MUSCLE UP GUIDE THE MUSCLE UP GUIDE -1- Copyright by Calisthenics Concepts MUSCLE UP GUIDE INTRODUCTION The muscle up is an advanced bodyweight skill. It‘s one of the best upper body exercises out there since it combines a pull and a push movement. The muscle up requires a high amount of pull strength and body control. In comparison to a regular pull up, where you want to bring your chin over the bar or your chest to the bar, during a muscle up you want to make it above the bar. That means you need to accelerate your whole body weight enough that your chest passes the bar and you can press yourself up. This requires a lot of explosive strength conditioning and technique work. As with every other calisthenics skill, we can work progressive and achieve this skill step by step by breaking it down to easier regressions of the skill. This guide will introduce you to three levels of training: Level 1: Increasing Pull Ups Level 2: Muscle Up Technique / Pulling Height Level 3: Muscle Up -2- Copyright by Calisthenics Concepts MUSCLE UP GUIDE ABOUT THIS GUIDE About the author: This guide was written by Michael Schulz. With over 8 years of fitness experience and several national and international weighted calisthenics competition wins, Michael proved his hard training and programming knowledge. To share and spread this knowledge he designed several weighted calisthenics programs, shares his training & routines on Instagram and also offers a lot of tutorials on YouTube. So if you are interested in more quality content, make sure to follow & subscribe to his social media channels. This is designed to give you an overview of how to master the muscle up step by step. It will show you how to execute it properly and how to progressively train for it. This guide contains three levels. Each level will bring you a step closer to the muscle ups if you use the given programming and adjust it to your situation. Once you have mastered a level continue with the next one. Be aware that you might have to change your workout split for level 2 & 3 since they are very pull dominant and have nearly no push integration in comparison to level 1. We recommend a frequency of two for each level. This means you should train the given program two times a week. How long you need to master a level depends on your previous experience, strength and also height & weight, so don’t focus on time or compare your progress to others. The given programming aims for a holistic training approach. It has no guarantee to bring you the muscle up in the fastest amount of time, but we can guarantee you it will bring you towards the muscle up in a balanced, progressive and sustained way. The guide will not only cover all aspects of the muscle up but also give you some insides in programming techniques you also can transfer to other skills. Website: www.kingofweighted.com Instagram: www.instagram.com/micha_bln_ YouTube: www.youtube.com/c/MichaSchulz -3- Copyright by Calisthenics Concepts MUSCLE UP GUIDE MUSCLE UP TECHNIQUE 1.GRIP To make it over the bar I would recommend every beginner to start with a so-called semi-false grip. This means while we are hanging on the bar we rotate our wrists up in the direction of the bar. This has several advantages. The first one is, that this shortens the way your wrists have to rotate during the transition. The second one is, that it shortens the way you have to pull. The last one is related to the first one since it is way easier to get your center of mass over the bar with a semi-false grip. Also, it’s easier to pull in C-motion because your wrists are pointing already in the way your body has to take to once you are initiating the transition over the bar. -4- Copyright by Calisthenics Concepts MUSCLE UP GUIDE MUSCLE UP TECHNIQUE 2. WRIST TRANSITION To make it over the bar, the transition/rotation of your wrists is one of the key points. Once your chest passes the bar, you will have to make sure that you also rotate your wrists up by loosen the grip a little and rotating your elbows upwards. If you don‘t loosen your grip and keep your wrists in place this will most likeley result in a muscle up attempt that failed because your wrists will block your transition above the bar, since your elbows then have no chance to make it upwards then. -5- Copyright by Calisthenics Concepts MUSCLE UP GUIDE MUSCLE UP TECHNIQUE 3. TIMING If you want a smooth muscle up, you have to keep an eye on your pulling timing. To create the C motion we need, start the movement by swinging in a hollow body position on the bar. In the point of return of this movement, start pulling up. This will make sure that you are pulling in C motion which allows your upper body to pass the bar. If you don‘t have the right timing, you will also have the wrong distance to the bar. This can result in a too big distance as seen in the picture on the right, or in a too small distance. -6- Copyright by Calisthenics Concepts MUSCLE UP GUIDE MUSCLE UP TECHNIQUE 4. PULLING HEIGHT All the previous techniques won‘t help you if your back can‘t provide the force which is necessary to generate enough acceleration so you can pull your chest over the bar. This height is needed, so you can move your upper body over the bar and start pressing up in a straight bar dip. If you don‘t reach that height, you won‘t make it over the bar (as seen in the first picture). -7- Copyright by Calisthenics Concepts MUSCLE UP GUIDE EXPLANATIONS Reps Sets Iso Main Lift Assistance Exercise Break Rear Delts Vertical Pulling Horizontal Pulling The number of repetitions you have to perform a certain exercise The number of sets you have to repeat an exercise with the given reps Short for isolation - describing an exercise where you only train the targeted muscle The exercise where your main training focus is on Exercises that will help you to improve on your main lift ( & maybe physique goals) The pause between each set Another term for your posterior shoulder muscle Pulling exercises where you pull yourself vertically up or a weight vertically down Pulling/rowing exercises where you pull yourself up horizontal or pull a weight horizontal towards your body -8- Copyright by Calisthenics Concepts MUSCLE UP GUIDE PROGRAMMING LEVEL 1: Increasing Pull Ups To be able to do the muscle ups you will need a solid foundation of strength. It’s always not very accurate to set requirements for a skill, but it will give you an orientation when you can start to focus on a specific skill. For muscle ups this imaginary border is around 10 pull ups (& 10 dips) But since the pull ups are the more important, we will focus on pull ups. So if you masterd around 10 clean pull ups (& dips), you can start to focus on muscle up specific training. Exercises: To increase pull ups , the most important exercise is: pull ups. So your training should start with pull ups. You should be training them at least 2x a week. But your ability to do quality pull ups will be limited to a few sets. That is where assistance exercises come in, which you can train to assist your training for the main lift, in our case the pull ups. The second main part of the movement is the pushing part. That’s why also pushing exercises will be part of the training. A training could look like this (see also workout table). Main Lift 1 Pull Ups Assistance Exercise 1 Vertical Pulling (Lat Pull Machine, Assisted Pull Ups, Negative Pull Ups, Jumping Pull Ups, Chin Ups, etc.) Main Lift 2: Dips / Straight Bar Dips Assistance Exercise 2 Horizontal Pulling / Rowing (Australien Pull Ups, Rowing Machines, Front Lever Pulls, Dumbbell/Barbell Rows, etc) Assistance Exercise 3 Pushing Exercise 2 (Push Ups, Dip Variations, Bench Press es, etc) Assistance Exercise 4: Rear Delts / External Rotation (Scapula Pull Ups, Facepulls, Butterfly Reverse Variations, Hinge Rows) Assistance 5: Arms (Curl & Triceps Extension Variations) As you can see, there are a lot of different exercises and so a lot of different training is possible. There are no best exercises. You should choose the exercises depending on your strength/weaknesses and also your ability to train them. Another big factor is fun. If you only choose exercises you don’t like, the plan will not be very effective for you. -9- Copyright by Calisthenics Concepts MUSCLE UP GUIDE LEVEL 1: Sample Program EXERCISE REPS SETS BREAK NOTES This plan would be an option for an athlete who‘s pull up max is around 6-8 reps and dips max around 8-10. (If your values are different, just adjust the reps) Pull Ups 4-6 4 2-3 min Horizontal Pulling Assistance 6-8 3 2 min Dips / Straight Bar Dips 6-8 4 2-3 min Rowing Exercise 8-12 3 2 min Pushing Assistance 8-12 3 2 min Rear Delts Iso 8-12 3 1 min Biceps Iso 8-12 3 2 min -10- Depending on your deficits, preferences and also aesthetic goals the volume of each exercise can vary. This is just a sample. The break time is also never to be taken as a fix. If you need more break, take more break! Copyright by Calisthenics Concepts MUSCLE UP GUIDE PROGRAMMING LEVEL 2: Muscle Up Technique / Pulling Height Once you improve your pull up game, it‘s time to start a more muscle up related conditioning. This consists of 3 parts. The first part is to understand the movement and learn the technique. The second part is to work on your explosive pulling strength which is required to make it over the bar. The third part is the basics. Two achieve this, we will need to adjust our training. Exercises: A good way to learn the technique for muscle ups are assisted muscle ups. With these exercises you can perform the skill with less load. A second exercise that helps to understand the technique is to do the negative part of the skill. For this part you need no explosive pulling strength but still can experience every phase of the muscle up. To improve your explosive strength you need to increase your overall pulling strength. To achieve that you can work with longer breaks, lower reps ranges, higher rep speed & additional weight. The push part of the muscle up is already mastered and will not be discussed in this level anymore. Main Lift Explosive Pull Ups Main Lift 2 Assisted Muscle Ups / Negative Muscle Ups Assistance 1 Weighted Horizontal Pulling (Weighted Pull Ups, Pull Ups against band, vertical pulling machines) Assistance 2 Rowing Exercise Assistance 3 False Grip Training (Hanging in semi false grip, performing pull exercises with this wrist position) Assistance 4: Hollow Body Position Training (Hollow body crunch, hollow body holds, knee raises, leg raises, abs roll outs, lalane holds) Assistance 5: Rear delts, Arms -11- Copyright by Calisthenics Concepts MUSCLE UP GUIDE LEVEL 2: Sample Program EXERCISE REPS SETS BREAK NOTES To improve your semi false grip, you can use this grip in any vertical pulling exercise. The hollow body core training will help you to keep the C shape of your body during the muscle up. Explosive, high pull ups 2-3 4-5 3-4 min Assisted Muscle Ups 3-5 3 2 min Weighted Vertical Pulling 5 3 3 min Negative Muscle Ups 1 6-8 / Horizontal Pulling / Rowing 8-12 3 2 min Hollow Body Core Exercise 10 3 2 min 10-15 3 2 min Rear Delts / Biceps -12- From time to time you should also add muscle up attempts to the beginning of your training, to see if you can already make it above the bar. Copyright by Calisthenics Concepts MUSCLE UP GUIDE PROGRAMMING LEVEL 3: Muscle Ups Main Lift Muscle Ups Main Lift 2 High Pull Ups Assistance 1 Weighted Horizontal Pulling (Weighted Pull Ups, Pull Ups against band, vertical pulling machines) Assistance 2 Rowing Exercise Assistance 3 False Grip Training (Hanging in semi false grip, performing pull exercises with this wrist position) Assistance 4: Hollow Body Position Training (Hollow body crunch, hollow body holds, knee raises, leg raises, abs roll outs, lalane holds) Assistance 5: Rear delts, Arms At a certain point in your training, you are finally able to make it above the bar. In most cases, this is not worth to be called a muscle up, but it‘s the start of this level and the perfect moment to start working on a clean strict muscle up. Exercises: From this point on the muscle up itself will be part of the training. You start with low reps and work your way up. The rest of the training is similar to level 2 since you still need to improve your pulling strength and explosive pulling power. -13- Copyright by Calisthenics Concepts MUSCLE UP GUIDE LEVEL 3: Sample Program EXERCISE REPS SETS BREAK NOTES At the beginning, you will need to use a lot of momentum for your muscle up. This will change over time and will get cleaner and stricter. For technique adjustment, I would recommend you to frequently film your muscle ups to check your form. Over time you can increase the reps of your muscle ups. Muscle Ups 2-3 4-5 3-4 min Explosive, High Pull Ups 3-5 3-4 2 min Weighted Vertical Pulling 6-8 3-4 3 min Deep Straight Bar Dips 2-3 3 2-3min Horizontal Pulling / Rowing 8-12 3 2 min Hollow Body Core Exercise 10 3 2 min 10-15 3 2 min Rear Delts / Biceps Iso -14- Copyright by Calisthenics Concepts MUSCLE UP GUIDE VISIT WWW.KINGOFWEIGHTED.COM FOR MORE PROGRMS AND WORKOUT CONTENT -15- Copyright by Calisthenics Concepts
