Back in Febuary 2009, I got my set of gymnastics rings from Ringtraining.com [affiliate link]. That was at the time when I started thinking that I would like to be able to do a muscle-up. Some of you may remember my post on Greg Glassman's journal article:
"The muscle-up is astonishingly difficult to perform, unrivaled in building upper body strength, a critical survival skill, and most amazingly of all, virtually unknown. This movement gets you from under things to on them. Though containing a pull-up and a dip, its potency is due to neither. The heart of the muscle-up is the transition from pull-up to dip - the agonizing moment when you don’t know if you’re above or below."[caption id="attachment_607" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="Me at the transition point of a muscle up"]
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My own muscle-up story
Anyway, as you can see from the above picture, after about six months of trying, I'm now able to do a muscle-up. It was an interesting experience - I had tried a few times over the months to do them, without success. I could only manage a jumping muscle-up which really doesn't count. But the other day, the `30 muscle-ups for time' WOD came up and I thought - ok, time to practice muscle-ups again - maybe I can get one today! Turned out I got not just one, but managed to do all 30! It took me a long time, but hey I did it. The fascinating part for me is that I hadn't been trying especially hard to get it. It had been at least 6 weeks since I'd last even attempted the movement, and all of a sudden I could do it. I certainly wasn't practicing it every day. This is a bit similar to how I got my first kipping pull-up. I was struggling with the movement for some time, then took a complete break from CrossFit and any kind of pull-up for a period of three weeks (I was on vacation in Ireland with family). When I got back to training, suddenly I was able to kip!
What I think made the difference for me
1) Full ROM strength
Obviously, you need to have a strong pull-up and a strong dip to be able to complete the muscle-up. When working ring dips, especially with intensity, it can be difficult to achieve full range of motion. I see lots of my peers not going deeply enough and of course I've been guilty of this at times myself. However, with the muscle-up, strength through the full range of motion is critical. You are going from a very deep dip, and you need to be strong there. The same thing applies to the pull-up, but I think in general people are getting decent ROM with their pull-ups.
In addition to full ROM, I was working a bunch of weighted pull-ups and dips over the months. I found a 5x5 of dips/pull-ups with weight starting at a 1 pood kettlebell to be beneficial. Beast Skills mentions going up to 100 lbs - while I'm sure thats going to give you awesome strength, that kind of weight definitely wasn't required for me.
2) Shoulder flexibility
While the muscle-up needs a lot of strength, it also requires quite some shoulder flexibility. Shoulder flexibility has been an issue of mine for some time, especially with overhead lifts, but even in the power clean and front rack positions. It was literally quite painful for me to perform a power clean and the front rack used to be impossible. Previously, every time I attempted the muscle-up, my shoulders would be pretty sore. On the Beast Skills Muscle Up tutorial page there is a note to the effect that the muscle-up is very demanding on shoulder flexibility:
"Shoulder issues can definitely arise from the muscle-up due to the hyper-extension of the shoulder at the top of the movement. If you have problems doing dips in general, but especially low dips, then watch yourself carefully. You may have to forego the skill entirely."However, I went to see Kelly Starrett for physical therapy a few times, and this was an enormous help. I believe that the same improvements in flexibility which now enable me to comfortably execute power cleans, hold the front rack, and work overhead presses - also gave me enough room to perform the muscle-up. 3) Technique Finally, the muscle-up is a highly technical movement. I guess it comes more naturally to some people than others. I certainly didn't find it easy. Although the cues are easy to remember - keep your elbows tight, push through the 'window' - it does NOT feel easy when you attempt. No doubt its different for everybody, but the most important things for me were to figure out how to grip the rings relatively comfortably, and then to keep your hands pretty close. Unfortunately theres no really easy way to learn other than trying. Like I said, my own experience was that I didn't do any practice for weeks then all of a sudden I could do it. Anyway, I'm very proud to join the ranks of the CrossFit KMSF muscle-up club and I hope this info is of use to someone! Train hard, be patient, and you'll get it.
Niall O'Higgins is an author and software developer. He wrote the O'Reilly book MongoDB and Python. He is the co-founder of BeyondFog, Inc which makes Strider Brilliant Continuous Deployment. Strider is a hosted Continuous Integration & Deployment service for Node.JS and Python.
