Chin-ups vs curls: Should you be doing one, the other, or both for bigger, stronger arms?

If you want to strengthen your upper body, build bigger arms, and change your physique, you might be deciding whether to do more chin-ups or curls. Both exercises target your biceps. But they both have different benefits and challenges.

On the one hand, chin-ups need more strength to get started. Most people will need an assisted chin-up machine before lifting their body weight. Bicep curls are isolation exercises that need less strength at the outset. Both movements work the biceps. And both can contribute to building bigger, fuller arms.

First, we’ll look at each exercise. We’ll go over the muscles worked by each. Then, we’ll examine how to perform each exercise and its variations. Then, we’ll discuss which exercise best supports different fitness goals.

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What Are Chin-Ups?

Chin-ups are a bodyweight that targets multiple muscle groups of the upper body. Chin-ups involve griping a horizontal bar with a supinated grip (underhand) and pulling yourself up so that your chin is above the bar.

Compound Movement: Chin-ups are a compound movement that involves multiple joints, including the elbows (elbow flexion) and the shoulders (shoulder extension).

Plane of Movement: Chin-ups are a sagittal plane movement. This anatomical plane divides the body into left and right halves and includes forward and backward movements.

Closed Chain Exercise: Chin-ups are a closed-chain exercise. A closed chain exercise is when the hand or foot does not move. In a chin-up, the hands are fixed to the bar. An example of an open chain exercise is the curl, where the hands move the weight up and down.

What Muscles Do Chin-Ups Work?

Latissimus Dorsi: Your lats are the largest muscles of the back and include the lower part of your mid-back that gives the back its “wings” shape. The lats are the primary back muscle worked by chin-ups. They are responsible for pulling the arms down toward the body.

Biceps Brachii: Your biceps are located in the front of your upper arms and attach at the elbow and the shoulder. The biceps are composed of two heads, the short head and the long head. They are responsible for bending the elbow (flexion) and pulling the body toward the bar in the chin up.

Trapezius: The trapezius, or traps, sit along your upper back and neck. The traps are among the larger back muscles but are much smaller than the lats. Your traps are responsible for moving and stabilizing your shoulders.

Rhomboid major: The middle of your upper back along your spine. These two smaller muscles retract the scapular (your shoulder blades).

Forearms: The forearm muscles, including the wrist flexors and extensors, are also activated during chin-ups. These muscles help stabilize the wrists and maintain the bar grip.

Benefits of Chin-Ups

Upper Body Strength: Chin-ups are an excellent exercise for building upper body strength. They target the muscles in your back, shoulders, and arms. Regularly performing chin-ups can improve your strength and build muscle mass.

Improved Grip Strength: Chin-ups build a strong grip. You can develop more muscular forearms and improve your grip strength by doing chin-ups. This can benefit other exercises that need grip strength, like deadlifts and pull-ups.

Convenience: You can do chin-ups almost anywhere with a horizontal bar. They are among the most convenient exercises to include in your workout routine. You can do them at home, the park, or the gym.

Compound Exercise: Chin-ups engage several muscle groups simultaneously. They engage your biceps, lats, shoulders, and core throughout the movement. Compound movements offer more bang for your buck regarding the time it takes to work multiple muscle groups. If you only have a little time to work out, compound movements like chin-ups will allow you to get more done.

Improved Posture: Chin-ups help strengthen the muscles in your upper back and shoulders, improving your posture. Focusing on exercises that enhance posture is essential to counter the detrimental effects of staring at screens all day.

Challenges of Chin-Ups

Difficulty Level: Chin-ups are challenging, especially if you’re new to working out. Most people do not have the upper body strength to lift their entire body weight when starting out.

Anaerobically Challenging: Chin-ups are challenging to the anaerobic energy systems of the body. If you are new to chin-ups, you will find they leave you gassed after a few reps. Chin-ups require quick bursts of explosive movement to move your body mass.

Strain: Chin-ups put a lot of stress on your elbow and shoulder joints. Doing too high volume with chin-ups can cause medial epicondylitis or “golfer’s elbow.” Golfer’s elbow pain affects the outside of the forearm at the elbow joint. This is one of the most common injuries for weightlifters, as many movements involve the elbow joint.

How To Do Chin-Ups

• Stand beneath the bar. Grab a bench or step stool if you cannot reach the bar standing below it. Grip the bar with a neutral, shoulder-width grip with your palms facing you (supinated grip).
• Allow yourself to hang from the bar with your arms extended. If your feet touch, bend your legs.
• Keep your eyes up toward the bar. This will help to keep your spine aligned and prevent you from hitting your head/chin on the bar as you explode upward.
• Pull upward until your chin is above the bar. When pulling, imagine pulling your chest to the bar.
• Keep your core tight. This will help prevent swinging like a pendulum as you raise and lower yourself.
• Keep your elbows parallel in front of you. If it helps, imagine driving your elbows down into the ground.
• Lower yourself in a controlled manner to the full extension of your arms.
• Repeat.

Variations of Chin-Ups

Several variations of chin-ups can target different areas of the back and arms.

Wide-Grip Chin-Up: The wide-grip chin-up uses a wider grip than shoulder-width apart. This variation of the chin-up targets the lats and the lower trapezius muscles. It places greater emphasis on the brachialis muscle or the outer part of the biceps. Wide-grip chin-ups are more challenging to get into position. Instead of jumping up to the bar, standing on something to reach it can make it easier to get in a wide grip.

Close-Grip Chin-Up: The close-grip chin-up uses a grip less than shoulder-width apart. This variation places greater emphasis on the biceps, upper back muscles (rhomboids), and rear deltoids.

Weighted Chin-Up: You can do the weighted chin-up with a neutral, close, or wide grip. This is an advanced variation that increases the resistance of the exercise. There are three ways to perform a weighted chin-up. The first is by wearing a weight vest. The second is by holding a dumbbell between your legs. The third is by wearing a belt that attaches at the waist with a weight plate on a chain.

L-Sit Chin Up: The L-sit chin up is an advanced variation with the legs extended straight out in front of the body, so your body forms the shape of the letter “L.” This variation emphasizes the lats and core muscles.

What are Curls?

Curls are an isolation exercise that targets the muscles of the biceps. Curls involve holding a form of resistance like a barbell, dumbbell, or kettlebell. You then flex the elbow to raise the resistance toward your chest.

Isolation Movement: Biceps curls are an isolation exercise that involves a single joint, the elbow. Single-joint exercises focus on one muscle or muscle group.

Plane of Movement: Like chin-ups, curls are a sagittal plane movement. This plane of movement divides the body into left and right halves and includes forward and backward movements.

Open Chain Exercise: Unlike chin-ups, curls are an open-chain exercise. An open chain exercise is where the hands move the weight and do not stay in a fixed position.

What Muscles Do Curls Work?

The biceps brachii is what most refer to as the biceps or “bis.” Your biceps are located in the front of your upper arms and attach at the elbow and the shoulder.

Biceps Brachii: The biceps include two heads, the short head and the long head. The primary function of your biceps is to flex the elbow joint (aka bending your arm). The elbow is one of the most active joints in the human body. We must flex our elbows to do everything from curling a dumbbell to picking up groceries.

The other primary function of your biceps is to supinate, rotating your hand so your palms face upward. You probably use this movement more than you think. When holding a cup or turning a doorknob, you use your biceps to supinate your wrist.

Brachialis: The brachialis and brachioradialis work alongside the biceps. These muscles are also located in the upper arm and assist with elbow flexion.

Brachioradialis: The brachioradialis muscle is located in the forearm and is activated during most curl variations.

Deltoids: The deltoid muscles of the shoulders provide support during the curl. The anterior deltoid muscle assists in flexing the arm at the shoulder joint.

Forearms: The muscles in the forearms, including the wrist flexors and extensors, are also activated during curls to help stabilize the wrists and maintain grip.

Benefits of Curls

Bicep Development: Curls are a great way to target the biceps. Performing curls is essential to increasing the size and definition of your biceps.

Improved Arm Strength: Curls are an excellent way to improve arm strength. They target the biceps, forearms, and wrist muscles. Curls can also help you develop the strength needed for exercises like chin-ups.

Convenience: You can do curls almost anywhere with a set of dumbbells or a barbell. This makes them a convenient exercise to include in your routine no matter where you work out.

Improved Grip Strength: Curls need a solid grip to hold the weight. Curls can help develop stronger forearms and improve grip strength. This can benefit other exercises that require grip strength, such as deadlifts, rows, and pull-ups.

Mind-Muscle Connection: Since curls allow you to isolate the biceps, you can focus on developing a solid mind-muscle connection. Do this by focusing on the bicep muscle as you lift the weight. Contract the bicep at the top of the range of motion. Control the eccentric phase (lowering) of the movement.

Challenges of Curls

Performing a wide variety of curls can mean you need more access to various equipment. If you work out at home, you are less likely to have access to various bicep training tools like cable and machines.

Isolation exercises take more time in a lifting program than compound exercises. If you’re short on time, isolating each muscle group may not be your best option.

How to Do the Dumbbell Curl

• Stand tall with your shoulders back and your eyes forward. Place your feet hip-width apart. Grip a dumbbell in each hand with your palm facing your leg.
• Keep your elbow stationary. Lift one of the dumbbells, rotating it as you lift so that your palm faces your body at the end of the range of motion.
• Squeeze your bicep at the top of the movement.
• Reverse the movement to return to the starting position.
• Repeat on the other side, alternating arms each rep.

How to Do Barbell Curl

• Stand tall with your shoulders back and your eyes forward. Place your feet hip-width apart. Grip a barbell with a neutral, underhand grip.
• Keep your elbows stationary. Lift the barbell to your chest. There is no rotation in barbell curls like there is in dumbbell curls.
• Squeeze your biceps at the top of the movement.
• Lower the barbell back to the starting position.

Variations of Curls

Several variations of curls can target different parts of the bicep. Here are four of the most popular.

Hammer Curl: Hammer curls are a variation of the traditional bicep curl. They target the biceps, brachialis, and brachioradialis. Hold a pair of dumbbells with a neutral grip (palms facing each other), and curl the weight towards your chest to perform a hammer curl.

Preacher Curl: Preacher curls are performed on a preacher’s bench. The preacher’s bench is designed to force the elbows into a stationary position. This position can help isolate the long head of the biceps. Preacher bar curls are often called ez-bar curls because they are typically done with an ez-bar. To perform this variation, sit at the preacher’s bench with your upper arms resting on the pad. Curl the weight up toward your shoulders.

Concentration Curl: Concentration curls are performed one arm at a time and target the biceps. You need a bench or an elevated flat surface to do concentration curls. Sit on the bench with your legs shoulder-width in front of you. Hold a dumbbell with one hand, pinning your elbow against your inner thigh. Curl the weight up toward your shoulder.

Reverse Curl: Reverse curls target the brachialis muscle. They are performed with a barbell or dumbbells using an overhand grip (pronated grip). The stance is like a traditional bicep curl, curling the weight toward your chest.

You can also do these movements at different angles with various implements like cables, bands, kettlebells, or ropes.

Chin Ups vs Curls For Different Goals

Chin Ups and curls can both support every type of fitness goal. The good news is you can’t go wrong with incorporating both into your fitness program. There’s no reason not to do both for intermediate to advanced lifters, especially. Depending on your training goal and technique familiarity, chin-ups or curls may be more advantageous during different stages of your training year.

Hypertrophy/Bodybuilding

If your goal is gaining muscle mass for aesthetic purposes, you need to train your biceps muscles directly with curls. In traditional hypertrophy programs, you will do separate back work in which your lats will be the primary muscles worked. Muscle growth involves time under tension, meaning for your biceps to grow, you need to do isolation work in addition to compound exercises.

According to the National Strength and Conditioning Association, the ideal rep range for hypertrophy is 6-12 reps for 3-6 sets.

If you can do 6-12 reps of chin-ups for 3-6 sets, include both chin-ups and curls in your training program. If you can’t perform that many chin-ups, keep chin-ups in your strength training phase until you can increase the reps.

Strength

If you want to build strength, chin-ups might be the better option. Strength training involves more compound movements with heavier weights at a lower volume. According to the NSCA strength training is optimal with 2-5 sets of less than six reps. Chin-ups help develop back strength while still training the biceps. A strength training block is a great time to incorporate chin-ups if you can do chin-ups in a 1-6 rep range.

Power

Power is work divided by time. This means doing the highest intensity possible as fast as possible. Power exercises use quick bursts of max effort. Chin-ups can be performed as a power exercise. Depending on your training level, you can do bodyweight or weighted chin-ups to emphasize the explosive muscle action of the movement. Power, like strength, is also performed in lower rep ranges of 3-5 or 1-2 for single power events. Power exercises are also compound, multi-joint movements. So, chin-ups make a lot of sense if power is your goal. Bicep curls won’t hurt power development but are less necessary to achieve full body power.

Muscular Endurance

If your goal is muscular endurance, the ability to complete high-volume repetitions at a lower intensity, then both chin-ups and bicep curls are great options. You will need a high degree of fitness to do high-volume chin-ups to pursue this goal. Or, you can do high repetitions of chin-ups using a supported machine. This type of training is ideal for first responders and armed forces personnel tested in muscular endurance events. High-volume chin-ups and bicep curls of more than 12 reps for 2-3 sets can contribute to muscular endurance goals.

How You Perform the Movement Matters

Form: You need to use proper form and technique when performing any exercise. Using a strict form with bicep curls can help isolate the bicep muscles. Using a full range of motion with a brief pause at the bottom of chin-ups will increase the time under tension and make the movement more challenging. Though I enjoy CrossFit, I do not advocate kipping, swinging, or bending to lift weights. This is a recipe for injury. Use controlled movements with a full range of motion.

Grip: The great thing about curls and chin-ups is that you can use several grip positions to develop good grip strength and target specific muscle regions. For bicep curls, you can also play with the angle of the curl, use a preacher bench, or use concentration curls to target specific areas of the biceps.

Progressive Overload: Progressive overload is essential whether you are doing chin-ups or bicep curls. Shoot for a slight increase in load, reps, or volume each time you train. This will help you make progress in all your training goals.

Recovery: Recovery is essential. Make sure you incorporate rest days into your training program. Get adequate sleep and refuel with a high-protein diet. Building muscle and strength takes time and rest.

Looking to learn more about different exercises? Check out the Outdoor Muscle Exercise Hub for weekly articles!