Explosive Pull Up training for Muscle Up (with video)

Hi guys.

I started doing explosive pull ups on the high bar to train the first steps for my muscle ups.
I recorded some parts of yesterday's training to see how (bad) my explosive pull ups are.
Can you give me some tips on the explosive pullups please?
As you can see on the video (video is in slowmotion) I touch the bar to my chest, but my elbows are pointing to the ground and I don't pull myself up in the right way and the right time so I'm actually pull up myself up straight to the bar...
 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEj3JyBz_Vg

Is your goal a kipping MU on a bar, or a (slower) ring MU?

After getting my slow ring MU, I was able to do kipping MU's on the bar without training for them, but I doubt the opposite would be the case.

For the same reason, I'm not very knowledgable om the kipping ones, but if you want to get the slow ones, check out russian dips and/or FritsMB's basketball approach.

EDIT: In any case, if you want to get the kipping MU, you'll need to initiate with a forward swing of the body. When you're at the top of the swing, pike slightly and when he body begins to travel backwards again, you initiate the explosive pullup, while kicking out of the pike. This should end with you in a bottom-of-dip position at the top of the bar.

Looks really good, I think you can get the muscle-up next month. Have you tried a false-grip muscle-up?

Having learnt the explosive bar MU (with no kip, legs kept vertically down) before the slow bar MU (legs kept vertically down), I can tell you that the slow MU route is definitely the way to go.

Having said that, if you want maximise the explosiveness of your MU, you will need to train your explosive pull-ups. After doing 5 slow bar MUs, doing an explosive MU felt very easy, however my explosiveness was lower than before.

A few tips for your explosive pull-ups:
Maintain a tight/rigid body throughout the explosive pull-up.
Don't allow your legs to go forwards like that.

Allow a small swing before pulling up at first, but remove it asap.

Ravn said:

Is your goal a kipping MU on a bar, or a (slower) ring MU?

After getting my slow ring MU, I was able to do kipping MU's on the bar without training for them, but I doubt the opposite would be the case.

For the same reason, I'm not very knowledgable om the kipping ones, but if you want to get the slow ones, check out russian dips and/or FritsMB's basketball approach.

EDIT: In any case, if you want to get the kipping MU, you'll need to initiate with a forward swing of the body. When you're at the top of the swing, pike slightly and when he body begins to travel backwards again, you initiate the explosive pullup, while kicking out of the pike. This should end with you in a bottom-of-dip position at the top of the bar.

I don't have gymnastic rings yet. I will buy them soon. But first of all I want to be able to a muscle up on the bar. Or is it odd to learn a Kip MU on the bar first instead of a (slower) MU on rings?

Yaad Mohammad said:

Looks really good, I think you can get the muscle-up next month. Have you tried a false-grip muscle-up?

Thanks. I hope it will within a few weeks. Haven't tried a fals-grip MU yet... I couldn't even ''hang'' in a false grip position when I tried the fals- grip pullup last week (hadn't the strength in my fore arms and wrists). Is the false-grip alot easier in my position? May be you have tips or topics you find benificial for training false grip on the bar?

Jono said:

Having learnt the explosive bar MU (with no kip, legs kept vertically down) before the slow bar MU (legs kept vertically down), I can tell you that the slow MU route is definitely the way to go.

 

Having said that, if you want maximise the explosiveness of your MU, you will need to train your explosive pull-ups. After doing 5 slow bar MUs, doing an explosive MU felt very easy, however my explosiveness was lower than before.

 

A few tips for your explosive pull-ups:

Maintain a tight/rigid body throughout the explosive pull-up.

Don't allow your legs to go forwards like that.

Allow a small swing before pulling up at first, but remove it asap.

Slow MU sounds nice, but HARD, isn't it? Even if someone can't do one MU with a kip.. Tips are welcome.

The point is that you can spend time learning it with a kip first, and then spend time afterwards learning the slow version. Or you could just learn the slow version, and more or less get the kip version as a side effect. The slow version is somewhat hard on rings, but relatively easy compared to other strength elements. It is way harder on a bar though.

A kipping MU on a bar is mostly technique, not a lot of strength involved.

i don't think that you really need explosive movements until you have mastered the foundation pulling movements the reason in my opinion is that explosive movements can be stressful for the joints. so in order to exert maximum power on a safe movement you need a great basic strength with a good extra weight or difficult leverage. the force you can product can be the same if the acceleration is constant and the overweight/leverage increase or the leverage/overweight are constant and the acceleration increase. you can produce the same amount of strength, but the tension that your tendons can support is the same...so increase your joints health with basic exercises gives to you a safe foundation for more accelerated/explosive movements...

for the rest i suppose you have mastered the RC movements that are a solid pre reqs to approach muscle up work.

i don't like explosive or kipping muscle up- there is no specific teaching in my gym for that movement cause is not recognized in gymnastic and is not really useful...strict muscle up builds up strength between pull and dip that is the biggest gap for the people...explosive movements don't focus on that...and this is the limit of this movement

but is just my opinion!

A ring MU is completely different from a bar MU. Some people find a ring MU easier than a bar MU, and some the exact opposite. Now I myself never used false-grip when doing bar muscle-ups, I just started off doing it with kip and started slowly to lose the kip. I personally think that a slow ring MU isn't that hard, it just requires some gripping strength, which is not that hard to acquire. My gripping strength is not that strong, I can barely hang in a false-grip on the rings without chalk, but I can do a pretty slow MU, with piking that is, hehe.

If you are aiming to get one of those kipping or non-kipping fast MUs, then you have enough strength and power already to do it. You just need to learn the technique. It's just a matter of sliding your palms up once you are done with the pull-up to switch to support grip from hang grip and then dipping. It requires like no transition strength since you have a lot of momentum to bypass the transition.

Yaad Mohammad said:

A ring MU is completely different from a bar MU. Some people find a ring MU easier than a bar MU, and some the exact opposite. Now I myself never used false-grip when doing bar muscle-ups, I just started off doing it with kip and started slowly to lose the kip. I personally think that a slow ring MU isn't that hard, it just requires some gripping strength, which is not that hard to acquire. My gripping strength is not that strong, I can barely hang in a false-grip on the rings without chalk, but I can do a pretty slow MU, with piking that is, hehe.

You ended up building the strength you needed over time, probably with the negatives.

Based on my experiences training people, it is faster to work specifically on false grip pull ups and russian dips, and to do some super slow negatives after a warm up, as a little fun before the important work begins.

If someone specifically focuses on slowly lessening the kip, and also on going as slow as possible on the way down, they will get there eventually. Even so, a more structured approach leads to better results.

I have not done fast MU for 5 months, just strict, slow ring/bar MUs 1-2x per week. Yesterday I decided to try some fast MU and here is the result:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WqXS7-kWb6o

Point: If you're going to train MU, train the slow MU and the regular kind will just be for messing around.

g

acrobatlegend said:

Good job. 

 

The only thing holding you back is your grip. Take a look at my video of me doing a muscle up. Look at my over-grip, that I take as soon as I jump up on the bar. Combined with that speed you have in your video, the muscle up will be much easier. I used to be where you are now, and the grip made all the difference. 

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LzOaYxN4SNE

That's a false-grip muscle-up, of course it's easier but your ultimate goal should be doing a muscle-up without the false-grip.

Yaad Mohammad said:

That's a false-grip muscle-up, of course it's easier but your ultimate goal should be doing a muscle-up without the false-grip.

Why? I mean, you can start without and over-grip (aka false-grip), but halfway through the muscle up you WILL have to rotate your wrists up anyways. 

Holding the over-grip takes a lot of forearm strength imo. 

False grip VS no false grip is kind of a silly debate...

f you're going to go there, they are quite different. Just look at the wrist positon in each... you have to have much more flexible wrist extensors to do the false grip from a dead hang, and you have to have pretty strong flexors as well. 

In order to transition into the false grip at the transition, there's technique AND strength involved, but the strength aspect is really a different thing than holding the false the whole time and I do not think that you would want to focus exclusively on either one, but if there was ONE to focus on it would be the false grip, because you're going to use it all the time in advanced ring strength so you better get a strong one now.

For funsies, go for the no-false, and I'm sure there are some wrist and hand strength benefits to it as well, but i don't think that you're going to see a magical transformation just from only doing no-false muscle ups.

Try to remember that the muscle up is pretty much just a way to get on top of the rings so that you can do some real work...

If the wrists aren't touching the bar/rings then it's not a false grip. 

The explosive MUs are very easy even without a false grip. If we are talking about a slow no-false grip MU then it is significantly harder than a slow false grip MU. Slow false grip MUs will be very easy for you if you can do a slow no-false grip MU.

An explosive muscle up is not really a muscle up, it's pretty much a kip variation. You miss the entire transition, and that's the only part of a muscle up that is different than a dip or a pull up