Muscle Up
Trains the Lats.
- Equipment
- A pull-up bar or a suspension trainer
- Mechanic
- Compound
- Force
- Pull
- Level
- Intermediate
How to do it
- Hang from a bar or a pair of rings with a false grip if you can hold one — hands over the top rather than around.
- Set your shoulders down away from your ears and let the body settle.
- Pull explosively, driving the elbows down and back until your chest reaches the bar.
- As the chest arrives, roll the shoulders forward over the bar and drive the elbows behind you.
- Press out of the bottom of the dip until the arms are straight.
- Reverse it under control — lower into the dip, then back through the transition into the hang.
Common mistakes
- Attempting it without a high pull-up and a strong dip separately. The muscle-up is those two movements plus a transition, and the transition is the only part that is new.
- Pulling to the chin. The chest has to reach the bar for the shoulders to get over it; a chin-height pull leaves nowhere for the transition to start.
- Letting the body hang straight through the transition. Leaning back on the pull and then rolling forward is how the shoulders get over the bar; staying vertical means pulling straight into it.
- Dropping out of the top. Lowering through the transition under control is the half that builds it, and jumping off skips the part that makes the next repetition possible.