Explosive Calisthenics, Superhuman Power, Maximum Speed and Agility, Plus Combat-Ready Reflexes--Using Bodyweight-Only Methods (2015)

9 THE MUSCLE-UP

OPTIMAL EXPLOSIVE STRENGTH

If I had to write a “top ten” list of the planet’s hottest bodyweight moves, the muscle-up would definitely rocket straight to number one—with virtually no competition! Thanks to the growing popularity of street calisthenics, and its adoption by a new generation of bodyweight masters like Al Kavadlo, everyone interested in bar work has seen this exercise on YouTube. And, better still, everybody wants to achieve it! Very few enthusiasts will be able to manage this exercise of course...unless they approach it progressively. In this chapter, you’ll learn all the secrets and tactics you need to totally own this exercise. In no time, it will be you powering yourself over that bar, to envious glances from lesser mortals. Just stick with me, kid.

What is this super exercise? Putting it simply—too damn simply—a muscle-up involves hanging from an overhead bar, and pulling your torso over the bar, before pressing yourself upwards to arm’s length.

Younger readers might find this surprising, but ten years ago, if you spoke to calisthenics athletes about “muscle-ups”, 99% of ‘em wouldn’t have had a clue what you were talking about. Even the name is pretty new; I have trained in bodyweight strength methods for over four decades, and I only heard the term “muscle-up” for the first time in 2006. In jail we used to call this exercise the sentry pullup—“sentry”, I guess, because it looks like you are pulling yourself over something to take a look in the distance. Of course, gymnasts know all about this technique—it’s the Movement One of all hanging gymnastics work; it’s how gymnasts pull themselves up on the horizontal bars or rings, to initiate a routine!

Hang, pull, and push—sing it with me: “Yah mo be there...up, and over”. What? You’re too young to remember that song?! That track’s a classic, fool! James Ingram is THE MAN. Screw you!

BENEFITS OF THE MUSCLE-UP

Although the crazy popularity of the muscle-up is a fairly modern phenomenon, the muscle-up movement itself is not new—hell no. The exercise is an ancient one, which stretches all the way back to our primate ancestors. To this day, if you go to a zoo you may be lucky enough to watch a chimp or a monkey climbing up and over a branch—and you’ll get to see an animal muscle-up! Species which evolved using arboreal locomotion as a survival tool (that’s tree-climbing, to schlubs like me) had to be able to pull themselves up and over horizontal branches, and they did it, pretty much, with the muscle-up...or something that looked a lot like it. We humans were one such species.

Fast-forward to the modern era, and this up-and-over movement is still an essential survival tool. I remember being chased around as a kid, back in the Bay, and having to scramble over walls on more than one occasion. Too fat, too outta shape to make that wall? You got your ass caught—or worse. Military calisthenics courses all have short walls for just this reason—and they are often the toughest part of the course, for some trainees (unless they can perform a muscle-up already, that is). Cops and firefighters all need to be able to scale short walls, using the “up-and-over” technique. It’s an essential survival movement, in the way a barbell curl or bench press just...isn’t. Since physical development systems began, muscle-up movements have garnered an important and honored place in their training curriculums. This was as true for the Greeks and Romans as for the early modern pioneers, like Georges Hébert and Francisco Amoros. Of course, it all died out in recent times, when bodybuilding became king, and guys were only worried about the size of their arms...as opposed to what they could do with those arms. (Let’s not fall into that mistake, eh?)

Okay, so the muscle-up is useful. It’s “functional”. So what? So’s a spatula. I want speed and power, son. Well, the muscle-up can give you that, too. It really is a unique exercise when it comes to strength and conditioning. Unlike the vast majority of strength techniques, the muscle-up requires a very explosive pull—to get you up on the bar—plus a push, to get you over it. So it pretty much works the entire upper-body; the back and biceps pull, the chest, triceps and shoulders push. The grip needs to be insanely strong, and you need a stomach of steel and a very athletic posterior chain to initiate the kip and hip-thrust needed to get you up there. On top of that, without coordination, timing and total-body tendon strength, you can forget it—the muscle-up just won’t happen. This isn’t just blowing smoke; I’ve met very strong, very fit men who can do pushups and pullups all day, who got their asses handed to them by the muscle-up because they lacked that elusive total-body-sync X-factor which this exercise can teach you. It’s this X-factor that’s the secret to building insane explosive power in a highly compressed timeframe.

So swallow that coffee and read on, Jack. I’m gonna show you how to own this sucker.

DECONSTRUCTING MUSCLE-UPS

Many newbies look at the muscle-up (or try it) and assume: superhuman strength and power is necessary to make that movement happen. Don’t get me wrong, strength and power are important—no weakling could perform this exercise—but you might be surprised the role skill plays; I’ve trained with plenty of guys who were easily jacked enough to perform the muscle-up, but were miles away from ever pulling it off, because they just never had the know-how. Although you can train muscle-ups like a power exercise—using sets and reps—there’s a good argument for training it as a skill technique, because the technical components of this exercise are so crucial. I could write a book about the different elements involved here, but let’s break ‘em down into four basics: the kip, the pull, the pull-over, and the press.

THE KIP

To begin the muscle-up, you don’t just perform a very fast pullup—you need to perform a kipping pullup. This means that you are not yanking yourself up vertically, but swinging backwards, and pulling yourself up and in to the bar. Think about it for a second—if you want to perform a muscle-up, you need to get your hips to the bar, so you can lean over it (this is called a pull-over) before you press yourself up. Pulling yourself straight up vertically—like a regular pullup—and getting your chin over the bar is an accomplishment for most people, let alone getting your hips all the way up to the bar! So forget the idea of the muscle-up being an extension of a regular pullup. It really isn’t. The art of kipping in this respect involves the ability to swing the body back, and slightly up in an arc (you will always swing back and up in an arc if you keep your arms fairly straight—think of a rope swing, or a pendulum in motion). One of the goals of this chain is to get higher and higher on the backswing of the swing kip: eventually, your head will be level with the bar on the backswing, and this is what makes a true, power-based muscle-up possible.

Observe—the swing kip, a key drill for every exercise in the muscle-up chain!

1. In the first photo, Grace swings forward as she pushes her hips/chest forwards and shoulders back. She simultaneously flexes her spine, and it goes into a concave position (not unlike a bridge, but gentler).

2. In the second image, Grace begins to rebound, straightening her trunk as the backswing begins.

3. Finally, the backswing: Grace harnesses the backward momentum, by pulling down with her hands and arms—the elbows don’t bend at this point—and “curling” her abs (like a crunch), rendering her entire body convex, or “hollow”.

All these changes happen very rapidly, but the end result sees Grace heading behind the bar with some momentum assisting her: this is a very powerful position from which to explode upwards and inwards, pulling your chin, chest, or even abs to the bar, by thrusting your hips up and snapping back with the arms. It’s not a pullup!

THE PULL

Because of the kip, the pull in a muscle-up is different from the pull in a regular pullup. Instead of slowly pulling yourself up, the arms quickly snap back to the waist—combined with a hip thrust, this punches the lower abs into the bar.

Al pulls himself towards the bar, from the third stage of the swing kip (see previous page). Note that—since the kip put him behind the bar, and arcing upwards—he doesn’t pull straight up. Instead, he pulls his arms back and down, while thrusting his hips diagonally up and forward.

THE PULL-OVER

A big problem many athletes face—even those who are great at regular pullups—is that they just can’t get their torso over the bar. If the kip and pull, described above, are performed correctly, this should be much easier. Another key point to remember is the grip—your forearms will need to rotate above the bar, to form struts for pushing with later. This requires a split-second relaxation of your grip, to allow the hands to spin around the bar.

THE PRESS

Once you complete the pull-over, the keys to the press are having vertical (or almost vertical) forearms to push from, tilting the legs forward for balance, and employing the false (thumbless) grip. A thumbless grip—which you need from the start of the exercise—aids the hand rotation in the pull-over, but also provides a wider pressing base. You also need the raw strength—not power, just slow strength—to perform the push. (If you are still lacking a little, don’t worry—starting page 238 I’ve included enough dipping progressions to take any athlete from zero to hero.)

The parallel bars can be a useful tool for training the pull-over/press stage safely. Check out Grace’s vertical forearms and leg angle—ideal!

It can feel weird starting your pulling exercises with a false grip—you’ll get used to it. The fingers and wrists are plenty strong enough to hold your weight: the thumbs don’t actually do very much while you are hanging.

Once you are above the bar, the false grip really comes into its own. Compare the regular, thumbs-around-the-bar grip (above) with the thumbless, false grip variation (below). The false grip provides a much stronger, more stable pressing base. That thumb is even better than having an extra finger!

THE MUSCLE-UP CHAIN

If the different skill-aspects of the muscle-up I discussed in the previous section seem intimidating at first, don’t worry—the muscle-up chain has been designed to teach you those skills, step-by-step. Swing kips (step 1) will teach you the basic but subtle movement of building momentum by curving and straightening your body while hanging from an overhead bar. Jumping pullups (step 2) teach you the art of pulling in to the bar from behind it, but this is made easier since you can push up and backwards off a base. Athletes are encouraged to practice swing kips and jumping pullups together until both are fully mastered. When this is the case, you’ll be able to combine both these moves into a kipping pullup (step 3). These beauties might look like regular pullups, but they are much more explosive, requiring you to swing back behind the bar, and pull yourself in, until you finish with your chin over the bar.

Once you can pull your chin over the bar, kip-style, it’s time to increase your power even more. This starts with pullup hops (step 4) where you release your hands briefly from the bar at the top of the movement. When you can release your hands well, the next stage is to clap them—and we have a version of the classic clap pullup (step 5). By now, you should really be mastering the kippull groove with power to spare, so we’ll try to pull the chest into the bar (step 6), and then the hips (step 7).

Once you can kiss your hips to the bar, the pull stage is essentially mastered. The next trick to learn is to throw the head and trunk over the bar, in the pull-over position (see page 214). A surprising number of athletes have difficulty with this, so I like to teach it utilizing a jump to make the power element easier, to allow the athlete to focus on the technique of pulling over. This is the jumping pullover (step 8). Once the movement is better understood, the athlete moves to regular bar pullovers (step 9) performed from a dead hang under the bar.

Once you can pull your torso over the bar, the “only” thing left is to press yourself up—this stage is the Master Step, the complete muscle-up (step 10). Now, pressing yourself up is the element of the exercise which is more about raw strength than power or skill, and this might be where a few athletes need some help. If you do need a bit of work pressing your entire bodyweight over a horizontal bar, I’ve included a complete series of dip progressions to help you on your way, starting on page 238. Don’t say I don’t love you guys.

STEP ONE: SWING KIP

PERFORMANCE

· Hang from an overhead horizontal bar, with a shoulder-width grip. Keep your shoulders pulled down tight, and your body braced.

· Thrust your hips and chest forwards, while pushing your arms back and bringing your feet behind you. Your body should be curved and flexed. Your knees can bend slightly.

· Don’t hold the back-curve, but allow your body to spring out of it, assisting with a contraction of your abs.

· As your glutes and hips shoot back, pull down with your hands and lats (keeping the arms straight).

· At the peak of the rebound, allow your body to curl slightly (the hollow body position). You should look like a letter “C”, with your feet raised a little, and your trunk curved (not just bent at the hips). This is the backswing.

· Continue this back-and-forth, building a little momentum, and trying to get as high as you can on the backswing.

EXERCISE X-RAY

This drill might look like a simple swing, but in reality the swing kip is the key to unlocking the muscle-up—in fact, it’s the cornerstone of virtually all explosive bar work. It’s also a fantastic conditioning exercise: swing kips condition the deep tissues of the shoulders, spine and hips, as well as the grip, and forearm/elbow complex. These are all “power” areas.

REGRESSION

Any explosive hanging work—even this first step—can be hard on an untrained body. I would advise that an athlete is very comfortable with pullups before even approaching this series. That said, if swing kips prove too tough, begin by just hanging from the bar. Start swinging slowly, exploring pendulum swings without worrying about “kipping” too much. When swinging backwards and forwards is easy, begin building kipping form.

PROGRESSION

Build a stronger kip by generating more height in the backswing. Eventually athletes can perform a modified swing all the way up to the bar; this is a more advanced movement known as a full kip (see page 252).

TIP: This is one explosives drill which benefits from higher reps—in fact, you don’t really need to count reps here. Stop when your form deteriorates.

Thrust your chest and hips forward…

…and rebound into the backswing, behind the bar.

STEP TWO: JUMPING PULLUP

PERFORMANCE

· Grab an overhead bar with a shoulder-width grip.

· You should be standing in a semi-squat rather than hanging, so you can use a low bar or stand on a sturdy object.

· Holding the bar, leap up and back, to emulate the backswing of the swing kip (step 1).

· As you explode up, pull down and in with the arms. You will have to pull yourself in to the bar, since you jumped up and back.

· Use the combination of the momentum of the jump, plus the arm pull, to carry yourself upwards until your jaw is higher than the bar.

· Lower yourself quickly, but under control.

EXERCISE X-RAY

Have you been doing your regular pullups in a slow, strict, controlled fashion? Congratulations kid—that’s the best possible way to build muscle and strength! But for explosive pulling power—the kind that’s absolutely essential if you want to get the muscle-up—you need to change gears, neurologically and kinesiologically. Jumping pullups are the key. You can do jumping pullups by jumping (and pulling) straight up, but if you want to use jumping pullups to build to muscle-ups, you should remember to jump up and back, so you will have to pull up and in—an elliptical motion which mimics the arc of a proper kipping pullup (step 3).

REGRESSION

Using more leg involvement will make this easier. This can be done by using a lower bar, or pushing off a higher base. Alternatively, you can just focus on jumping higher.

PROGRESSION

The converse principle holds for progression: the higher you have to jump to grab the bar, the harder the exercise; the less distance you have to jump, the easier the exercise. If you can’t raise the height of your horizontal bar, you can make the exercise a little tougher by jumping up off one leg. Remember to alternate legs each rep. At some point you can begin the exercise without gripping the bar—you’ll have to jump up and grab the bar and pull up/in.

TIP: Note how Al is jumping up and back behind the bar—to emulate the swing kip.

STEP THREE: KIPPING PULLUP

PERFORMANCE

· Grab and hang from an overhead horizontal bar.

· Your grip should be approximately shoulder width, with your shoulders pulled down tight into the armpits. (This protects the shoulder socket.)

· Use the swing kip (step 1) to build some momentum prior to the pull.

· As you reach the peak of the backswing, thrust your hips forwards as you simultaneously pull down on the bar by bending the arms and shoulders.

· Use the combination of the backswing, plus the arm pull, to carry yourself upwards until your jaw is higher than the bar.

· Lower yourself quickly, in a reverse path. This will see you swinging forwards slightly. As you reach the bottom position, use this momentum to thrust your chest forwards again into a swing kip.

EXERCISE X-RAY

Once you have spent enough time really mastering swing kips (step 1) and jumping pullups (step 2), the next step is to combine these movements into the kipping pullup. The kipping pullup is the cornerstone of all power training on the bar—take the time to master it!.

REGRESSION

If starting the movement with just one swing kip is too difficult, utilize a chain of them, to build as much momentum/backswing as you can.

PROGRESSION

At first, you will only be expected to get your jaw over the bar. As this gets easy, instead of making the exercise stricter (which would strip it of power/momentum) keep trying to get your head/shoulders even higher over the bar at the top of the movement.

TIP: The swing kip (step 1) is a great skill to use to explode up towards the bar. Whether it’s specifically shown in the photos or not, always use the kip to get started on the remaining steps in this chain!

STEP FOUR: PULLUP HOP

PERFORMANCE

· Grab and hang from an overhead horizontal bar.

· Your grip should be approximately shoulder width, with your shoulders pulled down tight into the armpits. (This protects the shoulder socket.)

· Use the swing kip (step 1) to build some momentum prior to the pull.

· As you reach the peak of the backwards swing, thrust your hips forwards as you simultaneously pull down on the bar by bending the arms and shoulders.

· Use the combination of the backswing, the momentum of the knees, plus the arm pull, to carry yourself upwards.

· At the very peak of the movement, quickly lift your hands off the bar for a fraction of a second.

· Re-grip the bar and lower yourself back into the swing kip.

EXERCISE X-RAY

Once you have mastered the kipping pullup, you will be beginning to build some good levels of explosive power. But before you can progress to the coveted clap pullup, it’s a good idea to work with this preliminary drill. Pullup hops are, for clap pullups, what pop-ups are for clap pushups. With either exercise, before you can clap, your body needs to learn the skill of creating “airtime”—it needs to leave its comfy base. The only difference is that for pullups the base is a bar; for pushups, it’s the floor.

REGRESSION

At first, just work on building speed. It can help to begin by just alternately lifting one hand off the bar at the top of the movement, to get the feel of the exercise.

PROGRESSION

Initially, athletes exploring this exercise will be lucky to just loosen their grip and recapture the bar. As you get stronger, begin building some height—a master of this exercise should be able to lift their palms six inches or more from the bar at the top of the movement.

STEP FIVE: CLAP PULLUP

PERFORMANCE

· Grab and hang from an overhead horizontal bar.

· Your grip should be approximately shoulder width, with your shoulders pulled down tight into the armpits. (This protects the shoulder socket.)

· Use the swing kip (step 1) to build some momentum prior to the pull.

· As you reach the peak of the backswing, thrust your hips forwards as you simultaneously pull down on the bar by bending the arms and shoulders.

· Use the combination of the backswing, plus the arm pull, to carry yourself upwards.

· At the very peak of the movement, quickly lift your hands off the bar and audibly clap them together.

· Re-grip the bar and lower yourself quickly, into the swing kip.

EXERCISE X-RAY

Some folks might think that vertical momentum might be better for getting the height needed to pull off your first clap pullup. Not so. The most efficient way to learn the clap is through swinging up in a curve, like you learned in kipping pullups (step 3). When you swing kip yourself up behind the bar—instead of trying to get above it—you’ll find there’s plenty of room for your forearms and hands to clap behind the bar. You don’t need to pull yourself a mile over it. Don’t overdo it and try to push yourself away from the bar, either—just follow the natural curve you worked on earlier in the chain.

REGRESSION

An easier progression involves just removing one hand at the top of the movement, and slapping your opposite forearm.

PROGRESSION

You guessed it—if this is too easy (!), work on those double and triple claps.

TIP: If you can’t fully clap yet, just try touching your fingers together quickly.

STEP SIX: CHEST PULLUP

PERFORMANCE

· Grab and hang from an overhead horizontal bar.

· Your grip should be approximately shoulder width, with your shoulders pulled down tight into the armpits. (This protects the shoulder socket.)

· Use the swing kip (step 1) to build some momentum prior to the pull. By this stage, your swing kip should be more powerful, to the point where your backswing takes you higher than in the first few steps.

· As soon as you are close to the peak of the backswing—when your head is nearing the level of the bar—begin pulling your elbows back as hard as you can.

· Keeping pulling back until your elbows are behind your body, and your chest kisses the bar.

· Lower yourself down quickly, into the swing kip

EXERCISE X-RAY

Up to this point in the chain you have been pulling your torso more or less upwards, in the backwards swing caused by the swing kip. Now the pattern changes. At the height of your backswing, you change direction, and pull your elbows back—until they are behind you. This is what draws your chest into the bar, and if you do it right then at the peak of the movement your forearms will be diagonal; not vertical, as for regular pullups.

REGRESSION

If touching the bar with the sternum (breastbone) is too difficult, begin by kissing the bar with your upper chest. Experiment carefully, however—if you miscalculate your ability early on, it’s possible to hit your face against the bar.

PROGRESSION

As your swing kip gets you higher and higher, keep trying to touch the bar lower and lower against your torso. Eventually you will be pulling the bar into your stomach, then your lower abs—and this leads us neatly to the next step.

STEP SEVEN: HIP PULLUP

PERFORMANCE

· Grab and hang from an overhead horizontal bar.

· Your grip should be approximately shoulder width, with your shoulders pulled down tight into the armpits. (This protects the shoulder socket.)

· As soon as you are close to the peak of the backswing, snap backwards with your arms; this is a short tug backwards to change direction, not the full range pull you used for chest pullups.

· Simultaneously clench your glutes and posterior chain to thrust your hips upwards toward the bar. Thrust hard enough so that your lower stomach kisses the bar.

· Re-grip the bar and lower yourself quickly, into the swing kip.

EXERCISE X-RAY

There is an important distinction between chest pullups and hip pullups; with chest pullups, you pull in to the bar with your arms at the peak of the movement. With hip pullups, your arms only bend a little—most of the force at the top is generated by a hip thrust. Believe it or not, once you can achieve the hip pullup, you have pretty much achieved the muscle-up—the pulling portion, anyways. The next step will teach you how to channel this strength into the pull-over position.

REGRESSION

As before, the height at which your body touches the bar is key. If you can’t pull your lower abs into the bar, try your upper abs.

PROGRESSION

At this point, you have achieved pretty much the height you need to start working on the middle portion of the muscle-up—the pull-over. If you want to, you can keep building height—it’s possible to explode the upper thighs into the bar.

STEP EIGHT: JUMPING PULLOVER

PERFORMANCE

· Grab an overhead horizontal bar. Your grip should be approximately shoulder width, with your shoulders pulled down tight.

· Utilize a “false grip”—i.e., thumbs over the bar. (See pages 214-216 for more information on the correct grip.)

· You can either use a low bar (shown) or place one (or both) feet on a stable box or base beneath you; something that will allow you to push with your legs.

· Bend the loaded leg/s, and jump up and back, in the direction of the swing kip (step 1).

· As soon as you are close to the peak of the jump-assisted backswing, snap backwards with your arms, pulling yourself towards the bar.

· Simultaneously clench your glutes and posterior chain to thrust your upper abs into the bar.

· Keep pulling back hard with the elbows, as you hurl your torso forward over the bar.

· Rotate your wrists as you reach the final pull-over position (see page 214). You should finish up with the bar under your upper abs, with your head and chest over the bar, legs tilted forward slightly. Your forearms should be vertical struts. Pause in this position.

EXERCISE X-RAY

If you can attain hip pullups (step 7), then you have the power to perform the pull section on a muscle-up. You just need to learn the correct technique for pulling your torso over the bar. This is where jumping pullovers come in—the extra power from the legs allows you to work on pulling your trunk over the bar, before you do it for real (step 9). Train this exercise alongside hip pullups, to retain the power you’ve already built.

REGRESSION

The higher the base/lower the bar, the easier it is to self-assist.

PROGRESSION

Make the self-assist harder by jumping off a lower object, or using just one leg to push from.

TIP: Pulling onto a low bar is a perfect way to start using this technique. As you gain in confidence, move to the higher horizontal bar and push (jump) off a base, like a box or a chair, etc.

STEP NINE: BAR PULLOVER

PERFORMANCE

· Grab an overhead horizontal bar. Your grip should be approximately shoulder width, with your shoulders pulled down tight.

· Utilize a “false grip”—i.e., thumbs over the bar. (See pages 214 to 216 for more information on the correct grip.)

· As soon as you are close to the peak of the backswing, snap backwards with your arms.

· Simultaneously clench your glutes and posterior chain to thrust your upper abs into the bar.

· Keep pulling back hard with the elbows, as you hurl your torso forward over the bar. Keeping your legs tilted will help with this.

· Rotate your wrists as you reach the final pull-over position (see page 214). You should finish up with the bar under your upper abs, with your head and chest over the bar, legs raised. Your forearms should be vertical struts. Pause in this position.

EXERCISE X-RAY

Calisthenic pullovers are not only an incredible exercise for harnessing nuclear-level explosive strength, they are also functional as hell—you are learning to pull your bodyweight up and over. Whether it’s a tree, a fence, or a wall, having this technique under your belt may even save your life in an emergency. Almost as cool, master the bar pullover, and you are just one set of straight arms away from one of the most admired bar moves on the planet—the muscle-up!

REGRESSION

Initially you may not be able to pause over the bar—if you can’t get your trunk forwards far enough. At first, just be satisfied with completing the movement: the pause will come in time.

PROGRESSION

Finish the repetition by rolling forwards over the bar.

TIP: You need a powerful grip for all these techniques, but paradoxically you need to learn to relax your grip at the top of the movement—otherwise your forearms can’t rotate.

MASTER STEP: THE MUSCLE-UP

PERFORMANCE

· Grab an overhead horizontal bar. Your grip should be approximately shoulder width, with your shoulders pulled down tight.

· Utilize a “false grip”—i.e., thumbs over the bar. (See pages 214 to 216 for more information on the correct grip.)

· As soon as you are close to the peak of the backswing, snap backwards with your arms.

· Simultaneously clench your glutes and posterior chain to thrust your upper abs into the bar.

· Keep pulling back hard with the elbows, as you hurl your torso forward over the bar. Keeping your legs raised will help with this.

· Rotate your wrists as you reach the pullover position (see page 214). The bar should be under your upper abs, with your head and chest over the bar, legs raised. Your forearms should be vertical struts.

· Press yourself up by straightening your arms. It will help to look forwards with the head up as you dip up. Pause at the top.

EXERCISE X-RAY

If one popular strength exercise ever qualified as a “complete” feat of ability, it would probably be the mighty muscle-up. Unlike the vast majority of strength exercises it features a strong pull component, plus a strong push—add to these the need for speed, power, balance, timing, total-body coordination and a midsection of steel, and is it any wonder the muscle-up is one of the most jealously admired skills in all bodyweight training?

Typically, athletes who can attain bar pullovers can perform the full muscle-up—the only difference is you have to push your bodyweight up, about half as far as a regular dip. If your dipping is lagging behind, I got your back, kid—I’ve included a full set of dipping progressions from pages 238 to 249.

BONUS PROGRESSIONS: DIPS

The dip-press from the bar is the final concentric aspect of the muscle-up: without being able to depend on speed or momentum, most athletes are forced to push up with raw strength. Yep, there’s technique involved—there always is—but if the basic muscle strength is lacking, forget it.

This is why the dip-press is the part of the muscle-up that so many folks struggle with. The only way to build that strength is through plenty of progressive dipping. If you can comfortably perform a horizontal bar dip (a dip on top of the horizontal bar), then your chances of completing a muscle-up have skyrocketed.

Do you really need dips in your routine? As a permanent movement, I’m a bigger fan of pushups, for various reasons. But if you want to master the muscle-up, dips as an ancillary drill are a good idea: you need to be able to dip well. In addition, many famous calisthenics masters—notably Al Kavadlo and Matt Schifferle—take dips seriously as a part of their basic training. There are many roads to Mecca, right?

The majority of dips—being strength-based—are really not power exercises, per se. But since they help so much in the muscle-up, I’ve included a summary of a ten step chain of dip progressions here for anyone who needs them. There are no progression standards here; just use your intuition and “milk” the exercises until you become expert in them before moving on. Since this manual is about explosive power, I’ve also included some more explosive dipping variations after the progressions.

1. BENT DIPS

Begin with the feet on the floor, well-bent to take the bulk of your weight.

2. STRAIGHT DIPS

Straightening the legs forces the upper-body to take on more of the load.

3. FEET-ELEVATED DIPS

Raising the feet onto an object shifts the center of gravity backwards, towards the hands.

4. FEET-UP PARALLEL BAR DIPS

This variation is the easiest way to begin work on the parallel bars.

5. SELF-ASSISTED PARALLEL BAR DIPS 1

Assisting with the leg on the positive rep will help guide you through sticking points.

6. SELF-ASSISTED PARALLEL BAR DIPS 2

This variation (pushing off the instep) makes self-assistance a little bit harder.

7. PARALLEL BAR DIPS

The classic dip. Leaning back will work more triceps: angling forward allows the shoulders and chest to help.

8. LEGS FORWARD PARALLEL BAR DIPS

Bringing the feet forward alters your center of gravity and makes the press tougher.

9. PERPENDICULAR DIPS

A perpendicular (right-angled) bar serves as a great intermediate stage between parallel bars and the horizontal bar.

10. HORIZONTAL BAR DIPS

You’ve made it to the horizontal bar—you now have the strength to muscle-up!

RUSSIAN DIPS

Dips are an incredibly versatile exercise, and once you’re advanced, there are various options you can try. Russian dips are sometimes used as an ancillary exercise to muscle-ups: using the parallel bars, you lower under control down to your elbows, then shift your weight forward and straighten your arms. Some coaches feel that this pattern mimics the pull-over well.

L-HOLD DIPS

Performing parallel bar dips with your legs locked out in front of the hips (called an L-hold, or an L-sit) is an interesting advanced dipping variation. As well as training the midsection, the position shifts your center of gravity forward, making the exercise much tougher.

KOREAN DIPS

For those of you wanting to take your dipping to superhuman levels, how about one-arm dips? Believe it or not, they are possible, if you push up off the top of a wall. For information on this (and lots more) check out Steve Low’s superlative volume of progressive gymnastics, Overcoming Gravity. While you’re in a book-buying mood, you need to check out the greatest resource on dips (amongst other things) ever written: Al Kavadlo’s Raising the Bar.

Korean dips are a crazy variation of the straight-bar dip, where the bar is behind you. Gorilla shoulders only!

DOUBLE DIPS: EXPLOSIVE VARIATIONS

The dipping chain I’ve just presented is designed for building slow strength, the kind of strength that’s useful in the very top portion of the muscle-up. But this book is about explosive power, right? So it’d be remiss of me not to show you a few ways to work the dipping movement for speed-strength. Get ready to amp up that upper-body...I’m talking power dips, gorgeous!

WALKING DIPS

Once you have progressed in dips to the point where you can perform a few strict parallel bar dips, you can begin experimenting with explosive variations. The basis of all these variations is the walking dip. This forces your joints and muscles to accommodate a little shock as you “step” along the bars. A perfect start.

HOPPING DIPS

Once walking is a breeze, you can step up the shock factor by hopping up and down in the dip position. The hopping dip requires a powerful enough press to lift your hands off the bars. As you gain power, you can elevate yourself further. The hands and forearms also get a power workout by “catching” the bars again.

Once you’ve mastered hopping up and down, you can step things up a little with long hop dips, where you hop forwards along the bar. You can also go backwards, of course.

CLAP DIPS

Once your hopping is powerful enough, you will be able to perform clap dips. If you think clap pushups are tough, try this number, where your arms have to move your entire bodyweight explosively! Make sure you build up to this kind of brutal power exercise, or it’s an injury waiting to happen.

180 POWER DIPS

If clap dips get easy, rest assured that you have one helluva powerful upper-body. But—as ever, with calisthenics—you can always make things harder. The 180 power dip adds extra explosiveness and agility into the dip. Can you push up explosively enough to spin in mid-air and catch the bar again? I don’t know if a 360 power dip is possible, but I’ve never seen one.

SWING DIPS

Swing dips take things even further, and build total-body power and coordination. Swing your legs forward at the bottom of the dip, and as you straighten your arms, swing your legs and entire body back. By the time your arms are locked out, your trunk and legs should be virtually horizontal. This position only lasts a split-second before the swing back down.

GOING BEYOND

When an athlete aces the muscle-up perfectly, their first instinct is to try and do it slower. A perfectly slow, momentum-free muscle-up really is a sight to behold—but if it’s power you’re after, slow is the opposite of what you want. (That’s not to say you can’t work on this version as part of your strength goals, right?)

UNDERHAND MUSCLE-UPS

There are other variations of the muscle-up which make more sense to me when training for power. One of these is the underhand muscle-up. A normal muscle-up uses an overhand (palms away from you) grip, but the underhand version throws new power demands on the body, particularly the grip and biceps. The unusual position also makes the press at the top a lot tougher.

ARCHER MUSCLE-UP

Once you’ve perfected the underhand version, a great way to make the muscle-up more demanding is to perform it asymmetrically—with one arm out a little so it can’t assist with the pull/push as much. This is the archer muscle-up.

The archer muscle-up really screams your weak links to you. The bent arm has to compensate by amplifying its output, but Al laughs at weakness.

FULL KIPS

Another alternative in power building is to work on the full kip. You have already worked on swing kips as a key part of the muscle-up chain (and every exercise in it) to gain some momentum to help you pull up. But—if you harness enough body-power—you can perform an extreme kip straight up and over the bar. It might look a little like a muscle-up—you begin hanging and end up over the bar—but your arms remain fairly straight throughout. Your body movement powers you up!

SMALL SPACE DRILLS

Following are three useful speed and power techniques you can utilize in your routine for variety, as ancillary work or to train your muscles from different angles. They are all solo drills, and they require zero equipment. Unlike the progressive exercises in the chains, most of the following drills can be performed rhythmically for higher reps, and can work well when used with any of the chains in this book. In this sense, they can also work as warm-ups or finishing exercises in an explosives session.

SIDEWAYS POP-UPS

Get into a pushup position. Bend the arms, and pop-up your entire body, landing around six inches to the side of where you started. This simple drill is a great example of how different power pushups can be combined in a single set: you can go left, right, left, back, and forwards using this technique. You can also throw in other stuff like clap pushups.

PIKE SLAPS

Lay down, and balance on your butt. Explosively raise your torso and legs, slapping your insteps with your hands at the top of the movement. Bob down and immediately repeat, bouncing back up. All explosive pulling work requires steely abs, and this is a fantastic movement for building super-powerful abdominals—more painful than it looks if you try for high reps. But don’t sacrifice speed!

JUMP KICK

Assume a fighting stance, one leg in front of the other. Quickly snap up your back leg in front of you, and utilize that momentum, to whip up your other knee. At the peak of the movement extend the lead knee into a kick. A useful, fairly low-stress exercise for healthy hips, and a good way to raise the legs unilaterally, which is fairly rare in most small space drills.

LIGHTS OUT!

Some calisthenics techniques are dependent mostly on skill. The free handstand is a good example; most athletes can support their bodyweight with their hands—say, against a wall. But very few of these people can hold a free handstand effortlessly; they got the strength, but they lack the skill. Conversely, some bodyweight exercises are dependent mostly on strength. If you are strong enough, a pullup will be easy for ya—even if you have crummy coordination, timing, balance or whatnot.

The bad news is that the muscle-up requires both—strength and skill. Unless you have plenty of body-power, plus the deadly accurate “groove” of this particular movement, you don’t have much hope of getting it done. But the rewards of the muscle-up are incredible. For one, the pulling action to get over the bar works as a beautiful balancer to plenty of explosive pushing. (You have been doing your power pushups, right?) It’s also functional, builds total-body explosiveness and acts as a wonderful base exercise for further explosive bar work, if you want to get more gymnastic in your approach.

Is it easy? No. Can you learn it if you break it down into enough steps? Yes—I promise you. It’s like any skill, in that sense. So let’s quit wasting time and head for the bar.