How to do muscle-ups?
Muscle-ups is one of the most popular calisthenics exercises and the most fun. To learn the bar muscle-up you need both strength and technique. You want to build the explosive power needed to be able to pull high enough to throw your chest over the bar and then push up into the dip.
Do you want to learn the Muscle-up?
And we want to be able to do this with as little effort as possible. This is where the technical aspect of the muscle-up comes into play. If you are strong enough, you can pull yourself up. But if you also pair this with the correct technique, it will feel effortless. You will be flying over the bar.
In this article, I will go through several aspects of the muscle-up. We will be working on muscle-up technique as well as the strength needed for the muscle-up.
But don’t be fooled by how easy muscle-ups can seem to look. The easier it looks, the harder it is. And it’s often years in the making. But with the right programming, understanding as well as consistency, you will absolutely achieve the bodyweight muscle-up and eventually the strict muscle-up.
Muscle-up progression
In the context of muscle-ups, progression refers to the process of gradually increasing the intensity, complexity, or difficulty of the muscle-up. The goal of the muscle-up progression is to challenge the body in new ways that lead to increased strength and endurance.
In this article, you will learn all that you need to know to challenge the body, prevent plateaus, maintain motivation, and achieve long-term progress toward your muscle-up goal. However, it’s important to progress at a pace that is safe and manageable for your strength level and to prioritize proper form and technique over pushing yourself too quickly.
How difficult is the Muscle-up technique?
The muscle-up technique can be tricky to learn, but with these step-by-step instructions I will show you in this article, you will learn the muscle-up in no time! Let’s start and dive into the first part of the tutorial.
How do I grip the bar for the muscle-up?
There are two different ways you can grip the bar for muscle-ups.
Regular grip
The first kind of grip is what I call the regular grip. Here you just grab the bar without thinking too much about the grip.
You will hang more or less from the fingers so to speak. With this kind of grip, it is important to not have any friction on the bar. You want to be able to move your hands effortlessly around the bar, otherwise, you will most likely get stuck and fail the transition.
Overhand grip
The other kind of grip is what I call the overhand grip. In this grip, your knuckles are facing the sky and your palm is more or less on top of the bar. This grip requires more strength from your forearms to be able to keep this grip during your muscle-ups.
The transition becomes a little bit easier because you don’t have to rotate your wrists too much to get over the bar. Sometimes people even use chalk to keep the grip in place and don’t even move their grip during the transition. This requires a lot of strength and flexibility of your wrists.
How do I Muscle-up swing?
The second part of the muscle-up is the swing. The first thing you want to master when it comes to your bar muscle-up training is the swing and the pull-up timing. When you learn both of these techniques your muscle-ups will become so much easier.
I often see people swinging their legs to get momentum but the upper body remains still. This won’t help your muscle-ups. You want to swing the body as one piece by either relaxing your body from the waist down or tensing your lower body. You can experiment with both approaches and see which one feels best for you.
The first mistake I often see beginners make is not swinging the body as one piece.
Another mistake is that we are swinging too much. Swinging too much won’t translate well to bodyweight muscle-ups. Try working with less swing from the beginning the get the most out of your muscle-up training.
Pull-up timing for muscle-ups
Once you get the swing down you want to work on your pull-up timing. The two most common mistakes are pulling too early or too late. When you are pulling too early you will get stuck under the bar.
When you are pulling too late, more often than not, your chest will bounce off the bar and you won’t make the transition. You want to initiate the pull when you are on your backswing. This is a timing thing that you will need to practice a lot.
How to Muscle-up transition?
The muscle-up transition is one of the hardest parts of the muscle-up and is often the sticking point for a lot of us wanting to learn the muscle-up. Here I will go through a couple of key points to make you understand the muscle-up transition faster and easier.
Explosive pull-ups for muscle-ups
Lacking the strength to do explosive pull-ups will be the first reason you won’t make the muscle-up. To have an effortless transition you want to be able to pull the bar almost to your belly button. If you only have the strength to touch the bar under your chest, you won’t have time to rotate your wrists to be able to transition smoothly. So make sure you can touch the bar on your belly button before trying to do the muscle-up.
For most of us, building enough explosive strength needed for the muscle-up takes time. We often think that it is the transition that hinders us from achieving the muscle-up. But most of the time is our inability to pull the bar to the belly button or waist. Don’t get me wrong, it’s very good to have strength in the transition part of the muscle-up and to also have strong straight bar dips. But if you only have those two you won’t get over the bar in the first place.
Hands are sticking to the bar
The second transition mistake is that you are not able to rotate your hands due to a sticking bar or that you use chalk. This will make the transition harder and you are more likely to fail the transition. When first learning the muscle-up I would not recommend using chalk at all, the opposite. You want to have a smooth bar where your hands can rotate freely. This will make your transition much easier.
Not using your core
The third transition mistake is not using your core to help you with your transition. That’s why I like to give the tip of throwing your chest forward over the bar by using your core muscles. This will make the transition much easier. This is also known as the half muscle-up because we are not yet pushing up into the dip. But the pre-requisite is that you can pull high enough to be able to do the half muscle-up.
Chicken winging
The fourth transition mistake is teaching the body to chicken wing over the bar. That means throwing one arm over before the other to compensate for our lacking explosive strength. This can be hard to unlearn when you get stronger and is a high risk for injury so I would recommend going back a few steps and working on your explosive pull-up power instead.
Slow negative muscle-ups
Slow negative muscle-ups are a great way of strengthening the transition. They can be done with the assistance of resistance bands. Choose a resistance band that allows you to come down slowly through the transition. Try to resist coming down as much as you can and fight for that slow transition.
Jumping muscle-ups vs. banded muscle-ups
There are different ways of teaching the bar muscle-up. Here I will go through the two most popular ways of learning the muscle-up with the pros and cons of both approaches.
Is jumping muscle-ups good or bad?
One of the ways is the so-called jumping muscle-up. In this approach, you jump up into the muscle-up by either using a box or finding a lower bar. If you are in a situation where you don’t have access to resistance bands, this can be a good option.
But I wouldn’t recommend this approach over banded muscle-ups because of these 3 reasons:
Difficult to measure progress
First of all, it’s very hard to know how much progress you are making each week and month. The amount of force you are getting from your legs can vary a lot with every workout.
Access to equipment
Number two is that you must have access to either a box or a slightly lower pull-up bar which is not always the case.
Harder to use the correct technique
And number three is that it’s harder to work on the correct technique like your swing, your pull-up timing, and so on.
Muscle-ups with resistance bands
Start your muscle-up training with resistance bands and slowly build up your strength. You also don’t want to train the muscle-up like a one-rep max exercise. Use resistance bands that allow you to do around 5-8 repetitions in each set. This will also allow you to work on your technique and gain strength without working your joints too hard
Easy to track progress
With banded muscle-ups, it’s very easy to track your progress, and use thinner bands as you are getting stronger. It’s also easier to work on the right technique. The only downside with training with resistance bands is if you are using too much swing. This doesn’t mimic the bodyweight muscle-up well enough and the contrast will be too big when working with thinner bands and towards bodyweight muscle-up.
To fix this I always recommend decreasing your swing as much as you can. In this way, you are working on your technique as well as strength in the correct way.
To sum it up I would recommend using resistance bands for the fastest results but in the few cases where you don’t have access to resistance bands jumping muscle-ups can be an option, but mostly for strength and not technique progress.
To help you get your first muscle-up I made a free muscle-up checklist for you to use before every muscle-up workout as a reminder of the technique. This will make you learn the muscle-up much faster.
Straight bar dips for muscle-ups
The last part of the muscle-up is the straight bar dip. Having strong straight bar dips will help your muscle-ups a lot. Try to touch the bar under your chest every repetition. But even if you do normal dips on a parallel bar it will benefit your pushing strength for the muscle-up.
Strict muscle-ups VS kipping CrossFit muscle-ups
Strict muscle-ups is a powerful exercise. I was talking to a client yesterday about the muscle-up journey and how we often think that we first have to learn the CrossFit kipping muscle-up to eventually and gradually decrease the swing as we get stronger to finally reach the strict muscle-up.
But if your goal is the strict muscle-up, which means no kipping, minimal swing and momentum, and a clean transition, I would rather recommend training the strict muscle-up from the beginning. This means that you want to avoid trying to get over the bar with a lot of momentum and kipping. And you do this with the help of resistance bands.
When using resistance bands you can work on the correct technique and build up the real strength that’s needed for the strict muscle-up. But you must be patient, it will take whatever time it takes.
There are 3 reasons why I think you should, as a beginner, start to train the muscle-up as strictly as possible from the beginning.
Use the strict muscle-up technique from the beginning
The swing and kip muscle-up or the so-called CrossFit muscle-up uses a completely different technique where you rely a lot on hip drive and momentum. It doesn’t make sense to first teach your body this technique for then later on unlearn it in the pursuit of the strict muscle-up.
CrossFit muscle-ups are more prone to injuries
The risk of injury is much higher when we swing and kip a lot because we have less control, especially in the beginning stages of our muscle-up journey. It’s better to use resistance bands that will help you do a controlled more strict muscle-up for reps. After you achieved a couple of reps of strict muscle-ups and built a strong foundation, then it’s much safer to do kipping and swinging muscle-ups.
You will learn the Muscle-up Faster
And the third reason why I recommend you to train the strict muscle-up from the beginning is that you will reach your goal faster. It’s true that if you aim to just get over the bar at any cost, it will be faster to swing and kip a lot. But there is a much higher risk of injury and if your end goal is the strict muscle-up the journey will be longer.
And also to clarify. I don’t think its anything wrong with CrossFit kipping muscle-up, but I see it as a separate exercise from the strict muscle-up. If your goal is the strict muscle-up I am just saying there is a faster and safer way of reaching your goal.
The muscle-up in 5 simple steps
A lot is going on when doing bar muscle-ups and I have found it beneficial to teach the technique in slow motion to understand the different parts more clearly.
- I like to grip the bar a little wider than shoulder-width apart.
- Use a small swing forward.
- Initiate the explosive pull-up with your elbows facing forward when you are about to swing back.
- You then throw your chest over the bar and push up into the dip.
- You want to control your descent and make your muscle-ups look almost identical with every repetition.
Muscle-up program for beginners
This is how the program works: The goal is to do 5 muscle-ups for three sets with each band combination that I will show you. Always rest for 5 min between each set to be fully recovered.
I would recommend training muscle-ups 1-2 times/week. But remember, getting 5 muscle ups for three sets with each band combination will take weeks and months to achieve, BUT, it’s worth it, so don’t rush. Just work yourself down band by band and eventually, you will have your first muscle up with good technique. This is how you start!
Begin your muscle up journey by working with the green and the purple power band until you can do 5 reps for 3 sets. Remember, this can take weeks and months to achieve depending on your strength level.
When you achieve that without breaking a set you move on to the next combination which is the green and the black power band. Same here, work towards getting 5 reps for three sets.
Watch the video for more instructions:
Can I train muscle-ups every day?
A common mistake is overtraining muscle-ups. Everyone who sets their focus on achieving the muscle-up becomes a little bit obsessed and it is easy to get into the mindset of wanting to learn the muscle-up in a few weeks.
This often leads to overuse injuries that will slow down your progress a lot. It actually took me several months to heal from the overuse injuries from wanting to train muscle-ups every day.
But in reality, for most of us, it will take at least a couple of months if not up to a year to achieve the muscle-up.
The sweet spot for training muscle-ups is two times per week. Anything more than that won’t really benefit your progress.
We all start our muscle-up journey from different levels and that will play a big role in how fast we unlock it. But I had clients that could do 20 pull-ups but still struggled for months with the explosive power needed for the muscle-up.
My client Rebecca Learning the muscle-up
Learning the bar muscle-up can be hard. My client Rebecca has a lot of training experience and has been doing CrossFit for a couple of years so she has a really good base to start practicing the muscle-up more strictly.
Warm up
It can be a good compliment to the more heavily kipping CrossFit style muscle-up. As always, it’s really important to warm up before your muscle-up workout to reduce any risk of injury, especially your shoulders and arms.
Straight bar dips
The first thing I did was to ask Rebecca to try some straight bar dips. Having strong straight bar dips is one of the keys to a strong muscle-up. This was the first time she ever tried them but because she had strong push-ups she could do them quite easily.
CrossFit swing vs. calisthenics swing
Then I asked Rebecca to show me the way she has been practicing the swing part of the muscle-up. And because she has been doing CrossFit she uses the CrossFit technique and it’s nothing wrong with that. But today I wanted to show her how I teach muscle-up swing which means relaxing the body from the chest down or tensing the body slightly, swinging the body as one piece.
Explosive pull-ups is key
The next step is the explosive pull-up. You want to use a resistance band combination that allows you to pull the bar to at least under your chest or preferably to your belly button or waist. Don’t be afraid to use several bands together when getting started. As you get stronger you will use fewer and fewer bands until you don’t need them anymore.
Pull up timing
After you work on the swing and the explosive pull-up you want to work on the pull-up timing and transition. A common mistake is to pull too early which will get you stuck under the bar. You want to initiate the pull-up when you are about to swing back. This will get you into the correct muscle-up path and will make the transition much easier.
Transition
The next step is the transition. Here you want to focus on pulling explosively when you are about to swing back and then throw your chest over the bar. Spend some time on this part of the muscle-up. Get a feeling for the timing and when to throw your chest over the bar. In this step, you don’t have to think about pushing up into the dip. Just focus on getting over and resting your stomach on the bar.
Putting everything together
Now you just have to put all the pieces together. The explosive pull-up, the timing, the transition and finally pushing up into the dip. When you have practiced this for a while you want to push up into the dip without resting on the bar during the transition. Or at least minimize the time by pushing up as soon as you are over the bar.
Rebecca did an amazing job and my prediction is that she will get the bodyweight bar muscle up sooner rather than later.
