Tips on learning a bar muscle-up

 

 

Here are some tips on how to do a bar muscle-up. Once you have mastered the bar muscle-up then you can easily transition into the ring muscle-up. These pictures were taken during a ring muscle-up workout.

Swing. The basic of the muscle-up is the swinging of the body from behind the bar to in front of the bar. This is what makes the muscle-up so elusive as it is a complex and similar to the Olympic weightlifting moves, but in reverse.

Pull-up. Grab the bar and you then let your body swing freely and when it is at the farthest/highest point you pull-up as explosively as you can to your chest.

Kip. From the explosiveness of the pull-up, your body will naturally integrate your lower body. So the idea is that your body will bend at the hips. Instead of hanging straight down your legs will swing up forward. The stronger you are, the less you will swing your legs up. Even super strong athletes move the legs. To explain why lifting the legs up helps you, try visualize running up stairs. When you swing your arms up while climbing, the momentum helps you up. Same thing here, except with the legs.

Transition. So the better you are at pull-ups, the less of an actual transition there will be. Master the chest to bar pull-up to pull as low on your chest as possible. But for starters, after the violent  pull, you flick your arms and end up on top of the bar.

Dip. Basic dipping strength is needed to finish the move.