From Good to Great Bar Muscle Ups
Bar Muscle Ups in Competition
The bar muscle up has become a staple in CrossFit competitions, frequently appearing in workouts designed to test athletes’ gymnastics proficiency.
The movement involves transitioning from hanging below a bar to pulling the body up and over it finishing with locked out arms above the bar. It’s a seamless combination of a pull-up, a powerful hip drive, and transition into a dip position.
The ability to perform this skill requires more upper body strength, agility, and coordination than its counterparts like toes to bar and pull ups. Lacking any one of these aspects will make bar muscle-ups challenging to learn and even harder when you’re tired in the middle of a workout.
In this blog, we will explore the strength and technical aspects of the bar muscle-up, and provide you with sample training sessions to help you gain the strength and technique you need to master this complex movement.
You Gotta Get Strong First
Performing a bar muscle-up requires a lot of upper-body pulling strength. We generally look for athletes to be able to perform strict weighted pull-ups with between 20-30% of their bodyweight (between 30 -45lb for a 150lb athlete) before attempting to learn a bar muscle-up. This guarantees that they have the shoulder strength necessary to complete the movement and keep their shoulder safe from injury.
Additionally, turning over a bar muscle-up requires strength through a longer range of motion than a normal pull-up. Athletes should focus on training with a chest-to-bar finish rather than just training strict pull-ups with a chin-over-bar finish. This helps to build strength in the most challenging position of the bar muscle-up: the turn-over.
If you don’t yet have this level of upper-body pulling strength, you need to spend some time developing this capacity before you move on to the technical aspects of the bar muscle-up. Building upper-body pulling strength can be a long process depending on where you are starting from, however you can accelerate adaptation by following a targeted training program.
Below are two strength sessions that have been prescribed in TTT Compete that focuses on building strict gymnastics strength as a foundation for the more advanced elements in the sport.
Example Strict Strength Sessions
Session 1
A. Weighted Strict Pull-up; x 4-6 reps x 4 sets; rest 2min
B. Inverted Bar Row to bottom of ribs; (-1) amrap each set (1 rep in reserve); rest as needed
*Slow/controlled tempo, adjust body angle as needed to reach chest to bar, aiming for at least 5 tough reps/set
C. Bar Dip Support (top of dip); x 20sec hold x 4 sets; rest 60sec
Session 2
A. Strict Chest to Bar Pull-up; 4 x 2.2.2 reps; rest 30sec + 2min
B. Band Assisted Chest to Bar Isometric Hold; 6-10 sec x 4 sets; rest 1-2 min
C. Feet Supported Bar Dip; x 6-10 x 4 sets; rest 90sec
Skills to Pay the Bills
Once you have built the necessary strength, it is time to learn the skill components of the bar muscle-up. Coordination and timing are just as important as upper-body strength when performing the movement. In the above video, TTT Coach Mia Gianelli walks through the four steps she has used to teach hundreds of athletes how to get their first bar muscle-up. A description of those four steps can be found below.
Step 1:
Jump to pike: the idea here is to jump up to the bar from behind the bar and catch in a “pike” position. This sets you up to have a great arch-position as you transition into the next step.
Step 2:
Tight and patient arch: here we are trying to use the pike position we create in step-1 to set us up to “snap” into an aggressive arch-body position. This position will let you capture momentum during the uprise portion of the bar muscle-up in the next step.
Step 3:
Toe rise (spot the toes): in the toe rise, we are passing through the pike and arch positions of steps 1 and 2 then using the momentum from the arch to drive our body up and back behind the bar. Spotting your toes in this position sets you up to have an aggressive hip drive in step 4 which will guide you over the bar.
Step 4
Hip drive with straight arms: the final step in the bar muscle-up skill progression is to drive the hips toward the bar from the toe rise position in step 3, while keeping your arms straight. This final step uses the hip drive to propel your body over the bar.
These four steps are designed to break down the bar muscle-up into small skills that you can learn and perfect each position before trying to put it all together. Below you can find an example session from our “Got None” Bar Muscle program showing how we use these skills to build the full movement. If after a couple of sessions working through the bar muscle-ups steps you still haven’t dialed in your reps, check out our TTT Compete Intermediate path where we have 6-8 week progressions focused on learning each of these skills.
Example Bar Muscle Up Skill Session
A. 20-30 min progressing through the BMU ”steps” (see above)
B. "Belly-to-bar" press; Accumulate 20 reps for quality
C. Seated straight arm press downs; Accumulate 30 reps for quality
D. Straight arm banded lat pulldowns; 10 x 3, rest as needed
Time to Implement:
Read through the bar muscle up steps
Train your strength or practice the 4 steps a few times a week
Refer to the TTT Compete Intermediate path, if necessary
Take your Bar Muscle Ups from Good to Great!