The ``Big Kids`` Muscle Up

The muscle-up has become a standard measure of an individual’s development in the realm of real fitness (in contrast to the more common measure of the loading of a supinating dumbbell concentration curl). There is a large, bold line separating the haves and have-nots, and those have-nots invest a great deal of time and energy into the pursuit of their monumental first muscle-ups. A very generous definition of the movement—simply getting your center of mass from under to over a pair of rings—seems to have become an acceptable standard. This is unquestionably an accomplishment of which to be proud, but continuing progress demands the development of a strict muscle-up.

The rudimentary variation of the muscle-up excludes full extension at both the beginning and end of the movement—the two most difficult points in terms of strength. In addition, epic kips are employed. To clarify, the kip itself is not necessarily problematic—it’s an excellent tool for helping develop the pull-up, for example, and has numerous benefits of its own. But in the case of the muscle-up, the kip is used to effectively bypass the transition from under to over—the most technically difficult aspect, and the development of which is necessary for a strict muscle-up. That being the case, continued performance of rudimentary muscle-ups without additional specific work prevents the development of the strict muscle-up.

*Power Grab with a False Grip

The idea of optimizing power generation is a popular one—that is, performing a maximal amount of work in minimal time. In this context, the rudimentary muscle-up has found a welcoming home. The elimination of a couple inches each at the initial and end stages of the movement results in a relatively small reduction in total work because of the movement’s unusually great range of motion—more than double that of a squat or pull-up. A reduction of 4 total inches of travel will reduce the work of a pull-up by over 17%, but will only reduce the work of a muscle-up by 9%.

More importantly, because time has a greater influence on power than the distance of travel, the reduced time for completion for the kipped rudimentary muscle-up results in an enormous increase in power despite the reduction in work resulting from the reduced travel. A muscle-up with a range of motion shortened by 4 inches and performed in 2-second results in greater than 50% more power in comparison to a strict full range of motion muscle-up completed in 4 seconds.

What this means is fairly simple: depending on your individual objectives, the rudimentary muscle-up may have a place in your training. If your goal is achieving the highest power output possible—for example, for metabolic conditioning—clearly the rudimentary muscle-up is the better choice: it has the potential to deliver far more power than the strict muscle-up because of its high speed of execution.

So What’s the Problem?

It’s mathematically demonstrable that a muscle-up performed with greater speed, even with a reduced range of motion, results in far greater power output than a strict, full range of motion muscle-up, which by its nature requires more time to execute. So does it make sense to spend time and effort developing a strict muscle-up? That depends on your individual goals (which I assume confidently that you have clearly defined). If your only goals don’t extend any further than repeatedly and indefinitely getting your metabolic rocks off, the rudimentary muscle-up will suffice. If, however, you have greater athletic aspirations, the inherent limitations of the rudimentary muscle-up will be an important consideration in your programming.

Once you’ve achieved a rudimentary muscle-up, performing the movement regularly will undoubtedly result in the ability to perform more and more of the same movement. Eventually, however, the stimulus will not be adequate for continued strength gains (unless you’re continuously gaining bodyweight). Imagine deadlifting the same load for ten years—day one, that load may allow you to perform only a single rep. Eventually, you’ll likely be able to perform several successive reps—someday, you may be able to 100. But the ability to perform 100 reps of a given movement with given a load does not translate into the ability to lift a significantly greater load with that same movement (think Jazzercise practitioners—they can move a two-pound dumbbell about a million times). Beyond a certain threshold, strength development is replaced by local muscular endurance development. To continue developing strength, the resistance must be increased incrementally. This is the most basic concept of resistance training—progressive overload.

This idea results in a fitness progression resembling graphically a stair-step: that is, time must be spent developing a foundation of strength, then building on that strength base a greater degree of metabolic conditioning and stamina. Failure to develop the strength base unavoidably results in eventual stagnation.

The Point, Finally

All of that is simply to say that in order to continue to progress, the development of a strict muscle-up is a necessity—and the repeated performance of the rudimentary muscle-up will never produce this result. Just like you wouldn’t (I hope) progress your deadlift though a spastic, limited range of motion, nor should you do so with your muscle-up; a requisite foundation for continued strength development in the movement is the development of the movement in its most precise form.

My recommendation is that people make learning the strict muscle-up a priority over achieving the rudimentary muscle-up—that is, they patiently develop both the requisite strength and technique for the mature movement instead of grasping for anything that even vaguely resembles it simply to have one more movement to throw into the metCon pool. The reasons are based on both motor learning and path-dependent transferability. It’s very difficult to learn a new movement pattern that is very similar to an existing one: the transition movements of the two muscle-up variations are similar enough to cause neurological learning difficulty but different enough that the movement pattern of the rudimentary muscle-up will not translate effectively to the strict muscle-up. And in terms of transferability, if you’re capable of performing a strict muscle-up, you’re without question also capable of performing a rudimentary muscle-up; the inverse, however, is clearly not true.

Developing the Big Kids’ Muscle-up

Whether you have several rudimentary muscle-ups already or none at all, the progression to developing the Big Kids’ Muscle-up is the same.

Books & References:

Everett, Greg. The muscle-up has become a standard measure of an individual’s development in the realm of real fitness.In: '' The Performance Menu''.(May 2006), Issue 18.