How to Do a Muscle-Up
Bitches they be Musclin’ Part I
(Part I of III – Genevieve learning How to Do a Muscle-Up)
Disclaimer: I am not a fitness professional, nor am I trained in health in fitness. I am a fitness junkie who geeks out on reading about health and fitness, and love I to learn and challenge myself. I enjoy researching about health, fitness and our human body. I enjoy working out, working out with others and setting goals. I am not responsible if you hurt yourself – train smart and train responsibly.
When you’re in elementary school your learn how to write down goals. When you’re in high school, you learn how to write short and long term goals. When you’re in college, you learn how to write Specific Measurable Attainable Realistic Time-bound (S.M.A.R.T) goals and objectives. When you graduate into the school of life, hopefully you can do this without being told.
Most people are used to setting career, educational, financial or personal goals, but I think it’s also really important to have a fitness goal. I find that it helps me stay active, makes things fun, and keeps me passionate. When I completed my first 10K race, I was SO pumped! When I completed my first half marathon I cried. I did it! I flippin’ did it! Nobody else did it for me and nobody else can take the credit from me. I put in all those hours of running, sprinting, and training. I’m the one that got my ass out of bed at 6am to practice before school. I’m the one that tied my laces to go run in the cold Vancouver rain. I owned every decision and nobody but I was accountable.
Fitness goals are extremely rewarding – they’re almost two fold. You work hard to attain a goal, and when you do, your body has also transformed into something your mirror can’t stop staring at. You’re like “damn, I’m dedicated and smokin’ – nuff said.
So my most recent fitness goal was to accomplish doing ten pull-ups. Considering girls generally have t-rex arms, gaining enough strength to do ten strict pull-ups with over-hand grip is very difficult. I when I started a few months ago, I was able to do 4. After 3 months, I am now able to complete my ten. Still hard, but I can do them on a good day. My new fitness challenge is to complete one kipping muscle up.
When I was doing my research on how to do this extremely difficult move – I took note of the prerequisites
- Must be able to do a standard chest-to-ring pull-up – CHECK
chest to ring pull up
- Or nip to bar pull-up
- Must be able to do a standard dip on rings – FAIL
How to Do a Muscle Up. Practice your ring dips first.
- Sit in the very bottom of a dip without straining your shoulder – CHECK
Ok, so I know where I stand and what I need to work on. Nowadays, I keep up with my pull-ups but I’m also doing a lot of dips on bars and trying to hold a stabilized position on the rings. My arms are really shaky on the sings and I definitely can’t dip in them yet.
I also started practicing my muscle up technique on the rings. I lowered them to hip level and practiced the grip and the back and forth movement. I need this to be in my muscle memory so that I don’t injure myself when I attempt a full, unassisted muscle-up.
So, my job now is to keep up my pull-ups, keep up my dips and get more comfortable on the rings. I need to improve my control and start slowly dipping.
I’ll keep you posted on my progress, until next time!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFGA9eG-JaA
Genevieve
