Muscle-Up Progression: A Guide to Conquering This Challenging Move

By Jenessa Connor

Unless you're already a trained gymnast, bar muscle-ups are one of the most challenging bodyweight movements you can attempt. In addition to requiring significant core and upper-body strength, muscle-ups demand excellent mobility, body awareness, coordination, and timing.

If you're determined to add muscle-ups to your gym repertoire, know that there's a right and wrong way to develop this skill.

• The wrong way: repeatedly swinging and slamming your body against the bar until you're fatigued, frustrated, and possibly injured.
• The right way: a muscle-up progression.

A muscle-up progression is a series of increasingly difficult movements that gradually develop your muscle-up technique while building your strength. Each stage of the progression includes benchmarks indicating your readiness to move on to the next drill within the progression. The final stage is, of course, a muscle-up safely executed with confidence and impeccable form.

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6-Step Bar Muscle-Up Progression

Dr. John Gallucci, Jr., MS, ATC, PT, DPT, CEO of JAG-ONE Physical Therapy, explains that a muscle-up is actually a series of smaller movements strung together. “Think of the movement as five exercises broken down: kip swing, knee raise, leg raise, chest to bar pull-up, triceps dip," he says.

To do a muscle-up, you must be comfortable performing each of these movements repetitively. That's where the muscle-up progression comes in.

Developed with input from Gallucci and Jeff Waters, strength and conditioning coach with USA Boxing and owner of Watters Performance, the following muscle-up progression starts at a beginner level. Depending on your gymnastic experience and current strength levels, you may be able to skip ahead.

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Step 1: Hanging Leg Raise

• Grab a pull-up bar with an overhand grip that's slightly wider than shoulder-width.
• Hang at arm's length with your arms straight (a position known as a dead hang) and your legs straight and together.
• Bend your knees 90 degrees and lift them to hip level. Hold for one second, then return to the starting position.
• Once you're able to perform three sets of 10 reps, perform the same movement keeping your legs straight so that your body creates an L shape. Once you're able to perform three sets of 10 reps of straight-leg raises, move on to the next step.

Tip: “Ensure that you're not swinging and using momentum to get your legs up, and all the work is coming from the hip flexors and the core," Gallucci says.

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Step 2: Assisted Chest-to-Bar Pull-Up

• Loop one end of a large resistance band around the pull-up bar. Grab the bar with an overhand grip that's slightly wider than shoulder-width and place one foot in the other end of the resistance band.
• Hang at arm's length with your legs straight and core and glutes engaged.
• Without swinging or kipping (using momentum to propel you upward), engage your lats and squeeze your shoulder blades together as you pull your chest to the bar.
• Pause, and then lower yourself back to a dead hang.

Tip: “Start with a thicker band," Watters says. “If you can do 10 full pull-ups, use a thinner band. Over time, keep working your way down until you can do 10 strict pull-ups with the thinnest band. Then move on."

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Step 3: Strict Chest-to-Bar Pull-Up

• Grab a pull-up bar with an overhand grip that's slightly beyond shoulder width.
• Hang at arm's length with your arms straight, and your ankles crossed behind you.
• Without swinging or kipping, engage your core, glutes, and lats as you squeeze your shoulder blades together and pull your chest to the bar.
• Pause, and then lower yourself back to a dead hang.
• Once you can do three sets of 10 reps, move on. But continue to practice chest-to-bar pull-ups while working on new skills.

Tip: “At this stage, it's important to also be working on the 'push' feature that you use in a muscle-up," Watters says. He suggests incorporating push-ups into your training plan, including leverage push-ups, in which you lower yourself all the way to the ground and temporarily lift your arms before pushing up into plank in order to eliminate any momentum from the movement.

“Start from the floor position to halfway up, then lower yourself back to the ground. This is the hardest part of the push, which is why we emphasize it," he says.

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Step 4: Triceps Dip

• Grab the handles of a dipping station and jump or step up to the starting position: feet off the floor, arms straight, and ankles crossed. (To make the movement easier, you can loop a large resistance band across the handles and place your knees on it.)
• Keeping your forearms vertical and elbows tucked in (not flared), allow your torso to lean forward as you lower your body until your elbows form about a 90-degree angle.
• Reverse the movement, returning to the starting position. Once you can do three sets of 10 reps, move on.

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Step 5: Kip Swing

• Grab a pull-up bar with an overhand grip that's slightly wider than shoulder-width.
• Hang at arm's length with your arms straight and your legs straight and together.
• Assume a hollow-body position: engage your core and lats to flex (round) your spine and tilt your pelvis back (tuck your tailbone).
• Use the shoulders to thrust your chest forward and arch your spine, allowing your legs to swing behind you.
• Use your shoulders, lats, and core to swing back into a hollow-body position and begin to pull up in the same way you do for chest-to-bar pull-ups.
• Once you're able to complete three sets of 10 reps of kip swings during which your chest meets the level of the bar, progress to a full muscle-up.

Tip: Make sure you're using your shoulders, not your hips, to generate the swing.

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Step 6: Muscle-Up

• Grab a pull-up bar with an overhand grip that's slightly wider than shoulder-width.
• Hang with your arms straight and your core and glutes engaged.
• Initiate a kip swing: starting from a hollow-body position, use the shoulders to thrust your chest forward and arch your spine. Then, use your shoulders, lats, and core to swing back into a hollow-body position. (Once you're behind the bar, lean back and pull down on the bar to get as high as you can.)
• Squeeze your shoulder blades together and pull your hips toward the bar. Once your abdomen makes contact with the bar, rotate your wrists forward, lean forward, and straighten your elbows so that your torso is above the bar.
• Hold, then lower into a dead hang position.