Muscle-Up Progression: 6 Steps to Master the Move

Unless you’re already a skilled gymnast, bar muscle-ups are some of the difficult body weight actions you may try. In addition to requiring vital core and upper-body power, muscle-ups demand glorious mobility, physique consciousness, coordination, and timing.

If you’re decided so as to add muscle-ups to your health club repertoire, know that there’s a proper and unsuitable option to develop this talent.

• The unsuitable method: Repeatedly swinging and slamming your physique towards the bar till you’re fatigued, pissed off, and probably injured.
• The proper method: A muscle-up development.

A muscle-up development is a sequence of more and more tough actions that steadily develops your muscle-up method whereas constructing your power. Each stage of the development consists of benchmarks indicating your readiness to maneuver on to the subsequent drill inside the development.

The ultimate stage is, in fact, a muscle-up safely executed with confidence and impeccable kind.

6-Step Bar Muscle-Up Progression

Dr. John Gallucci, Jr., MS, ATC, PT, DPT, CEO of JAG Physical Therapy, explains {that a} muscle-up is definitely a sequence of smaller actions strung collectively:

1. Kip swing
2. Knee elevate
3. Leg elevate
4. Chest-to-bar pull-up
5. Triceps dip

To do a muscle-up, you should be comfy performing every of those actions repetitively. That’s the place the muscle-up development is available in.

Developed with enter from Gallucci and Jeff Waters, registered USA Boxing coach and proprietor of Watters Performance, the next muscle-up development begins at a newbie stage. Depending in your gymnastic expertise and present power ranges, you could possibly skip forward.

Step 1: Hanging knee/leg elevate

• Grab a pull-up bar with an overhand grip that’s barely wider than shoulder-width.
• Hang at arm’s size together with your arms straight (a place generally known as a useless cling) and your legs straight and collectively.
• Bend your knees 90 levels and elevate them to hip stage. Hold for one second, then return to the beginning place.
• Once you’re in a position to carry out three units of 10 reps, carry out the identical motion protecting your legs straight in order that your physique creates an L form. Once you’re in a position to carry out three units of 10 reps of straight-leg raises, transfer on to the subsequent step.

Tip: “Ensure that you’re not swinging and using momentum to get your legs up, and all the work is coming from the hip flexors and the core,” Gallucci says.

Step 2: Assisted chest-to-bar pull-up

• Loop one finish of a big resistance band across the pull-up bar. Grab the bar with an overhand grip that’s barely wider than shoulder-width and place one foot within the different finish of the resistance band.
• Hang at arm’s size together with your legs straight and core and glutes engaged.
• Without swinging or kipping (utilizing momentum to propel you upward), have interaction your lats and squeeze your shoulder blades collectively as you pull your chest to the bar.
• Pause, after which decrease your self again to a useless cling.

Tip: “Start with a thicker band,” Watters says. “If you can do 10 full pull-ups, use a thinner band. Over time, keep working your way down until you can do 10 strict pull-ups with the thinnest band. Then move on.”

Step 3: Strict chest-to-bar pull-up

• Grab a pull-up bar with an overhand grip that’s barely past shoulder width.
• Hang at arm’s size together with your arms straight, and your ankles crossed behind you.
• Without swinging or kipping, have interaction your core, glutes, and lats as you squeeze your shoulder blades collectively and pull your chest to the bar.
• Pause, after which decrease your self again to a useless cling.
• Once you are able to do three units of 10 reps, transfer on. But proceed to follow chest-to-bar pull-ups whereas engaged on new abilities.

Tip: “At this stage, it’s important to also be working on the ‘push‘ feature that you use in a muscle-up,” Watters says.

He suggests incorporating push-ups into your coaching plan, together with leverage push-ups, wherein you decrease your self all the best way to the bottom and briefly elevate your arms earlier than pushing up into plank with a purpose to remove any momentum from the motion.

“Start from the floor position to halfway up, then lower yourself back to the ground. This is the hardest part of the push, which is why we emphasize it,” he says.

Step 4: Triceps dip

• Grab the handles of a dipping station and bounce or step as much as the beginning place: toes off the ground, arms straight, and ankles crossed. (To make the motion simpler, you may loop a big resistance band throughout the handles and place your knees on it.)
• Keeping your forearms vertical and elbows tucked in (not flared), permit your torso to lean ahead as you decrease your physique till your elbows kind a few 90-degree angle.
• Reverse the motion, returning to the beginning place. Once you are able to do three units of 10 reps, transfer on.

Step 5: Kip swing

• Grab a pull-up bar with an overhand grip that’s barely wider than shoulder-width.
• Hang at arm’s size together with your arms straight and your legs straight and collectively.
• Assume a hollow-body place: have interaction your core and lats to flex (spherical) your backbone and tilt your pelvis again (tuck your tailbone).
• Use the shoulders to thrust your chest ahead and arch your backbone, permitting your legs to swing behind you.
• Use your shoulders, lats, and core to swing again right into a hollow-body place and start to tug up in the identical method you do for chest-to-bar pull-ups.
• Once you’re in a position to full three units of 10 reps of kip swings throughout which your chest meets the extent of the bar, progress to a full muscle-up.

Tip: Make certain you’re utilizing your shoulders, not your hips, to generate the swing.

Step 6: Muscle-up

• Grab a pull-up bar with an overhand grip that’s barely wider than shoulder-width.
• Hang together with your arms straight and your core and glutes engaged.
• Initiate a kip swing: ranging from a hollow-body place, use the shoulders to thrust your chest ahead and arch your backbone. Then, use your shoulders, lats, and core to swing again right into a hollow-body place. (Once you’re behind the bar, lean again and pull down on the bar to get as excessive as you may.)
• Squeeze your shoulder blades collectively and pull your hips towards the bar. Once your stomach makes contact with the bar, rotate your wrists ahead, lean ahead, and straighten your elbows in order that your torso is above the bar.
• Hold, then decrease right into a useless cling place.