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Exercise selection is a rabbit hole one can get lost in very easily. It is a double edged sword.
A lot of the time, what I think of as an interesting variation of an exercise is absolutely pointless for 99.9 percent of humanity.
But then once in a while an exercise variant is discovered that finds wide use.
Normal pull ups, chin ups or neutral are performed on a bar that runs parallel to the floor. With me so far? Basically you hold the bar like you would if you were going to give someone a high ten or were worshipping the sun god. After a certain number of chin ups this variant would bug my elbows.
Here’s something I chanced upon while working around a dodgy elbow. The tendons in my elbow are my weak link. They tend to feel irritated if I increase the intensity of my training. So I played around with different grip widths, grips and implements to find a variant that works for me.
Enter nunchuck pull ups. The bars are perpendicular to the floor. You hold them as you would hold a steering wheel. This is akin to the grip one would have while climbing a rope.
Off the bat, the grip is challenging. Holding onto the nunchuck handles is immensely challenging. But I persisted and worked with different variants of the bar. We use 28, 30, 32, 35 and 49 mm thick nunchuck handles in our gym. The 28 mm and 49 mm are the least fun to use since they are hardest to hold on to. The middling diameters are easier to hold.
To add another element of challenge, I slotted the 49 mm handles onto a fixed rod. This makes the shoulder adduction part of the pull up much more challenging (adduction is pulling arms that are positioned away from the body towards the body).
The feedback is terrific on the upper back. The elbows do not protest. And my grip is stronger too.
Am I asking you to try this exercise? NO.
What I am trying to tell you is: if you cannot perform an exercise, do not just give up. Find someone who can help you figure out a variant of the exercise that you can perform safely and scale effectively.
Not moving makes sense only if absolutely necessary. The answer to aches and pains is usually some movement. In those scenarios, a deep toolkit will have right answers.