The muscle-up is an intermediate calisthenics exercise that combines strength and technique and lays the foundation for many calisthenics combinations and skills such as jumping on the bar. It enables you to get from underneath objects on top of them, which also makes it a crucial survival skill. Everything that you need to start learning the muscle up is a regular pull-up bar and an intermediate fitness level.
To learn how to muscle-up it is crucial to firstly possess enough strength, before focusing on the right technique. Since the muscle up consists of a pulling and a pushing motion, you need strength in the lats and biceps, but also in the shoulders and the triceps. Here are a few tests that you can make to find out if your strength suffices to learn the muscle up.
- 10 unbroken pull-ups
- 10 hanging leg raises
- 15 straight bar dips
These requirements should be met with excellent form and without breaks. If your form gets worse or you are not able to complete the full number of repetitions, you should first work on improving your strength by training basic body weight exercises before learning the muscle-up.
Now you’re ready to learn the proper technique for the muscle-up! To muscle up, you need a lot of momentum and therefore a different technique is required than for a normal pull-up.
You start hanging from the bar in a straight line and tense the whole body. Then you push yourself forward with one foot and swing forward as far as possible. You should now press your foot down and feel a little stretch in the chest before swinging back again. That way more momentum can be developed which makes it easier to get over the bar later.
Building on this exercise, the next step begins when you swing back again. As you do this, lift your legs into an L-sit and pull yourself up backward with your arms. This should bring your head up to bar level, but unlike the pull-up, your arms remain quite extended. Lifting the legs creates additional momentum which makes the muscle-up much easier.
The last step is to tilt forward over the bar at the highest point of the L-sit swing. It is crucial to keep the legs lifted in the meanwhile, otherwise, you can easily fall back before you make it over the bar. Now you simply perform a regular and the muscle-up is completed.
Leaning over the bar is certainly the most difficult part of the muscle up. If you are still not able to do the muscle-up, it is best to go back to the previous progressions. Try to pull the legs up more explosively which will create more momentum.
Congratulations if you were able to achieve the muscle-up! Now you can work on mastering this movement until you are able to do several repetitions or even straight muscle-ups. Using a resistance band will help you to do so since it carries part of your body weight which will enable you to perform more repetitions and to use the momentum more. Furthermore, weighted pull-ups are very recommendable to improve the overall pulling strength which is also beneficial for the muscle-up. Step by step you can try to use the legs less until you can perform the muscle-up in a straight line without using any momentum. This variation requires much more strength. Have fun training and also check the other Callisthenics skills on this website!
