How to Do a Muscle Up

A muscle up, or muscle-up, is an important sign of strength in bodyweight exercises. Muscle ups are used to climb walls or to start a routine on the rings in gymnastics. Simply, a muscle up is a combination of a pull up and a dip, where you would start in a dead hang with hands in overhand position shoulder width apart and pull up and over the bar to a pressing position.

To be able to complete a muscle up it is important that you already be able to do several pull ups, as you will need plenty of pulling strength to move your weight above the bar. To begin, start with an overhand grip on the bar at shoulder width apart. Begin pulling up and moving your body past the bar. You must not lean back or you will pull your body under the bar and fail.

As you pull, make sure that you are pulling the bar down in front of your body. As you move your shoulders past the bar, swing or kick your legs to move your bodyweight over the bar. To do this your wrists must be over, and not under the bar. As you move above the bar and kick, lean forward over the bar.

If you lean over the bar and your wrists are above the bar, it should be a simple dip movement to complete the muscle up. Simply lean forward and press down on the bar until you have locked out your arms and are above the bar.

Completing multiple muscle ups is very difficult and will take practice. If you cannot yet complete a muscle up you can kick, or swing as mentioned, or you can jump up to begin the movement. You can also start the movement by standing on a box or chair to make the initial movement over the bar easier.

There is also an underhand variation that requires a large swing to move the wrists from under the bar to over it and should probably only be tried out doors or in a gymnastics gym. This versions starts in an underhand pull up and then requires a swing forward and then backwards of the legs. During the backwards portion of the swing you would move your wrists above the bar and lean you bodyweight over the top of the bar to do a reverse grip dip.

The hardest part of a muscle up is pulling up behind the bar instead of under it and getting your wrists on top of it. Once you figure out how to get your wrists above the bar, the rest is easy.