Muscle-up Training Tutorial: The Missing Workout Manual for Your First Bar Muscle-up

A muscle up training tutorial has always been something that I couldn’t find online. At least not something that would finally teach me how to do a proper bar muscle up. So finally this summer I got serious about training the muscle-up, among a few other exercises. This article is the result of my experience.

So the question is: why should you bother with the muscle up? Well, it is a complete upper body in itself – the only thing you need is a bar. Getting good at the muscle up will give you an awesome physique. I am convinced that the men with the best upper bodies are the ones that are freaky strong at bar or gymnastic type training.

Besides, mastering this bad boy is plain old fun. Fact is, very few people who workout will come close to doing the muscle up. It’s a shame really.

Here is a video we shot recently showing the muscle up and some tips. I had to do it on a soccer goal cause the pull-up bar was drowned by a recent rain storm. This made it more challenging, but the cool thing is that you get to see the exaggerated swing forward and the timing.

So What Exactly is the Muscle-Up

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Sternum Pull-ups Will Make You Explosive and Prepare You for the Muscle-Up

I first heard of the usefulness of sternum pull-ups towards improving muscle-up performance from my colleague Milko Georgiev, Bulgaria’s top conditioning coach. Here is a video I shot a few years back of him doing 9 muscle-ups with great form.

Prior to that, I had read an article by Charles Poliquin mentioning this exercise. Poliquin himself was inspired by the great Vince Gironda if I recall correctly. However I never found a comprehensive guide on doing the sternum pull-up, much less on using it to work towards muscle-ups. So this article is a first in a series that will help you do your first muscle-up.

Above you can watch a video I shot demonstrating the basic sternum pull-up. Again, the three keys to the move are using your back, exploding and pulling the elbows back once the upper arms reach parallel.

What is the Sternum Pull-up

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