Bar muscle-up workouts are a great way to test your skills, increase your strength and improve your mental grit.
This gymnastics exercise requires you to go from hanging off a bar to pulling yourself up until your upper body is over the bar and your arms are locked out on top.
Bar muscle-ups are an exercise many athletes are intimidated by, but breaking up the movement into effective progressions should help you master them like the best athletes.
Work on your strength and technique in the lead up to your bar muscle-up attempt. Developed arms and shoulders will not only help you with strength but will also protect your rotator cuff muscles and back.
Read more: Why Do I Suck at Pull-Ups? And How to Get Better at Them
Bar Muscle-Ups Technique
Bar muscle-ups are a high skill bodyweight movement which requires technique, speed and strength.
The key with bar muscle-ups is to bring your hips to the bar, keep your arms relatively straight and do a quick sit up over the bar as you transition.
Maintaining a strong core throughout is also important, because if you lose your midline stability you’ll lose your momentum.
Movement breakdown:
- Hollow body position: jump up to the bar and establish a solid hollow body position while hanging. Keep your shoulders active and feet together.
- Arch body position: move into an arch body position by swinging forwards and bringing your chest in front of the bar, your back should be slightly arched. Stay tight throughout your core and try too keep your feet together.
- Lever back: from the arch, scoop your legs forward and lever yourself back. Imagine trying to lay horizontally while pulling the bar down, all along keeping your arms relatively straight.
- Hips up: this is the crux of the muscle-up. As your legs lift into the air, aggressively thrust your hips towards the bar. The more aggressive you are here, the more momentum you will have to get over the bar. This is done while simultaneously pulling the bar towards your hips with your arms relatively extended.
- Fast sit up: loosening your grip a little as to allow your hands to slide around the bar, engage your core and pivot over the top of the bar in a sit-up-like motion. This has to be done fast, using the momentum of the hip thrust.
- Lock out your arms at the top: you’ve made it up! Now lock out your arms at the top and train your descends so you become more efficient at bar muscle-ups and are able to string them together successfully.
The best athletes can string up to 60 unbroken bar muscle-ups.
Before transitioning into bar muscle-ups, you should be proficient in:
- Pull-ups
- Chest to bar
- Dips
Most importantly, you should feel perfectly comfortable performing strict pull ups.
Bar muscle-up strength requirements
In order to solidly hit the positions needed and be safe performing bar muscle-ups, the following strength baselines are suggested:
- 2-minute dead hang: this will test your grip strength, any athlete looking to perform bar muscle-ups should not fall off the bar.
- 5 strict pull-ups: muscle-ups require a lot of pulling strength, five strict pull-ups are a good base.
- 5 strict dips: the higher you catch the muscle-up, the less you’ll require the dip strength to lock your arms on top, but the strength required to perform strict dips will certainly help.
CROSSFIT BAR MUSCLE-UP WORKOUTS
1. 160202
For time:
- 9 Bar Muscle-Ups
- 21 Push Jerks, 115 lb.
- 7 Bar Muscle-Ups
- 15 Push Jerks, 115 lb.
- 5 Bar Muscle-Ups
- 9 Push Jerks, 115 lb.
This workout should be a sprint, elite athletes will finish around the three-minute mark. If you struggle with bar muscle-ups consider scaling with pull-ups and ring dips.
Well performed bar muscle-ups are a great upper body exercise and show of arm strength. When getting your first muscle-up or becoming more efficient performing them, there’s a handful of technical points to remember, but beyond that it’s all about building strength specifically for the movement.
2. Unbroken Bar Muscle-Ups
For time:
- 30 Bar Muscle-Ups for Time + Max Unbroken
Perform 30 muscle-ups for time, going unbroken to start with and reaching your highest number, then finish the remaining muscle-ups for time.
This is a tiering test that will definitely build arm strength. The best athletes will be able to complete this unbroken but the vast majority won’t get to 30. Still, remember this bar muscle up workout is meant to be performed fast (before the three-minute mark after the max set) and test you under fatigue, so don’t take too long breaks.
If 30 is too challenging of a number, scale down to a rep range suitable for your current skills.
3. Harvest by Jacob Heppner
EMOM in 6 minutes
- 4 Bar Muscle-Ups
- 20 Wall Ball Shots (20/14 lb)
Perform four muscle-ups and 20 wall ball shots every minute on the minute. CrossFit Games athlete Jacob Heppner described this workout as one of the hardest 6-minue EMOMs he’s ever done.
The original workout featured ring muscle-ups.
This is a real shoulder and arm burner. You’ll accumulate a big number of reps by the end of the six minutes.
4. Airborne
AMRAP in 20 minutes
- 400m Weighted Run (30lb)
- 5 Bar Muscle-Ups
Run 400m as fast as possible with a weight vest/sand bag/load, then perform 5 bar muscle-ups without the weight. Grab the load again for the run and repeat for as many rounds as possible for 20 minutes.
Scale this bar muscle-up workout by doing the run unweighted or reducing the reps the muscle-ups from 5 to 3. Two pull-ups and two ring dips can also be used as a bar muscle-up sub if you’re still working to perfect this exercise.
5. Double Trouble
EMOM For As Long As Possible:
- 3 Bar Muscle-Ups*
- 5 Shoulder-to-Overheads (135/95 lb)
*Add one rep every minute.
At the start of the workout, you have one minute to complete 3 bar muscle-ups and 5 shoulder to overheads. If you complete this task within the minute, then add one rep of bar muscle-ups in the next round. You should continue to perform 5 Shoulder to Overheads every minute.
Score is the total reps completed in the entire workout.
6. Uplifting
10 Rounds for Time:
- 5 Deadlifts (315/210 lb)
- 3 Bar Muscle-Ups
This workout will test your pulling strength, starting with a lower body pull with the deadlifts and then testing upper body pulling strength with the bar muscle-ups.
The loading on the deadlifts should be moderately heavy and something that athletes can perform touch-and-go on for at least the first 5 rounds (if not the entire workout). That being said, form has to stay immaculate throughout, lower the weight otherwise.
Athletes shouldn’t spend more than 30 seconds on the bar muscle-ups. Fast singles are totally acceptable as long as they keep to that time range.
If you have 5 or more consistent strict pull-ups, 5 or more consistent strict ring dips, and have been performing some type of transition for our last muscle-up scales, perform 2 attempts per round and rest 10 seconds in between.
“Uplifting” was created by Joe Masley of Grit Athlete.
7. TTTTD44 “Gary”
AMRAP in 15 minutes:
- 3 Bar Muscle-Ups
- 6 Handstand Push-Ups
- 12 Alternating Pistols
Perform as many reps as possible of the prescribed movements in the written order in 15 minutes.
8. Amanda
9-7-5 Reps For Time
- Muscle-Ups
- Squat Snatches (135/95 lbs)
Amanda is one of the classic CrossFit “Girl” workouts and was dedicated to Amanda Miller as the first workout of the 2010 CrossFit Games.
Beginner and intermediate athletes should be able to finish this workout between 10 and 15 minutes, while advanced athletes will complete the prescribed work under 10.
