explosive pullups + muscle ups

[volk3]

i have recently achieved my goal of being able to do a muscleup with both hands acting symetrically. but i can only do it with a gig swing and kick. i realized that i am not explosive enough. so, does anyone know any exersises to get rally fast and explosive pullups, or any general excersises to improve muscleups. thanks

[KwAzn]

Pull-ups and Dips, than mix them together and you have a Muscle up
I myself have never been able to do a muscle-up without jumping into it.

I think there was another topic about this..

[Bear]

You just have to train for explosivity. Instead of pulling yourself up like usualy, you need to visualize throwing yourself up.

For explosivity, do the Olympic lifts(dumbbells or barbells) for the most noticeable improvements. Other things you can do are back exercises with an explosive pull, and a controlled return to the begging of the motion. I.e. lat pull downs, pull down explosively, with speed in mind, then control the bar back to the starting position. Same deal for rows.

Other things you can do, chop wood, sledge hammer drills, and hitting the heavy bag.

[obsidian]

If you can explosively pullup to the bottom of your breastbone then you've done half the battle. You can gain that ability by ... doing explosive pullups. Try launching yourself in the air and catching the bar again, or launching and alternating hand positions, or clap pullups. The other thing I found about muscle ups is that it helps when you flare you elbows on the way up. When you combine those two you find most of your upper body over the bar, branch, etc.

[evanpk]

Train your pull ups and dips slow and in strict form. Its going to take time and training. Do some dynos for pylo on the side if you can.

[volk3]

i will try that... clap pullups look interesting

[hunbuntu the ninja]

what is this "olympic lift?"

[Hairu]

Check crossfit its on there somewhere

[Animus Light]

[pkdanno]

hunbuntu ... the advice given to you about olympic lifts is great in theory but not practical for you, making it something I would rather you not follow. Machines are not going to teach you this movement either, so for instance and lat pulldown is useless, because you are not going through the same motion and rom that a muscle up needs, or learning how to throw your weight around properly. It will build you some strength if you are weak, but not the explosiveness and aptitude required for this move.

Olympic lifts are great lifts if you A. know what you are doing and B. can put adequate weight, but otherwise there's so many other ways to get explosive.

Obsidian was on the right track with his info.

Whenever you have something technical to learn like that, you normally want to improve it with means completely transferable to the technique.

Here's a brief outline of what I get people to do, to learn muscleups.

Assessment:

How many pullups and dips (only exercises for this assesment) can you do? If more than 10, skip section A. If less, train section A.

Section A: Pullups and Dips. Do a pullup and dip program 3x per week, focusing on getting your bodyweight pullups and dips to a minimal strength level. Don't worry about power just yet, or fancy stuff, just learn these two motions.

The pullup should be done from all the way down, to all they up. No kipping. The dip, again, with the same range of motion, and you should feel and intense stretch in your shoulders when you are deep in the dip.

Continue doing this section until you can get atleast 10-15 of each in a row. Until then I do not teach mucsleups as I feel they are a waste of time, and a bandaid to the main problem. Without the required strength (or explosiveness pending on how you do them) they are BRUTAL for your shoulders because of internal rotation of the humerus. That is more info than you need to know though, but when you see people flailing up on a bar, with chicken wings spread out, or in retarded positions, think shoulder problems later.

Section B: Weighted pullups and dips along with explosive drills + light technique.

Once you can do 10-15 normal pullups and dips, its now the time to start building towards the technique. You may think, still more stuff before the muscleup, but yes, if you cheat itll only cost you in the end. You may get a crappy muscle up (see shoulder problems above), and then to fix it youll have to come back and do these things anyways.

The cheapest way to add weight to your pullups and dips is to put something into your backpack and do them. As long as your backpack isn't anymore than 20-30 pounds, then it wont affect your technique too much.

So this is essentially just doing the same routine 3x per week as the first section, only now with weights.

As well as that, after you do a few sets with the weighted stuff, you will start throwing in explosive pullups into the mix. The first exercise you are going to do is to pull the bar as fast as you can and get it to hit your breastbone. As you progress with this exercise, you keep pulling it more and more, faster and faster, lower and lower. You can work your way all the way upto the waist if you want, as long as your wrists permit it.

The light technique for this section is doing muscle ups on really low things using the power of your legs to get your over. Ie you are basically just standing up into a muscle up. You can do this on a kitchen counter, a rail, anywhere really. Do the exact form of a muscleup but only put 10% of your weight into it. Concentrate on the deep stretch during the part where you transition from pullup to dip. Do this movement really slowly, really work the feeling you get so it gets imprinted in your brain.

Section C: Explosiveness + Technique

I find the explosive muscleup much more practical in real life, so I will continue aiming you towards that.

This section has 3 parts.
A. Continue adding weight to your pullups and dips.
B. Continue working that explosive drill + adding more
C. Start on technique

If you have done the first parts right, you are ready and pretty close to getting a muscleup properly.

Once that explosive drill gets you almost to your waist, imagine the bar there for a second and hopefully a lightbulb goes off in your mind at how easy it is to climb there. This is our goal. Along with doing that waist exercise more and more explosively, you should include 2 others I find essential plus an extra one.

The first exercise is exploding yourself way over the bar. Pullup as fast as you can and throw yourself way up and away past the bar. Really yank yourself and let go. You don't have to recatch the bar if you dont want, so chose a lower bar or whatever to do this from if you want to learn it that way. If you want to recatch, its a good plyo exercise but can be harsh on your body to be warned and prepared.

Second exercise is a pullup with a massive reach with 1 arm only as high as you can in the air, and then on your way back down re-grabbing the bar. This is great at a football field because you can pullup fast, explode and touch the other bar on top, and then come back down. When you get good at this, explode up, touch 2-3 times really fast while trying your best to hold yourself up with the other arm, and come back down.

Speaking of football fields, while you are there, you can practice dynos up to the second horizontal bar. I dont usually include this im my programs for people because well, if you dont have access to this its hard to replicate, but if you do (or can find a tree) than do it as well.

Technique for this section is a jumping muscleup. Find something low and do jumping muscleups. Same exercise as the second sections but because we are jumping now, we are putting more weight into them. This leads you upto the actual technique needed for the quick transition in the end.


Section D: Reverses + explosive weighted

You can start doing reverse muscleups now. Some people think these should go sooner, but I disagree because theres way too much pressure on the joint capsule in this position to benifit anyone who isnt strong enough to do it.

Get up on a bar, tree, whatever. And bring yourself down through the motion. Don't just fall, try your hardest to keep yourself going smoothly through it. Might be hard at first, but itll come.

Also you want to start doing weighted explosive movements that were listed above. Again just a backpack is fine, strap it on tight, and you are good to go.

Section E: If you actually completed all those sections, about an 8-12 week program lets say give or take on the person, than you should have enough to do a muscleup.

Go out and do some warmup jumping muscleups, stretch yourself out in a deep dip position, and drill that technique. You will know after this that you have learnt it the proper way, the safe way, and once you get it you will ALWAYS get it and easier and easier each time.

This is the exact program I followed. Before I hurt my shoulder and stopped training for a bit, I was doing no arm bend muscleups. I had no transition or stop in between and could just pop from bottom position to the top one. It also helped me get huge dynos, massive numbers of weighted pullups, and the ability to do a muscleup with 35pounds on me.

So go out and learn this. Anyone can do it. Its very very simple but takes some time to do it right. For those that think OMG THIS IS SO LONG AND SLOW.... Sit there and think about this for a second... How long have you wanted to do a muscleup without being able to? Probably much longer than this program.

Cheers.

[pkdanno]

holy crap i didnt realize that was so long while i was writing.

Sorry for the length but i swear its worth reading =P

[Animus Light]

Dan, sorry. I didn't mean to suggest that he should do the lifts for the purposes of this. I was just answering his question and suggesting that he start learning the lifts cause it can benefit him later on. Takes a loooong time to learn the Olys properly, though.

[Hairu]

In response to Dannos program, how long would you place the times of these transitional phases the was you explained section E it would be about a year, but how would you divide it out.
also what do you mean by the pullup to the breast bone, and then the waist

[Animus Light]

He means explosive pulls to your breastbone.. and then explosive pulls to your waist if you can. I've only ever seen one person do this, though (Leon Mederos). It's pretty effin crazy.

[volk3]

that was alot of very good info.. thanks guys, and Danno, im going to try as much as i can of what was said

[hunbuntu the ninja]

wow... thanks for the info... i think i'm past A, but i'm going to keep working at regular pull-ups and dips for now until i'm complete confident in my technique and consistency...
about the olympic lifts... i know clean and jerk, at least... i just haven't heard it called an olympic lift...

[cojo]

[Harvest]

That was fantastic. I've been working on Section A for the past 2 weeks. Still have a couple more weeks to go before I should be able to move onto the next section. Excellent post Danno

[evanpk]

We need a search bar for forums to find topics like these long after their dealt with directly.

[pkdanno]

Cojo the way you are trying to learn them that way is the same as how I describe skipping steps in a band aid way.

Ill explain why briefly...

Some people sometimes think they are training smart by going straight to the end result and trying to train what they specifically want to achieve in the end. For example sake, lets use the muscle up.

People will skip to the muscle up and they will most certainly get it if they are persistent enough, no doubt. They can say they reached their goal, and they can say their training was 'smart' and it 'worked'. They did reach their goal, so I can't argue about that, but Ill explain why I put those words in quotes.

I explain the muscle up this way because, in the end not only will you have the muscle up, ie your first goal, But you will have about 100 sub goals too. By training this way instead of skipping you will achieve many different things at once, you get the most bang for the buck. Your training time is put to the most use! This is always the smartest way to train in situations like this.