November 16th, 2012

I often get asked by CFSers how an athlete works up to getting a muscle-up.  To be honest, the short answer for most athletes is that they need to get stronger and better at pull-ups and ring dips.  While their is definitely coordination and timing involved in the muscle-up and just being strong enough to do one does not guarantee immediate success, strength is a prime factor in pulling one off.

The muscle-up can be looked at as a big pull-up followed by a ring dip (although the ring dip is about 7-10 feet up in the air, yikes!).  If you can’t do  2-3 chest to bar pull-ups or 10-15 regular kipping pull-ups unbroken, then you are probably not ready to get yourself up on top of the rings.  And if you are not able to do an unassisted ring dip at ground level, you are definitely not ready to attempt one several feet in the air.   Work hard on these two movements when they come up in a WOD.  If you are using a band for pull-ups or dips, make a conscious to keep working down to smaller and smaller bands over time.  Also, add a few extra ring dips and pull-ups to your warm-up or practice a few when your workout is over, if time permits.   A little extra work here and there is sometimes all takes to start seeing some improvement on body weight/gymnastics movements if you feel stuck. Persistence will pay off over time.

– John Pavlic, #21

 

Workout of the Day

A. 10 to 15 minutes of rope climbing practice
Work on technique, speed and efficiency, moving up to the non- knotted rope if you are not there yet or challenging yourself to do a rope climb or two with no feet (just your hands) if you feel up to it.

B. 3 rounds for times (of the ‘work’ each round) of:
500 meter row
15 burpees over the erg (rower)*
2 minutes rest

*Just to clarify, you are jumping over the rail that the rower seat slides on and not the housing where the fan is located. The burpees don’t have to be done ‘facing’ the erg, you can do them sort of parallel to the rower instead. But the standards for the burpees today include:
– touching the ground with your chest & thighs each reps
– jumping over the rower with two feet (as opposed to stepping over the rower)
– touching your hands above and/or behind your head when you jump over the rower

If the class is large, the rest between rounds on Part B may need to be a little longer to accommodate that.