How to Do a Muscle Up

The muscle up is a pullup variant that make even the toughest pullup devotee gaze in amazement. A combination of skilled movement and pure strength, the muscle up works the entire body with the compound of a lat pulldown and a very intensive dip. Doing the muscle up takes some practice and training so follow these steps to get started.

Difficulty: Challenging

Instructions

1. Grip the bar. Your grip for the muscle up depends on the form of the exercise you do. If you do the muscle up on rings, or if you do a slow version of the movement, then you need to use a false grip. However, most people do a normal, fast muscle up which requires a regular pullup grip with your palms facing out.

2. Pull up behind the bar. To do a regular pullup you generally pullup from underneath the bar and then peep your chin over the bar at the top. With the muscle up, though, you need to bring your whole upper body over the bar. To do so, pull your self from behind the bar, using your chest, abs and shoulders to keep yourself offset from the bar as you pull the bar "down to you" as in a lat pulldown.

3. Kick your feet out. To get enough power to leverage yourself over the bar you need to kick out your knees or feet as you near the top phase of the pullup. Try piking your feet at the top as you pull yourself up and away from the bar. You will find that the piking allow a point to leverage off of for the second phase of the exercise.

4. Thrust over the bar. Immediately after you kicking your feet out (or simultaneous to the kick if you need more power), lean forward at the waist. Make sure your wrists are not hanging down but stay level with your knuckles. If you give a good enough kick and a fast lean from the waist you will end up in a dip position on the bar.

5. Raise up into the dip. Once you've got yourself over the bar you should be resting in a dip position with your elbows out behind you and your weight supported by your hands on top of the bar. Raise up, as in a regular dip, and then lower yourself back down. Instead of stopping at the dip down position, though, lower yourself down to the down position of the pull up to complete the muscle up.

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[castleclimber]

on 9/9/2009 I have written a muscle up guide on my blog which gives an in-depth training approach to the muscle up. It can be found here:

http://super-human-strength.blogspot.com/2009/09/muscle-up-training-guide.html