Learn how to ace your muscle-ups.
If the squat is “king of exercises,” over all then the muscle up has to be king of calisthenics moves.
This is one of the most advanced bodyweight-only movements that you can master. Used in calisthenics training, CrossFit gyms or gymnastics, not only are muscle-ups a fantastic way to build strength in everything from grip to core engagement, but they look pretty darned impressive.
Often muscle-ups take years of hard work, sweat, and dedication to perfect. But don’t despair. There’s a starting point for everyone.
Whether you’re just starting on your bodyweight workout journey or you’re a calisthenics enthusiast looking for an added challenge, let’s take a look at some of the steps that will help you ace your full muscle-ups.
Muscle-Up Breakdown
If you’re reading this, you know what a muscle-up is (well, duh, you’re learning how to do one), but are you familiar with the processes that go on in your body when you train for this major move?
Muscle-ups are one of the most impressive-looking exercises you can try.
Maybe you’ve seen the fittest-looking guy at your gym ripping through sets.
Or if you’ve walked by an outdoor gym or calisthenics park, chances are there are a few strong athletes you may have seen who look like pros doing this bodyweight exercise.
It looks intimidating, but don’t let muscle-ups scare you too much.
Once you get to know the technique, you can work up to muscle-ups. And if you’re not quite there yet in terms of strength, take pride in being able to at least get comfortable performing one of the lead-up progressions.
Before giving you a starting point to begin learning this exercise, let’s unpack which muscles are at work in a muscle-up and how they drive this explosive power move.
What Muscles Do Muscle-Ups Work?
The name speaks for itself. Muscle-ups are a great exercise because they target so many muscle groups all at once.
Latissimus Dorsi
Your lats help you move your arms and shoulders. Connecting to the back, the latissimus dorsi are some of the biggest muscles in your body.
Triceps
These muscles on the backs of your arms help you extend your elbows. These are important during the “up” part of the muscle-up.
Once you get into a pull-up position below your bar, you’ll need to explode up, pushing through the triceps to get your arms fully extended to balance over the top of the bar.
Abdominals
The abs, including your Rectus abdominis, (aka six-pack) keep your organs and spine stable. These muscles help your posture and balance and connect your upper and lower body. Reducing abdominal fat is one of the best ways to keep your organs healthy and lessen your risk of disease.
Deltoids
These shoulder muscles help you stabilize your shoulders and move your arms. To hold your weight up, stable deltoids can make all the difference.
Pectoralis Major
Your chest muscles help you move your shoulders and pull your arms across your body.
Biceps
These inner-arm muscles help flex your elbows and rotate your arms. The pull-up portion of a muscle-up uses mostly back and bicep strength.
How to: Muscle Up Progression on Bar
So how do you work your way up to a full bar muscle-up?
Let’s get familiar with a few of the earlier steps you can take.
Pull-Ups
Before you get a muscle-up, you’ll need to ace your pull-ups. For a perfect pull-up:
- Grab a high bar in an overhand position with your hands slightly wider than shoulder-width apart.
- Using the strength of your back (mostly the lats), pull your weight up towards the bar, keeping your body stable.
- If you’re not able to fully pull your weight up, use a box to support you. You can also take some effort out of this move using a resistance band.
- If that’s too hard for you, start with simply dead-hanging to get comfortable holding your full weight up on the bar. See if you can hang for one minute straight.
Hollow-Body Hang
A hollow-body hang is just like a dead hang, only with more core engagement to hollow out the center of your body and using protracted scapulae (widening and pushing your shoulder blades out).
This move is a great way to stabilize your back and abs. Hint: you’ll need this kind of mid-body stability when it comes to keeping your movement in a straight line to drive yourself up.
- Grab a high bar in an overhand position with your hands slightly wider than shoulder-width apart.
- Contract to hollow out your core: keep your abs strong, back slightly rounded and shoulders wide.
- Think about bracing your abs and keeping your legs from swinging.
- See how long you can hold yourself up on the bar.
- Aim for 3 reps of 1-minute holds.
Hip-to-Bar Kip
Here’s where things get a little tricky. Training a hips-to-bar progression in a muscle-up helps you understand the “explosion” component of your muscle-up.
This may take you some more time to learn than the other parts of the progression. It’s pretty mentality taxing, but motivation and mind-to-muscle connection are essential if you want to do this move properly and safely.
First:
- Jump up to a hollow-back hanging position on a high bar. Your hands should be just over shoulder-width apart.
- Quickly swing your hips forward to arch your back. This will help create the kipping motion that will drive your hips up toward the bar.
- Just as quickly, swing back to the hollowed-out position, continuing to drive your upper body backward and hips up, attempting to get them close to your bar.
- Drop back to the ground, or continue to swing the hips up for reps.
- Repeat as needed.
Keep in mind that this part of the progression is FAST.
Make sure you understand the shape your body should make in a hollow-back hold before attempting this move. Using sloppy technique when you introduce kipping into your movement can force your body to drop too much weight into your arms and shoulders, yanking too hard on the joints.
It’s a recipe for hurting yourself if you’re not practicing clean reps with technique, so don’t introduce this progression too early in your training.
Many athletes, even those who are experienced with calisthenics stay at the earlier stages of a muscle-up for at least a few months before attempting this move.
High-Bar Dips
Dips are the “finisher” in your muscle-up, so to speak. If we think of this move as a pull-up that transitions to a dip, you’re driving yourself straight up from the bar at the end of a muscle up.
To train your straight-bar tricep dips:
- Start with your arms shoulder-width apart and extend straight, using an overhand grip. This brings you to the top of the movement, high up on your bar.
- Slowly bend into your elbows to lower your body down towards the bar.
- Continue to descend in this movement until your elbow hits 90 degrees. Keep your elbows pointed straight behind you. This will help stabilize your movement so you don’t injure your shoulders.
Try to work through all of these progressions any time you want to practice your muscle-ups. Although you may not think it’s important to work through the foundational movements as often once you advance, it’s still a good idea to keep practicing tricep dips and pull-ups.
Don’t be discouraged, no matter what stage of progression you’re in.
If you find the progressions here too tough, try some regressions until you master the foundational moves. Instead of pull-ups, start with dead hangs or assisted pull-ups. Try assisted dips, using your feet or equipment to take some effort out of your move.
To prevent injuries, it’s essential to focus on building your strength before you muscle up. Otherwise, you’re looking at a recipe for injury or disappointment.
FAQ:
Q: Why are muscle-ups so hard?
The difficulty in muscle-ups lies in the fact that you have to muster up some explosive power to push yourself out of an already hard move.
The initial pull-up is a challenge and gravity works against you as you aim to drive up into a muscle-up. You have to explode out of a hanging position that is very hard to push powerfully from, especially without overusing your momentum and swinging your body.
Q: Are ring or bar muscle-ups easier?
Most athletes find bar muscle-ups easier and ring muscle-ups harder. That’s because ring muscle-ups, as you see in pro gymnastics are unstable.
Bars stay put. Rings do not. Once you try to pull your weight up, you may notice your rings slipping around and going all over the place.
Using rings means you need to cultivate more forearm strength to keep your body still.
Q: How strong do you need to be to do a muscle-up?
Although there’s no exact strength measure you need to be able to do to perform a muscle-up, generally, you’ll want to have mastered doing sets of 10 reps (at least 3–4 sets per gym session) with pull-ups before attempting this move.
Q: Is the muscle-up a functional movement?
For most people, no. For rock climbers, it could be. If you also enjoy sports like bouldering or climbing, learning to pull your weight up like in a muscle-up may make sense as part of a training program.
That being said, muscle-ups are a cool skill to have since most of us don’t perform any type of similar movements while we go about our days.
Q: Does being able to lift a lot help you do muscle-ups?
Not necessarily. Although being a good weightlifter will likely make you overall stronger, muscle-ups are a skill more than a functional training exercise. Strength training doesn’t specifically benefit muscle-ups.
Some lean athletes can crank out muscle-ups in their sleep, and some big strong weightlifters would struggle to do a muscle-up at all, simply because they aren’t training to lift their bodyweight in the same way.
Q: What’s the difference between pull-ups and muscle-ups?
Think of a pull-up as the first part of a muscle-up. Pull-ups allow you to lift your weight, holding your body up with bent arms as you hover under a pull-up bar.
In a muscle-up, you’ll need to push up and OVER the bar. A pull-up works your back and bicep strength. Muscle-ups are kind of like a hybrid move that comprises a pull-up to a straight-armed dip.
Although pull-ups themselves are a fantastic way to build strength and take incredible skill, muscle-ups work more muscles in one go.
Big Picture
Not only will muscle-ups help you get strong, this calisthenics move is seriously impressive.
The bodyweight-only move basically breaks down into a pull-up toa high-bar dip.
Once you’ve gotten comfortable with supporting your bodyweight on a pull-up bar, start training progressions like the hollow-body hang, hip-to-bar kipping and finally a full muscle-up.
Training pull-ups and dips independently will also help you get strong for your muscle-ups. You should continue to maintain your pull-up and dip technique and practice them for multiple reps, even if you don’t want to muscle up.
Remember to always take proper recovery time after training muscle-ups. Full body stretches, ice baths, foam, rolling, or innovative techniques like muscle scraping can all be good ways to help your muscles recover and rebuild.
Are you interested in expanding your calisthenics toolkit? If you’d like a more grounded high-skill move than the muscle-up, get to know how to perform a full planche.
If you work out in a gym, now’s the perfect time to focus on targeting other skills this year. Maybe you’d like to focus on chest training by improving your bench press or push-ups.
Or if you want to train like a real pro, we’ve broken down the Herschel Walker workout. Find out what it takes to do thousands of push-up reps.
Muscle your way up to the top. Flex offers an all-in-one workout platform to help you learn new exercises, visualize your fitness journey and keep all your PRs in one place.
We’ve made it simple to work on customized fitness plans or to introduce a little friendly competition to your fitness community by sharing exercises with your friends. Try it for free through the Flex fitness app.
