Two Of The Best Exercises You Could Ever Learn

The two exercises that I am about to discuss in this post are some of the best, if not the best, exercises you could do for your upper body.  True, this is my opinion, but I bet that if you ask some other trainers and fitness professionals, they might say the same thing.

What are those exercises?  Chin-ups and Dips.

What’s So Good About Chin-ups and Dips?

Let me now explain why I choose these exercises out of the hundreds of other exercises out there.

My first reason for saying this is perhaps the biggest reason, and that is, chin-ups and dips involve you controlling all of your body weight, and if you can control your own body weight, that’s a valuable skill.

Think about this…there are definitely folks out there who can bench press or row a lot of weight but can barely crank out two reps of either chin-ups or dips.  Why?  Well because free weight exercises like bench press and seated rows don’t work as many muscles due to the fact that they involve a bench.  That one variable “deactivates” several muscle groups, including, but not limited to, your core muscles (abs, obliques, etc.).

Chin-ups and dips, on the other hand, use your core and other muscles to stabilize your body while you perform the move, making them much more dynamic and taxing exercises.  I have done several sets of chin-ups before and been sore in my abs the next day as if I had done 500 crunches.  Seriously.

The second reason is, both chin-ups and dips require no other equipment than bars – a high pull-up bar for chin-ups, and a set of waist-high parallel bars for dips.  This means that you can do them at the gym, at the park, or even at home (I’ll show you how soon).  Oh, and you might prefer to use some gloves to minimize the stress on your hands, but aside from that, it’s just you and the bars.

The third reason for chin-ups and dips being amongst the top exercises is that they’re functional.  What I mean is, they translate into movements that you actually do during the day.  While your day-to-day life might not involve laying down flat on your back and hoisting a random object over your chest, you will very likely need your arms to lift you out of a chair by the armrests, which is precisely what a dip is.  Activities such as gardening, moving furniture, and carrying grocery bags involve your muscles in a very similar way to how chin-ups and dips involve them.

And since we all begin to lose muscle faster and faster with age, it’s important to stay active to counteract this trend.  Chin-ups and dips are your friends in that regard.

But What If I Can’t Do Them?

Say you are like I was when I was in high school and you can’t perform either of these exercises*.  No worries.  I have made a couple of videos for you that not only show you how to do chin-ups and dips, but they also show you how to do easier variations of both exercises that, if done faithfully, can eventually have you doing your first dip or chin-up.

Here’s my video on chin-ups…

…and here’s my video on dips…

If you want a good strength foundation and desire to maintain muscle in a way that works with how your body works, choose chin-ups and dips.  And if you want to see more exercise tutorials (and workouts) from me, consider subscribing to Your Health At The Crossroads on YouTube so that you’ll know whenever I post new videos.

*Well, I was able to do 1-2 chin-ups, but that was it.  And they were ugly chin-ups, too.