range of motion in a wide-grip chin

Hey all,

I had my gym 'induction' recently, which was really just running through what I've already been doing with a 'personal trainer,' but I've hit a problem with one of the changes he suggested. When I was doing my lat pulldowns (can't manage real chins for actual sets yet, I'm afraid) he asked me to change two things - instead of pulling down behind my head, to pull down in front, and to attempt to bring the bar down to the bottom of my sternum. When I attempted this with reasonable weights, I found the front part no problem, but the motion past my collar bone with a wide-grip seemed really awkward to perform without relying on my triceps, and I ended up injuring my right shoulder. And with my palms facing away from my body, the collar-bone to sternum part of the exercise really just felt like a cable pulldown being done with the wrong bar and hands too far apart.

As if the injury wasn't annoying enough, my copy of Arnold's Bodybuilding Encyclopedia arrived today, and I noted that it seemed to indicate that for a wide grip, you're only supposed to go as far as the collar bone. Then I found the animations on the ministry of fitness site, and they seemed to indicate the same thing. So I'm a bit unsure now - what range of motion are you supposed to use for a wide-grip chin? I'm guessing that Arnie and the Ministry are right, but can someone confirm this?

I won't even bring up what this guy said about squats...

cheers,

In a word, horseshit.

I see people do this sort of thing all the time in the gym, and what invariably happens is that they end up using their rotator cuffs to finish off the movement (by rotating their forearms downward), so they are basically doing a (somewhat unsafe) rotator cuff exercise. The extra range of motion has absolutely no benefit on the lats. This is probably how you've injured your shoulder.

Trying to turn a wide grip pulldown into a peak contraction exercise is futile. The mechanics of the exercise make it difficult to get a full contraction. It's more of a stretch exercise.

For a peak contraction (an exercise that works well at the end of the ROM), you need either close grip pulldowns or rowing exercises. With both of these, one can focus on pulling the elbows in towards the body at the end of the movement for a good squeeze.