Excessive load on the FDS muscle during chin-ups can cause injury. — Whalespan
Excessive load on the FDS muscle during chin-ups can cause injury.
⚠ High risk
The evidence is convergent. Multiple independent sources reach the same conclusion, the underlying mechanism is well-characterized, and even the field's most cautious voices treat it as worth doing.
✓WELLSUPPORTED
⚠
High-risk intervention — consult a physician before acting.Drug-drug interactions, dose-dependence, and screening contraindications apply.
“This is happening to people that have these inherent weaknesses in these muscles. You or haven't done enough of the gripping in the meat of the hand for long enough but it starts to put that stress on these muscles that are ill-equipped to do this and to handle this and it starts to it's particularly on that fourth finger, which is part of the muscle we call the FDS, a flexor digitorum that is just too much for it to handle. And that comes all the way down and meets right at the media level. Right on that spot that you can say feels like someone's knifing you right in the middle in that medial level. And medial epicondylitis or they call it golfers elbow is something that a lot of us deal with in the gym.”
“So, the easiest thing to do is just grip deeper so that what you're doing is you're using, you know, more leverage from the palm to encapsulate the bar or the dumbbell or whatever. and you're not putting that pressure really distally right on that last digit because that's where the that FDS muscle is most strained.”
“So that like, you know, maybe it's only capable of handling 30 lb and then when you're doing a chin-up and it goes and it drifts so far that it's now you, let's say you're a 200lb guy, you've got, let's say, 100 lb through one arm and 100 lb.”
“And it actually is a little bit easier to perform the exercise with that sort of like false grip, like a little hook grip at the end because you're not going to engage the forearms into the exercise. You're not going to start pulling down. But at the same time, while it could help you to perform them better by getting the back more activated, if you have weakness in these muscles, because it's not it's not a thing that happens to every this not one of those upright row type things where I think this is h happening to everybody. This is happening to people that have these inherent weaknesses in in the these muscles. You or or haven't done enough of the gripping in the for in the meat of the hand, you know, for long enough. But it starts to put that stress on these muscles that are illquipped to do this and it to handle this and it starts to particularly on that fourth finger you know which is part of the muscle we call the FDS of flexor digitorum that is just too much for it to handle and that comes all the way down and meets right at the medial elbow right on that spot that you can say feels like someone's knifing you right in the middle in that medal elbow and and medial epicondilitis or they call it golfer's elbow is something that a lot of us deal with in in the gym.”