So…You Think You Want A Muscle up

Posted by Andy on November 05, 2009 - Posted in Movement There are 4 comments, Add yours!

Everybody wants to do a muscle-up and I’ve never been totally sure why.  It was the muscle-up that first got me into gymnastics as an adult.  I saw someone on the Internet that was my dad’s age executing a perfect muscle-up and decided that I wanted to be able to do that someday.  Unfortunately we aren’t professional athletes and we all only have a limited amount of training time per week.  Before we all go spend our precious training time working on muscle-ups let’s take a step back and think about progression.

It is often very easy to get wrapped up in chasing skills that we aren’t really ready to go after.  This is why we want folks to have 10 strict push-ups before they begin to work on dips.  This is why we work on ring rows before moving to pull-ups.  Before you begin chasing muscle-ups let’s make sure you meet some minimums.  First of all you need healthy shoulders.  Those of you who have bad shoulders (you know who you are) are better off spending time on other ring drills.  Muscle-ups place a tremendous amount of stress on the shoulder joint and tend to make bad shoulders unhappy fast.  You also need at least 10 strict pull-ups and 15 ring dips. If you don’t meet those minimums then your time is better spent building basic strength and getting your shoulders healthy.  Be patient as that increased strength will help you get further down the fitness road.

Once you meet those minimums you need to spend time working on hanging from the rings with a false grip and on false grip pull-ups.  The false grip is critical when first learning the muscle-up because it shortens the lever arm and puts us in a better biomechanical position to complete the move.  The false grip pull-up has a very different feel than a traditional grip and stresses the wrists and forearms very differently.  Realize that the false grip is a temporary solution and that as your strength improves we will work towards doing a muscle-up with a standard grip.

Once you meet the requisite basic strength requirements and feel comfortable with your false grip pull-ups the primary challenge when developing a muscle-up is always learning how to work through the transition.  The simplest solution is to add a portion of the transition to the top of each pull-up and the bottom of each dip.  So for each pull-up try to pull yourself a little higher and add more transition to the top of each rep and on each ring dip try to lower yourself a little bit lower than the supported bottom of the dip.  Be careful to only lower yourself as far as your strength will allow you to pull back out of and continue on with the next dip (Less is definitely more in this case).  Over time you will be able to smoothly pull yourself up to the top of the rings and smoothly lower yourself down.  The downward phase is critical so that you can eventually string several cool ring moves together.

Lani is demonstrating both of these drills in the video below (Notice his excellent false grip).  For ease of presentation we have combined the moves, but for practical purposes I recommend practicing the pull-up portion and dip portion separately in the beginning.  Notice on each pull-up Lani is pulling himself a little higher into that transition and on each dip he is lowering himself a bit more, but still pulling himself out of the transition.  Lani is very strong and make these drills look easy.  Realize that these are challenging drills and plan to spend some time slowly building up strength through the transition.

Muscle-Up Transition Drills from Andy Deas on Vimeo.

Once you can do a single muscle-up you should continue to develop your proficiency until you can do 3 consecutive (including a controlled lower to full extension under the rings) and then it is time to move on to a harder variation.  There isn’t much point in spending any more time on that variation.  Progress in gymnastics strength development does not come from beating one particular variation to death, but in learning the basic movement and then carefully proceeding through the subsequent progressions. It should also be remembered that there are far harder exercises than a muscle-up. Once you are proficient and have progressed through the variations in question it is time to move on. 

A word on kipping muscle-ups - a kipping muscle-up is just that a kipping muscle-up.  Let’s not confuse that with a strict muscle-up. A strict muscle-up does not include a kip and is one smooth motion from dead hang to support on the rings. Some folks like to go straight to practicing the kipping version, but this isn’t the best idea.  Kipping muscle-ups place tremendous ballistic stress on your shoulder girdle.  I’ve actually seen a few folks dislocate their shoulder practicing this variation.  Just like I would never encourage someone to try clapping push-ups before they mastered the standard version, I don’t think it is a great idea to spend time working the kipping muscle-up version.  The kipping muscle-up also limits our strength development in that critical transition phase because we are using the kip to power through it.  Obviously someday you may come across a WOD with a bunch of muscle-ups.  If you can do strict muscle-ups and have solid kipping pull-ups you will have no problem turning a good time.  The inverse is definitely not true.  Additionally, mastering the strict muscle-up opens up a whole new world of cool gymnastics skills to chase.