Reverse MU

I think I may be viewing this particular exercise the wrong way. Is it simply a bicep curl up to a shoulderstand, or should I try to perform it like a muscle up, where I pull as high as I can, transition and keep pressing?

I've been training partial repetitions and barbell curls, but breaking the bottom quarter of the curl on the rings is extremely difficult (same deal with OAC I've found).

Is this the right way to go about it?

My understanding of the move is that it ends in a full ring handstand. So do the curl and then keep pressing through until you're into the HS.

Erik said:

I think I may be viewing this particular exercise the wrong way. Is it simply a bicep curl up to a shoulderstand, or should I try to perform it like a muscle up, where I pull as high as I can, transition and keep pressing?

I've been training partial repetitions and barbell curls, but breaking the bottom quarter of the curl on the rings is extremely difficult (same deal with OAC I've found).

Is this the right way to go about it?

I was doing this with cables until recently (can't do much until arm is healed) but that helped a LOT. I think that progressive work full ROM combined with SSC starting from shoulder stand and curling back up to shoulder stand with the ROM you have strength in is going to be the best way to go. If you're doing HSPU work at the same time then you should build the reverse MU with little problem.

Reverse muscle up is an inverted hang through to a HS, so freestanding HS pushup on rings is already a prereq. Luckiy, getting the HS pushup is a lot easier than building up the curl, or at least in my opinion.

I know I don't do this, but getting someone to spot you with reverse MU will help a lot. That way you can build strength through the weaker parts of the movement.

I normally practice lowering down as slow as possible from the shoulderstand. I can do this slow and controlled up to those last few degrees of elbow flexion.

With feet on straps the curl is definitely significantly easier and the HSPU.

Right now I'm mostly concerned with building the curl (the HS pushup is still pretty far out of my reach, so I'm building that seperately). I just noticed that it felt different when my hands were "in line" rather than out a few degrees, and that it would probably be different if you did a pull and transition rather than just a curl.

I'll try and think of a way to spot myself rather than using the straps, see what I come up with.

Spotting, unless you're very nearly there, won't be helpful. If your spotter is performing sumo squats just to get you up this is not going to do anything for your development and you have no business doing them. The balance, the rotation, the stabilization can not be duplicated with a spotter..especially if it's a heavy one. Something along the lines of a two finger spot at the shoulders may be beneficial.

Weights have no effect. Open chain kinetics vs Closed chain kinetics, one way street.

Slow quality eccentrics through the entire ROM is key. For me, I'm also starting to think that it may be beneficial to begin these at 90 and emphasize the last 90 degrees since every clip I analyze I lose quality very quickly after 135 degrees where my biceps start to fail. You may also develop or notice some deficiency and benefit from putting emphasized work on the specific angle where your biceps fail.

ts00nami said:

Spotting, unless you're very nearly there, won't be helpful. If your spotter is performing sumo squats just to get you up this is not going to do anything for your development and you have no business doing them. The balance, the rotation, the stabilization can not be duplicated with a spotter..especially if it's a heavy one. Something along the lines of a two finger spot at the shoulders may be beneficial.

Weights have no effect. Open chain kinetics vs Closed chain kinetics, one way street.

Slow quality eccentrics through the entire ROM is key. For me, I'm also starting to think that it may be beneficial to begin these at 90 and emphasize the last 90 degrees since every clip I analyze I lose quality very quickly after 135 degrees where my biceps start to fail. You may also develop or notice some deficiency and benefit from putting emphasized work on the specific angle where your biceps fail.

Thanks for the reply, ts00n! I kinda got it in my head that weights can help after weighted pull ups yielded such good results in my front lever development.

It's a little tough to work full ROM in my current situation right now (feet on the ceiling in a shoulderstand gives the most room, and that still leaves me in a candlestick on the floor before I get to the bottom), but if eccentrics are the way to go, then eccentrics it shall be.

Thanks again, everyone. This has been great info!

Yeah, I played a bit earlier this year trying to do negatives with my legs on the cables and just shoulderstand to invert hang.

Frickin hard. I was doing some shoulderstand to invert hang negatives as I got better quality out of them than HS to invert hang.

Erik said:

ts00nami said:

Spotting, unless you're very nearly there, won't be helpful. If your spotter is performing sumo squats just to get you up this is not going to do anything for your development and you have no business doing them. The balance, the rotation, the stabilization can not be duplicated with a spotter..especially if it's a heavy one. Something along the lines of a two finger spot at the shoulders may be beneficial.

Weights have no effect. Open chain kinetics vs Closed chain kinetics, one way street.

Slow quality eccentrics through the entire ROM is key. For me, I'm also starting to think that it may be beneficial to begin these at 90 and emphasize the last 90 degrees since every clip I analyze I lose quality very quickly after 135 degrees where my biceps start to fail. You may also develop or notice some deficiency and benefit from putting emphasized work on the specific angle where your biceps fail.

Thanks for the reply, ts00n! I kinda got it in my head that weights can help after weighted pull ups yielded such good results in my front lever development.

It's a little tough to work full ROM in my current situation right now (feet on the ceiling in a shoulderstand gives the most room, and that still leaves me in a candlestick on the floor before I get to the bottom), but if eccentrics are the way to go, then eccentrics it shall be.

Thanks again, everyone. This has been great info!

Weights sort of can, but barbells definitely will not. Dumbbells CAN be ok but cables are really your best bet, and they have to be really close together and low so that you can getr the same basic angles as the rings give. It is WAY harder than dumbbells. I can easily do 10 reps of curls with 50 lb dumbbells but barely 3 proper reps with the cables. It is MUCH more like the rings. It isn't perfect, but I do think that the ring-width or slightly wider cables at foot level will provide a progressive full ROM strengthening aspect that will work very well together with your partial ROM curls from shoulder stand on down.

Hmmm...well, the only cable machine that I can use now is way too far apart to be used effectively as a ring simulator, although if working one arm at a time works, I can do that.

I kinda feel like I've wasted my time doing all that work on the barbells now...but, I guess that's how you learn (or at least how I learn). Spend time doing something stupid until you learn how to not be stupid. :oops:

This'll mean a bit of a revision on how I use weights for supplementary work (mostly overhead pressing and curling), so here's hoping it'll have more of an effect than the last bit.

@sliz, idk man, why waste time poorly emulating an exercise instead of actually doing it? If you're not strong enough to do eccentrics with the straps then you really have no business working the skill yet.

ts00nami said:

@sliz, idk man, why waste time poorly emulating an exercise instead of actually doing it? If you're not strong enough to do eccentrics with the straps then you really have no business working the skill yet.

I'm totally on board with that, for sure. I didn't realize that what I said could be construed as supporting something like what you just mentioned, but it definitely can! I'm pretty sure that trying this before a slow controlled negative all the way to straight arms is a waste of time but I don't actually know. That didn't take too long to build in my experience, I don't know about yours.

So here was my total experience: Negatives were easy and I could probably do the first 90-100 degrees from the SS on down and back up for a few reps. I thought to myself: Hmm, my other rings simulation is working very well, I wonder if I should maybe try reverse MU as well! So I did, and I was very surprised at how hard it was. Keep in mind I was actually using my rings as the cable attachment, to keep the feeling the same. I DID find this to be very useful. I am rather upset that I won't be able to do this for quite a while because of this whole arm thing, this will be a rather large chunk of time lost, but an initial 4 weeks led to a noticeable increase in overall strength despite not working actual reverse MU at all. More control, negative felt significantly easier. I do think the two together would be much better but I wanted to assess the effectiveness of just the supplementary work. Couldn't make any claims if I was doing other work related to the movement, you know?