that I had which was would it be possible to do a one arm chin while doing absolutely zero specific training for the one arm chin and literally just do weighted pull ups. So I basically went on a mission to get to a body weight plus body weight pull up. So I was kind of, I'm not a big guy anyway but I was walking around at about 75 kilos. I kind of lost a little weight or down to about 72 and a half and I got my weighted chin to 75 kilos hanging off a climbing harness. So essentially I got slightly more than a body weight load hanging from my waist and I was doing chins comfortably with my kind of chin all the way over the bar with that load and I was nowhere close to one arm chin. Now so I basically did that entire process just to satisfy that curiosity that I had is like would it literally just allow me to do that straight away. And that was kind of a fairly long journey to get that point to me about kind of 18 months to years from you know kind of what I would call some normal kind of weight to pull up strength. A lot of people tend to have maybe 23 kilos hanging off the waist it took me probably about 18 months to get to that kind of ridiculously silly weight. So I think one of the things people don't realize is that you can't just kind of you know expect the same duration of time to get from sort of a body weight chin to a body weight plus 20/30 kilos. You know you've kind of got to expect this to be a lot slower when you get to that sort of stage. It's a real grind to get from you know sort of closing on half body weight to a whole body weight addition of load on the harness. So that was kind of my starting point. So that was my kind of like first half of my training and I quickly realized that when I started to try and do one arm chin that the rotation was the problem. I don't know if you ever see it. Yeah you'll get into this when you tell me about how you've been training other people. But basically my quick realization was that I needed to develop muscles involved in stopping myself from just spinning into the bar. Every time I pulled I would just rotate and I would lose to it. I would lose the ability to pull in the direction I want to pull it. And so basically with that I just did a little bit of practice with assistance. So I set up a climbing pulley. Almost all of the equipment I was using was basically just climbing as equipment that I repurposed in my garage gym for the kind of goal of getting some particular strength exercise that I wanted to do. So I repurposed the climbing pulley and put a small kind of cord through it and I put ten kilos on the other end of that start with and I basically used that to take load off me. So I took a bit of weight off my weight by touching myself to that pulley and essentially I was able to do one arm chin with that while focusing on the anterior rotation aspect. And I did that and just gradually took the weight off and reduced the intensity and eventually got down. So I was doing a one arm chin. Incidentally the people that I know who have done one arm chin has been climbers and they almost all I think if not all of them have done it with the simple use of a diesel chain. So essentially that's a climbing kind of another piece of climbing equipment that you kind of it's like a long sort of sling that has got loops in it. And the sense to what you can do is you can put your sort of hand or fingers in the diesel chain at different heights. So if you start out with it right to the very top it's almost like doing a pull up with both hands at the same time. You've got one hand very, very slightly below the other. And gradually you just move your hand down the diesel chain to lower and lower points until it gets right down the bottom and of course when it gets right down the bottom you can't put any kind of additional support to you to be able to do the one arm chin. You're essentially doing a one arm chin at that point. And most people I know if not all of the people I know who have all been climbers they've all kind of done their one arm chin using that piece of equipment much easier than the way I went about it. But as I was doing through specific purpose I wanted to see whether I could you know kind of whether it was possible to literally just kind of get the strength aspect or they're in that in that bilateral exercise, whether it transfer perfect to the unilateral and it didn't. So I said it's probably curiosity. And then as I fixed it by just fixing the rotational issue using a little bit of assistance for the exercise that I was training for. So nothing more complicated than that. So how does that sit with your your kind of programs that you're writing for the people in there? Yeah, I mean, I've definitely done a similar thing to that. In terms of like the base strength level, I've actually had people get to a point where they've had slightly less than body weight on the bar and then they can already do one. But it's dependent on the person because I've had quite a few others who are maybe you know, like 80, 85, 90% of body weight and like can do it or just or in the opposite end of like absolutely nowhere, nowhere close. The usual kind of target I hit for like a bilateral chin for start working on some one homework is like around 85% of body weight added to the belt. And then from there, if someone wants to do it, I'll get into like a more specific thing. Like you said, just getting like really high chin up strength like that takes a super, super long time. I think most people just are not willing to grind it out. Nothing with chin up work. I notice that you will tend to go like way too close to failure, way too often. And especially on pops and chin ups, I notice they start to stall really, really quickly if you don't leave a little bit reserved. Okay. Okay. I mean, you've dropped three knowledge bombs there in the space of 30 seconds. So let's just walk through those today because they res it. They all of those resonate with my experience. So first, we'll just kind of go through them in the order that I think they're at least, we'll start with the least important. Interestingly, you also have identified that the chin up strength needs to be relatively high. And that's really interesting because when I was first looking at this problem, like 12, 13, 14, 15 years ago, I said, I can't remember. Hold on. It's actually more than 18 years ago. Wow. Okay. So I'm really old. So people were talking about two thirds body weight as the point where they would start doing, you know, kind of specific one on chin work. So they would be like, get two thirds body weight on a harness and you can start doing some one on chin, kind of specific practice and you probably will get your skill relatively now after a few months. And I was like, that is my experience tour, but as I say, my route was different. Interestingly, you've kind of noticed something similar there where you're pushing 80 to high percent before you start transitioning into skill specific work. So I think again, you've kind of come down hollow on the side of, you know, pulling strength being really, really critical to this skill. Yeah. I don't think two thirds in my experience anyways, not high enough. I, I mean, you know, I've never seen anyone come close with two thirds on the on the chain or at a belt. Yeah, exactly. You know, if you have been trying when I'm trying to do that point for like, for fun, I don't think they move anywhere. I agree with you. I agree with you. So that's really interesting that that kind of old sort of idea surrounding that, that strength level required for the skill. I think there's potentially a little bit understating how much putting strength you need to obtain. The second thing you mentioned, again, resonating with what I said earlier was this idea that it is just a massive, massive long grind. And this is the thing that I get when people ask me questions about how to do a one on chain. I'm like, just put the time in. And they're like, no, no, no, no, what's the secret? I might know that is the secret. It's like just dedicate two years of your life to just very, very slowly try to get a little bit stronger each week. You know, kind of and just nudge your way very much closer to the goal you're trying to get to. Except that it isn't going to be as fast going from 20 kilos. Oh, sorry, 30, 30, 30 to 40 kilos on the harness to 78 kilos on my harness. They're just totally different animals. You know, it's like it's a very slow process. I'm just going to give it time. And then the third thing you said is this idea that you can't sort of be training to failure and smashing a ton of volume all the time. And that was, I think, again, so I keep telling people it's like just find two or three sessions a week where you're going to do, you know, your weight to pull up training and just do a couple, you know, or three sets of low reps, you know, just do, you know, two or three sets of, you know, two or three. And don't train to failure. Give yourself a rep and reserve on those. So the clean crisp reps. I mean, that was the thing I was always focusing on. It was like, if I started to feel like I was kind of, you know, sort of pulling the bar towards me and just desperately trying to get my chin out of the bar. It was like, no, no, no, no, no. That is not what I'm aiming for with these sessions. It's like, I want to go in, bang out some really, I mean, they're grinders, they're slow, but they're not like, you know, like, yeah, don't get totally stuck. Yeah, you don't get totally stuck. I mean, that's the thing is, it's like, maybe it's half a rep and reserve, maybe it's a rep and reserve, but that's the territory that I was always aiming for. I was never happy, really, if I felt like I was fighting to clean complete repetition. And then it would just be like, the climbers have a say. It's like, let power come to you. So I just let the strength manifest itself. You go there, you do reps and you suddenly notice that, yeah, you can do that extra rep, then you take it off. It's like, fantastic. That's when you stand there. And you just do that week on week and week and week and week. And it just kind of goes, that was my experience. Anyway, it sounds like that's really terrible. Yeah. I think people want a shortcut. The only shortcut would be just stop training your legs and diet and get the hell out of yourself. And no one's going to want to do that. But it's so slow because always like, you also usually, if you're training restrained, then a little bit of hypertrophy, like your body weight is out there pretty stable. We're going up a little bit as the chin-ups going up. You're generally not pulling significantly less body weight unless you're specifically dieting. So it's like, it's so slow. Chin-up work just as an exercise for everyone, unless you're trying to get smaller. So yeah, you just got to grind it out for just forever till you get there. Absolutely. But it's one of those weird things. It's extraordinarily motivating to do something that most of the rest of the planets never going to be able to do. So it's like it was weird because it's one of the few kind of diets that I've done that I was really motivated to do. Trying to get super lean for that. There's that two or three kilos to get kind of, you know, a bit more of an edge to be able to do that. Honestly, one of my coworkers that I made a bet for the end of next year on who would be able to do more one-on-tins, he can currently probably do at least one maybe two. He's a pretty strong guy. But you know, we'll just gun it until the end of next year and see how it goes. And at that point, I'll probably back the fruit down a little bit, making it a little easier. Yeah, it does definitely change things. So yeah, just kind of listing out some of those important observations that you made. But just kind of, you know, segregating straight into something I think is relevant now, which is that. So many of the people that I know who have tried to train for one-on-tins and similar skills have ended up with, you know, Alba pain or have been diagnosed with some sort of tendinopathy. And I never had any issues whatsoever at all. And I've got really, really tiny joints. I mean, like my wrist, you can see it's like ridiculous. I just can't see, but it's really, it's comically small, yeah. So like, I struggled to get wristwatches to film, because basically they don't make them and my size are too small. So yeah, so it would be, I would have been an absolute, you know, kind of classic candidate for a tendinopathy or Alba pain or some sort of problem. I never had any issues whatsoever. And I think the reason for that was twofold. Firstly, I start now literally just doing heavy chin ups sort of, you know, bilateral heavy chin ups, not doing any kind of single joint, single limb stuff at all. And I took that all the way through very slowly to the point where I got that, you know, necessary level of strength right to the top end of what you would need. And I did that with low volumes, both sets and reps. So I wasn't, you know, doing tons and tons of sets, and I wasn't doing tons and tons of reps. So I think that basically meant that my tendons stayed really really stiff, and I didn't get that kind of positive that turns to me right. I think when people would stick throwing, you know, spamming chin ups all the time. Yeah, you know, and the same thing pain, like it's like the elbow and that. All the time in the super high volume chin up work, like any programs are doing tons of reps, I definitely see that a lot, a lot, a lot. And especially, you know, use them when people are getting to the point where the reps are super slow, super grindy, they might be like yanking out of the bottom and stuff like that. And that's a generally is not going to feel great when you keep at it, super high volumes. So you definitely with a low reps, just a few sets. Absolutely. And I think that's one of the huge advantages of doing it like that with this sort of very low number of sets and reps. Two or three tons a week. And again, just kind of commenting on that. I would program myself three sessions a week, but if I felt even so much as a twinge, I would just kind of session. And it would be two sessions a week for a while until I felt I was comfortable. It's like, you know, an ounce of prevention is worth bound of cure. I was just like, I'm not going near problems with that nature. I'm just going to be like backing off straight away. And just kind of treating as a marathon aspirin. It was just like, and again, this is like, you tell people when they ask me the question, they just look at me as if I'm, you know, kind of making something up. I'm like, no, this is honestly how I did it. Just take your time and give yourself the space and the necessary, you know, kind of adaption capacity to get to these goals. Because otherwise it's just, you know, it could be constantly, you know, rushing and then stopping and then rushing and then stopping and then they'll get anywhere. Yeah, I mean, you just, anyone who gets to a crazy high strength level and any of any of any of the big lifts like, you just got to do years of it where you don't really get to beat up and get to the point where you're sliding backwards. I just saw a great, you know, separate from the chin-up conversation, but a great post from a guy who did started out and I think it was 2017 squatting. It was maybe 130 kilos. And then he posted his entire progression up to this year squatting 300 kilos, natural IPF. And you know, he's quite a lot of guy now. He's put on size. But I mean, you know, all it was, he posted every single almost heavy squat that he had done in that point. It's almost like this people take photographs of themselves every year on that birthday, isn't it? Yes. I'm not gonna do that. But it was, it was just cool to see that very slow, like sometimes each month was the same way. Sometimes it's a big jump, sometimes it's a little, you know, maybe a smidge back. But it was always that average is budging forward really. So, I mean, 2017 to 2025, you know, you know, it's my maths terrible. Seven, eight years, you know. Yeah, that's a long time. That's a long time. You want that high strength level, you just grind it out and just make sure you don't, you know, mess yourself up on the way. Yeah, absolutely. But again, like, I think that your point earlier is definitely still a value, which is that, you know, even comparing squats with, you know, chin-ups. When I, when I pushed my squat up to, you know, relatively, you know, on, on, on exciting levels, it was, it was using a habit method and I did spate by two, two rising to eight by three twice a week. And over about 18 months, you know, I was pretty happy with the numbers I got to, but there nothing to write home about. But I would, that was a lot more volume than I ever would have done for a chin-up. It's just like, you would not ever catch me doing eight sets of two, rising three for a chin-up. I mean, I'm just like, I can just feel my elbows swelling, thinking about that. It's like, no, it's not true. And it's over. I've been points, you know, years ago, I might have tried higher volumes for other myself or for clients. And I pretty much immediately noticed, you know, the same thing, elbows, wrists, things like that, just hurting. And so I pretty, pretty quickly came in and started back off a lot. Yeah, absolutely. I think that's that there's definitely, when we're talking about the practical side of things regarding, you know, sort of strength feeds, there's definitely that management of injury risk that, you know, you kind of have to look at the exercise in your own experience and go, what's sensible here? You know, I think, you know, in that respect, that I'm not going to say that pull up is like a deadlift where you're probably really kind of keeping things kind of super contained, but it is kind of somewhere in between the squat and the deadlift where you kind of like, you know, trying to avoid doing a ton of unnecessary work, if you can go away with it. You just, this isn't the capacity to throw volume at it. And as I said before, even the frequency side, I would drop down two times a week if I was so much as, you know, sniffed the possibility that, you know, something wasn't quite right. So that was always my kind of inclination was just kind of back off and try and play it safe all the time. So yeah, just to be clear, I was doing, you know, two or three sets, two, three reps, half to one rep in reserve, two or three times a week. And I didn't change that. I literally rode that from 20, 30 kilos on the belt to 75 kilos on the belt. That was the whole gym, nothing different. All right, people are trying to sell me these, I mean, we'll do an episode in the future on periodization. Yeah, yeah, because you want to exercise, you're just really nothing, you need to exercise forever. And it's just like people are trying to say, oh, no, you've got to, you've got to periodize, you've got to do these rep ranges and then we'll change this and you're going to change that. And I'm like, dude, I literally went all the way up to a double body weight, you know, chin up, you know, without changing anything. That was just the whole journey, because, well, one, one certain reps. Yeah, yeah, it's, people really overestimate the amount of things you need to change over time. It's so minimal. I mean, I think people got some stuck in like the, you know, periodization ideas and the conjugate ideas and things like that. And they looked at, you know, maybe powefters from back in the day with conjugate periodization and stuff. And those guys being, you know, hilariously strong, yeah, but one, you know, using etabolks and two, it was, you know, geared parallel thing. It's an entirely different animal. So you really people jump to apply it to like all these natural strength progressions. And I don't think it worked out the way they would have liked. No, it just the more I think about it, the more I think that was one of those moments where if I give a parallel in exercise physiology, in the early 1990s, there was a group of research as you proposed the idea that metabolites could create metabolic stress that would stimulate muscle growth, hypertrophy. That was a moment in exercise physiology where we went absolutely steaming off to the left. You know, when we should have carried on straight talking about mechanical tension, motor growth, sealing off the left and we wasted 30 years, you know, arguing about whether, you know, there was some kind of thing in called metabolic stress. Like I was joking with you on what was happening earlier in the week. There is no such thing. It doesn't exist. It's not right. And it's definitely not causing start to plasmic hypertrophy. Or anything else with that matter. It's like the only thing it possibly could do is produce an improvement in fatigue resistance related to metabolites, which is called buffering capacity with that's not anything to do with hypertrophy. So then again, it's like this whole periodization thing as regards strength training, that was us, you know, shooting off to the left in the practical programming kind of realm and going, you know, let's just make up a whole load of, you know, random nonsense that doesn't really get us where we want to go, because I think it's just not been my experience that periodization would have helped me. And, you know, I managed to get where I wanted to go with that to. And it sounds like that's been your experience and been your approach to your clients as well. Yeah, more and more of the last few years, especially just things are, you know, kind of like ultra specific and I just look and I say, I what, you know, what's the adaptation here? What do I need to do? I'm going to do that. And then I'm just going to keep it in the rotation forever unless I need to change it. Yeah, and yeah, there's obviously some reasons you can change it, pain, which is mentioned as a big one. Obviously, things start to hurt. You might rotate it, performance stalls for too long, you rotate it, but it's not, you know, you're not just arbitrarily bringing in a bunch of random exercises, even if they're for the muscles you need, just, you know, for the sake of variety and changing things up. And, you know, clients, people always argue, you know, about like client engagement and enjoyment, which is fair, but the same time most of my clients, if they go from five bodyweight chin-ups to a one-on-chain-up, they don't really complain about, you know, the fact that we didn't change much the whole way, they just pretty say they don't want to turn up. So that doesn't, yeah, it doesn't tend to matter when clients make a really good progress. Exactly. And just to be clear, just so that people know where you're going from, you know, what are your kind of frequencies, sets reps, reps and reserve, that kind of thing, for a standard weighted chin training session. Yeah, same thing, going to be like two to three times a week. Sometimes I will alternate, while you've had even one session of chin-ups, the next session might be just a pull down or a single arm row, depending on the client if they need or want, you know, more growth in those muscles. And then the chin-ups are always low reps, you know, usually on anywhere in the like two to five rep range on chins, the pull downs, row work stuff like that, you know, a bit more moderate, a lot of times like four to eight, or like a smaller range, five to seven, something like that, just to drive a little bit more growth, you know, standard exercises, increases in recruitment, those things. The chin-up is always going to be like two to three times a week or maybe every other session. Certainly not once a week, that's not where we're going to get you anywhere. Sure. And if someone likes to train every other day, although I rarely have clients doing that, you know, just schedule wise, I'm usually in Monday with your Friday guy. Honestly, I think that whole kind of every other day thing is a social media phenomenon, I think, nobody in the real world trains like that. Everyone is doing three times a week, you know. It's, I mean, it just doesn't make sense, especially like a personal training strength coaching scenario, you're never going to be with someone every other day. It's just, it's never going to happen. So yeah, it's almost as good. I think it's for people, these influencers have got their own gyms, like they part of their house and they kind of, they lose track of what the day of the week is anyway, because it's like, yeah. If you can train every day, cool, but I'm assuming I'm doing it either, it's never going to happen. And I'm in again, wanting to force that out almost. Exactly. Exactly. Cool. So that was, yeah. So frequency basically sounds similar to me. You obviously have access to more equipment than I did when I was doing it. I was literally just, there was me and I kind of a pull up bar in a stack of point plays. So, but yeah, I mean, that was, that was kind of just situational. And you're using similar kind of range. I probably was drifting like that lower than you were, or, you know, kind of do in terms of your client training programs. And in terms of numbers of sets, similar kind of numbers to a three sets. Yeah, I mean, I've had people where if we're super limited on time, they've made really good progress in way to gen-ups and ones out twice a week even. Yeah, sure. And a guy who loves to shout out. And I'd rather, I'd rather people, I'd rather people lean in that direction than the opposite direction. I think honestly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, would both kind of been, I think, you know, sharing experiences here and it does sound like, you know, the lower end of the volume is sort of spectrum is definitely going to be, you know, preferable for this particular strength scale. I think it's, it's just one of those that it punishes you pretty quickly if you overdo it. Yeah. So cool. Yeah, I mean, I think that's really everything I can think of. I mean, ultimately, it's like a very simple, very slow process. It's mostly about just letting the progress happen, avoiding getting injured. And, you know, I think, although it definitely doesn't, I don't think, happen magically just by getting your way to chin up to, you know, kind of plus body weight, I think it is pretty close to being dependent on that strength level. Yeah. And it's the easiest way for most people to start getting there. Oh, totally, totally. I mean, as I say, the climbers that I know didn't do that, they just kind of, they're pretty strong already. And all they do is kind of, you know, just introduce that, that sort of sling on one side of the bullet bar and gradually move the hand down over time, the supporting under down over time, just at the end up with the one on chin eventually. And that has the interesting effect of essentially giving you the process or a guide you through the process of learning anti rotation. Yeah. Because you get, you get less and less support, but you get, not only less than a support in the vertical direction, far helping you pull upwards. You get less in the support for basically that rotation, so you go to control it with the main arm instead of the supporting arm. So it kind of forces you to learn both aspects of the skill simultaneously. So in that respect, I think it's more organic. So, you know, if people want to go down that route, I think it's, you know, pretty cool. We're doing it. It's just, that isn't a way that I've ever, you know, done personally, I've never, you know, sort of had an experience of doing it, either. Yeah. I have actually had clients do that same thing with, um, I'm not even in the Jay's, Daisy Chan though, just with a band around the bar. Yeah. And it's never, you grab top of the band near the handle, the start. Yeah. And then as the weeks go on, just gradually bump it down. No, totally. You just have to do the same thing we were talking about with assistance. You have to mark where you were last time. Yeah. Yeah. The thing about Daisy Chan is you just count the numbers and just put your hand in the loop that you've counted and it kind of works automatically. Kind of keep track of it, which is pretty cool. And the only, let's finish with one final observation, which is that, um, one of the really interesting things I noticed with the people, the time you, who were doing one on tins when I was, you know, starting out is that some people could do lock-offs. So a lock-off is a climbing kind of, um, terminology, I guess, is where you get to the top of the bar. You, you put your chin over the bar and you can hold that position. Now interestingly, what you can do, if, I mean, like, and this is not a training, a training program that I recommend do, but you can get a box, stand on the box, put yourself into that top position with your chin over the bar and then you can do eccentric one on chin. Yeah. Now that's not a clever way of training, because you can end up with just massive amounts of, you know, soreness and putting huge amounts of string on that joint that's not really had the buildup of the way to chin kind of progress that I think is really helpful for avoiding that, you know, kind of a potential injury. But one of the interesting things I noticed is that, um, of the people who were, you know, working the way towards one on chin, most of these climbers doing this kind of decent journey bridge. Some of them could do lock-offs and hold the lock-off position, even when they were only like halfway towards one on chin. And the interesting thing is, and I've shared this a few times on other podcasts, is that even when I got a one on chin, I couldn't stay in the top position. Yeah, the top position is very rare. I actually couldn't hold a lock-off position, but some of these guys who, you know, couldn't even do one on chin where I could. And like, they could hold the lock-off position almost indefinitely. I'm literally I've had conversations with people holding that position. And like, how is this, what is this sorcery? I mean, what is going on? I think really what it comes down to is what that person's, um, leverages unlike for shoulder flexion on the, um, elbow flexors. So I think what it comes down to is if that person has, um, no, the ability to, so like, I think that essentially, uh, I don't have very good elbow flexor strength at the top position because my biceps bracket have good shoulder flexion leverage. And so essentially they switch off. Yeah. I think that if somebody has really poor shoulder flexion leverage for their biceps bracket, so that their biceps essentially don't switch off at the top, they can just hold that, they can just hold that top position quite happily and indefinitely, whereas I'm relying entirely on my brachyridialis, which is very healthy, half the muscle mass of the other person. So I think, I think basically it comes down to individual leverages whether somebody has the ability to hold that position or not. It doesn't actually correlate at all with your one on chin strength. So I just wanted to kind of flag that with people that they might find that if their leverages are a little bit odd, um, and not, you know, like, I'm thinking of three or four people here in total. So like, you know, I think definitely one of them could hold a really strong lock off even with like half a body weight added onto the, you know, kind of hardest brick. Yeah. Yeah. Really ridiculous. And that was the guy who was having a conversation with me, but he was holding the position. I'm like, that's nuts. I can't even do that now. I've got one on chin. So I think basically it comes down to the leverages that somebody has for the elbow flexors and whether they can hold a position or not. Um, that really is all it is. You could, you can't really look at someone and go, oh, they can do a lock off. They should be like able to do a one on chin in the next couple of weeks. I might know. Yeah. No. He could not have another six to nine months ahead of him before he gets anywhere close to it to that level of strength. I'm so sorry. It's literally just a kind of weirdness associated with the leverages of a shoulder. Yeah. In terms of like elbow flexors stuff for clients, I generally do have them do quite a bit of regularity. Alice focused work for the top position. Um, just to help once you're getting up there. And I do find it generally helps. So just some like, I know you like the band and reverse curls are like those quite a bit or like just a reverse grip spider curls, some like that. Uh, you know, peak tension more towards a contracted position. Those tend to work good. And then just, you know, I think people do underestimate the, the, the arm strength. I don't have a lot of guys who want to prove their point. And when I want them to do curls, I do I need to work. Well, yeah. It's a good time. So again, because I've got these really tiny wrists, I hate curls with a passion. I really, really hate them because I feel like my arm is going to get ripped off. Um, so what I did when I was, um, doing my one on chin training was I got a second bar for the pull up station. And I positioned it, uh, sort of about, I don't know, you know, maybe a sort of lion's just to a foot below the one that I was holding. And that then provided a, uh, surface that I could push my forearm into. I put a bit of wrap around it to stop working in hurting. But basically what would happen is I would grab the top bar. And then this other bar would act as a support. And then basically what you're doing then, you're, you're going to go through a biceps curing of motion, but in a chin up position. Yeah, that's a good idea. Well, it's actually a pull up position rather than a chin position. So you're pretty through. So you're pretty through and you kind of, and based, I found that I could do, um, when I was kind of, if I was sort of using maybe a 60, uh, keynote weight for, for a set of, you know, whatever, three, four, five, I would probably have to take 10 or 15 kilos off to be able to do this variation. So the load would drop quite a lot, not massively, but it would drop meaningfully. And I'd be able to do in similar number of reps with that exercise. And for me, it always felt like there was absolutely toasting my whole reflexes. Oh, yeah, true. The other stuff didn't do. Yeah, that's cool. I'm now trying that. It's, it's a lot of fun. And it's kind of well, there's it's like some people kind of get on with it. So people don't, but, um, for me, it worked really, really well because it meant that I didn't have to have this kind of ridiculously heavy dumbbell on the end of what is basically a move, you know, one of one of two guys I've met that doesn't like girls. Well, yeah, no, it's like, but my situation is very specific. It's like, I've got this, I actually have pretty strong, um, I would like to strengthen just because of the pulling stuff I've done. And so, I've got this stupid kind of dumbbell weight in this tiny little hand. Just feel like my wrist is going to get ripped off. So, yeah, it's, it's not, not really, uh, kind of something that works very well for me. Um, but yeah, that, uh, that pull up station was, uh, I think, something I think did help a little bit. I don't think it would have been make or break, but it definitely kind of, um, you know, gave that extra stimulus to vice and also, you know, a little bit to variation so that I'm not, you know, kind of doing exactly the same movement all the time because, you know, I always found that, yeah, working in across pull ups and chin ups, uh, same grip width, um, but working chin ups and pull ups was a nice way of just kind of taking a little bit of the, um, you know, injury risk, uh, not, and down a notch or so. Um, but this again was just an old one I worked in. Yeah, for sure. I mean, you use the same exact thing over and over. You might get a new little bit of, you know, pattern overload over use type situation. Yeah. I mean, that's, yeah, I mean, that's, that's literally how, I mean, one of these days, I'll probably have to go through the overuse injury literature because, I mean, that's kind of their starting point is that, you know, if you're doing exactly the same movement repeatedly, especially under load, that's the, the kind of the recipe for overuse injury, you know, and then we go and, we go in the gym and we're like, how can I do this exactly the same way as I did it last time? Yeah, and now I have an album. I mean, that isn't that kind of the recipe for disaster, but, you know, it's like we have to because that's how you get better at the thing that you're trying to get better at. Um, anyway, um, anyway, so that was just a couple of things I thought might be interesting for people in the context of this conversation. Um, I don't have any more comments. Do you have anything else you want to say on this topic? No, I think we covered it pretty well. It was, it was one that a lot of people had asked us, so we figured we'd do a little, a little bit about it. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, this, so we don't have to do exactly the same format every single week. We probably will go back to the original format. We'll just chat to him before this podcast. Well, a few more ideas that people are asking about, periodization, tapers, Deodes, um, you know, is what I got a lot. Yeah, we get tapers a lot, don't we? So we'll do that in the future, you know, so, um, please stay tuned. Uh, of course, we will be back with another episode next week.