Striving for the "Perfect Bar Muscle-up"

[Jono]

Hey everyone. I come from the "calisthenics" background that some of you will have know of. In calisthenics, the "ideal" muscle-up is done with vertically straight legs, no kipping, speed, a smooth transition, and chest not touching the bar. The main part to highlight is speed; being able to pull as explosively/high as possible means less of the transition has to be ploughed through, making the move artificially easier than it really is.

My future goal is to do 20 ideal calisthenics muscle-ups. To achieve this goal with little to no transition strength would mean that I'd need to be able to do 20 explosive pull-ups, which'd be hard to say the least, at least in my opinion.

My theory: Instead, if I build solid transition strength, I'll still be able to perform a good calisthenics muscle-up even when my pulling power is decreasing. What do you guys think of my theory?

Below is my best calisthenics muscle-up so far, but now I'd like to take things more seriously and get stronger in the transition phase as I think it'd benefit me in my above goal. Plus, getting a gymnastically better slow muscle-up is a big bonus!

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I'm aware that the gymnastically perfect bar muscle-up is done slowly with no forward lean, piking at the hips, etc, but I'm yet to see this on YouTube. Joshua pointed this out in one of his videos, too. The only exception being Andreas Aguilar on the rings.

My questions:

1) Is the move possible with the legs staying perfectly vertical? Piking at the hips is bad, I know, but whenever I see people do slow bar muscle-ups, their legs naturally come forward, so I thought it was impossible?

2) This is related to question 1. Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't putting legs into L-sit also make the move easier (balance and weight distribution)?

3) I purchased the digital version of BtGB a few weeks ago and tried to put the knowledge together towards my goal. Is this routine good for improving my muscle-up transition strength?

Workout:

1) 3x5 negative muscle-ups (resisting as much as possible) - at the moment, it's very hard to control.

2) 2x3 full transitions (slowly/smoothly as possible) - admittedly, my chest is supporting quite a bit of the weight (Joshua's straight bar dip progressions video recommended to start out like this, though).

3) 3x5 russian dips - I need to start doing them more controlled/slowly, though.

Any recommendations, other exercises, thoughts or criticisms needed!

4) Finally, will tricep strength gained from HeSPU negatives have a carry-over towards muscle-up transition strength?

Forgive me if this is a long read and in a funny order, but since purchasing BtGB a few weeks ago I've been thinking about a lot of things. Everything here is basically a list of my thoughts throughout a 3-week period.

Thanks.

[Rik de Kort]

1) Not unless you have monstrous grip. If your legs are straight, your centre of mass is behind the bar, which means that you get torque at the hands, like in a CTI. Legs have to come forward to keep your centre of mass under the bar.

2) No, not really. Putting the legs in an L pushes your centre of mass forward in front of the bar. You then automatically have to push a bit on the bar (like in a front lever) to keep centre of mass under the bar. So there's additional load on the shoulders.

3) Are you training anything else as well?

4) I don't know.

[Jono]

3) Are you training anything else as well?

Cheers for the reply.

-I do weighted pull-ups & dips, as well as train them for endurance, explosive pull-ups without kipping, etc.

-I'm starting the basic progressions for HeSPU (negatives and elevated pike push-ups).

-I'm going through the pull-up progressions in BtGB.

-I'm going through the dip progressions without rings as I don't have them (so, single bar, russian, bulgarian).

-I'm doing all of the FSPs starting from first progressions. It's been a month and I'm making great progress. I'm making sure I do everything perfect and achieve 60s holds before moving on. Following the 60s of working sets method.

That's about it.