Ring Muscle Up In 60 Days? (Part 1)

How transitioning from pure weight training to calisthenics unlocked ring muscle-ups, skin the cat, the planch, plus unparalleled strength, mobility and athletic gains

There was a sudden intense pain in my left tricep…

After months of over-training weighted pull-ups, something broke.

This bizarre tricep strain lingered for months and months.

It was deeply annoying for me because the only excitement I was getting from my training at the time was from weighted pull-ups.

Then a few weeks later, I started getting a weird hip impingement issue on the left side.

That’s when I became fed up with body building style training.

It was time for a serious change.

Sure, I looked good, was reasonably strong and had muscle, yet it felt like something had been missing with my training…

I wasn’t as flexible as I used to be (some people would say I never was haha).

I often felt borderline immobile.

Although I’ve never carried any weight, I still felt heavy so to speak.

And let’s face it, body building is a boring way of training in the long-term.

Could this by way many people who train this way need to spam copious amounts of stimulants in the form of pre-workouts? Just to make it through one session…

You go through the motions lifting weights to failure or near failure.

It’s all very mechanical.

Three sets of eight reps of bench press, three sets of eight reps of dips, three sets of eight reps of bicep curls, three sets of eight of bent-over rows…

You get the picture.

The challenge with training this way day in, day is that you start becoming ‘blocky’ like a discombobulated human robot.

That’s why you see so many body building veterans with that artificial “arms puffed out” look which is not only unattractive but also a colossal postural failure.

Yikes.

Your muscles start to feel like they’re shortening.

Then one day you’re pulling a hamstring, calf or something else when faced with a real life situation where you need to move quickly to dodge something or someone.

The thing is that most body building exercises don’t translate into real life movements. They are unnatural movements so to speak.

And the diet and supplement lifestyle that so often accompanies this type of training is anything but natural or healthy.

Being chained to diet of boiled chicken and steamed broccoli is not something I aspire too. Nor is this a sustainable way of eating in the long-term.

So after being intrigued by calisthenics for a while, I began looking for a structured way to get started with this way of training.

The Twitter gods appeared to be listening because the answer appeared in my feed literally hours later… (I since deleted Twitter by-the-way and never felt better).

There was a post by a guy called Tim Kuijsters who spoke about his story and how a combination of movement, mobility training and calisthenics transformed his life.

I binge-read all his posts over an hour and watched a few of his videos. Not only did Tim appear to have impressive technical competency in many calisthenics movements but he was also a total beast.

I signed up to his coaching program a few days later.

Getting a coach who knows more than you about something you want to learn is a surefire way to get ahead much faster.

You’re able to short-cut the learning process and easily overcome the inevitable sticking points that come up from time-to-time.

You also get the added accountability of having someone looking over your shoulder. You soon start feeling bad if you don’t show up for training and/or don’t go ahead with what you say you will do.

The one thing that having a coach won’t solve is your internal drive.

If you don’t have a fierce drive to succeed in whatever it is that you are getting the coaching for, then it likely won’t work in the long-term.

Simply put: You need to really want it.

Tim got me started on a program with four training sessions per week.

As someone who is used to a higher volume of training, it didn’t look like much and I was a initially a little underwhelmed.

Then I tried the first session and was deeply humbled…

I was literally fried halfway through.

Not only could I not move my arms, but there was this far deeper type of fatigue and exhaustion. It was as if my central nervous system went into failure as well.

I stumbled through the training protocol for a first month feeling like a complete idiot. I’d wake up the following morning with all sorts of weird soreness in muscles I’d never felt before.

It was as if I was rebuilding the way my body moved from the ground up.

Calisthenics is a challenging way to train because it requires full-body integration. You need to combine the difficulty of precise technique with progressively increase the resistance. Then on top of that, it also requires significant strength, control and balance. This is particular true for exercises involving your own body weight.

Slowly, I began gaining a deeper level of awareness over how my body moved.

I’m now able to intuitively sense when I’m losing power when it comes to certain movements. I can then review it on video and make subtle tweaks to the movement in order to increase power.

My coach Tim says that this is essentially what high level athletes are able to do.

They know through attentive repetition how much muscle contraction to use but they especially know how much NOT to use.

Training calisthenics and mobility feels like an large upgrade compared to just bodybuilding. There’s huge satisfaction (for me at least) that comes with this style of training.

I think the satisfaction comes from the feeling of achievement that comes along with nailing a new calisthenics skill. There’s also a steep learning curve attached to this way of training. It requires a fair higher level of awareness, dedication and perseverance compared to regular gym training.

One of the reasons calisthenics is so taxing is because you actually need to think about the movements deeply. You need to be analytic to pinpoint the exact areas behind the reason for not being about to (yet) achieve a movement or skill.

I’ve now been training pure calisthenics and mobility movements for a little over three months now. Here are some of the exciting developments over this period:

• Massive gains in muscle strength size and definition — especially around the core, triceps, biceps, back and shoulders

• Massive flexibility gains in knees (a prior sticking point), shoulders, triceps and the entire scapula area

• The hip and tricep pain vanished four weeks after starting after what felt like an initial full body realignment period

• My six pack stronger and far more pronounced than before (it was underdeveloped beforehand)

• My toes are much stronger and activated (sounds weird I know). When I say activated, they are now an active part of the walking process whereas before, they were passive

• Lost 5.5kg… I was weighing in at around 80.5kg when I first started the program. Now my morning weight is around 75.2kg. This had a lot to do with some diet tweaks which I’ll share with you in part two.

• Feeling and looking much more athletic instead of “blocky”

• Everyday movements are effortless and like “butter” instead of feeling clunky

• My foundational strength went WAY up. Each month I do a bodybuilding style session to gauge where my strength is at. I actually gained strength in all exercises without lifting weights (except weight pull-ups and dips of course)

• Achieved my first ever ring muscle-up

• Close to achieving my first ever skin-the-cat

• I’m now looking forward to my training again because it is based around skills development. There is a feeling of progression, achievement and working towards something instead of simply going through the motions. With this style of training, I stay in the gym longer because I am excited to be there

Training calisthenics can often feel deceptive. It may seems like nothing is happening for weeks or months and then BANG, new skills are unlocked all at once.

That’s because you actually need to put in the work and repetitions with this style of training. There are no short-cuts.

An idea worth taking seriously is the value derived from compounding. Unfortunately (or fortunately) compounding only comes from doing the same thing over and ove for very long periods of time.

We already understand this concept from examples such an Einstein alleging compound interest to be the 8th wonder of the world… Or Warren Buffet accumulating over 70% of his net-worth after the age of 70.

Calisthenics is no different. Much like running a business, the massive returns seem to increase the longer you stick at it and keep building or in this case, training.

A recent example of this is the ring muscle-up.

This is a movement that has eluded me for years.

The sticking point was not strength. It was the transition, false grip, technique and power required to execute the movement.

I trained both the transition and false grip over and over for months and months.

The false grip is a hand position used in calisthenics and gymnastics for ring exercises such as the muscle-up. The grip allows for an efficient transition during movements by reducing wrist rotation.

It involves positioning the wrist above the hand, with the bar or ring resting on the lower part of the palm and the wrist flexed.

The best way to train the false grip is to simply hang from the rings with the false grip. Initially it will feel like your wrists and arms are sheering off.

After weeks and months though, your body will gradually start adapting to the grip and you’ll be able to hang for longer and longer periods of time.

Like with most things in life, you just need to start doing it. Stop reading, thinking and talking about the thing you want to achieve — and just start doing it.

The second part is training the transition from the right pull-up (under) to the ring-dip (over)…

The best way to train this is to do endless repetitions with the false grip on rings that have been lowered closer to the ground. The top of the ring should sit near the top of your chest. Place your feet on the group and thrust up chest first through the transition.

As you gain more strength, you can use less feet/legs and start “muscling” your way through the exercise. The key here is to do this so many times that executing the transition becomes second nature. That way you don’t need to think about it when executing the ring muscle-up.’

On top of that, I recommend having good amounts of strength build-up from the pull-up and dip (ring dips more specifically.

For example, I can easily do over ten pull-ups with a 20kg plate attached to me. I can also do around 10 dips with 20kg to 30kg of weight attached to me. Both with solid technique too.

Another thing on top of this is training the negative part of one-arm ring chin-ups. Not only is this incredibly exhausting but you will build up arm strength super fast.

Having a solid foundation in these movements will make the ring muscle-up much easier. This way you can use raw strength instead of having to swing/kip your way through the movement which opens you up to increased injury risk.

The last part behind successfully achieving this movement is belief.

You need to actually believe you can do it.

For me, I think I could have achieved this movement earlier if I had believed I could do it. But then in reflection, the months of very repetitive training set me up for success.

A few days ago, I hung from the high rings in false grip and pulled myself up. I was surprised how much strength I had in the upwards motion.

Once I was back on the ground, I spent a few minutes visualizing myself achieving the movement and how achieving it would feel.

I took a deep breath, jumped back on the rings and achieved my first ever ring muscle-up. You’ll see in the video below that I almost didn’t know what to do when I got into the dip position on top of the rings…

The next thing I’ll be working on with muscle-ups is the negative part of the movement (you’ll see in the video that’s it’s rather awful). In calisthenics, a movement is not considered “mastered” until you also have strong competency and control of the negative component as well.

I’ll now be training the negative part of the exercise with a focus on control. From there, I’ll build up to doing multiple repetitions in the one hang without having to reset.

One other thing I want to expand on is the difference between calisthenics movements and mobility movements.

For me, the difference is that calisthenics movements primary increase strength, power, balance and control while simultaneously increasing full-body mobility.

Mobility movements however primary focus on increasing the mobility and/or flexibility of a muscle, joint or ligament.

An example of mobility movements from my program are:

• The Sissy and Seiza squat combination

• Dumbell hip airplane

• Stot to squat

• Front back side leg swing

• Straddle nose-to-ground

• One leg deficit box step-up

• Nordic curl

You’ll notice that these mobility movements also build full-body strength, control and balance.

An example of calisthenics movements in my program are:

• Elastic push-up

• Straddle planch push-up (mostly done on parallettes and a build-up to planch)

• Ring front lever straddle pull (building up to front lever and skin-the-cat)

• One arm right pull-ups

• Hand stand push-ups using parallettes

Then there’s the added muscle-up specific training:

• False grip toe alternated toes (progressing to full hang

• Ring german hang with alternating toes (progress to full hang)

• Ring muscle-up transition

• Hanging 90 degree tuck into straight leg raises

On top of that, I also do the following strength-focused supplementary exercises:

• Weighted pull-ups and chin-ups

• Weight drips

• Ring rows

• Diamond and planch push-ups

• Straight arm incline dumbell front-raise (to train bicep strength in the straight arm position)

Then I also practice:

• L-Sit holds on parallettes

• L-Sit to handstand progression on the parallettes

• Handstands on the floor

One thing of importance is that the majority of these are highly technical exercises. It’s not the best idea to jump in head first without guidance and regular feedback.

I’m looking forward to sharing more of my learnings and progress with you as I continue training and progressing through the movements.

I’d like to close out this article with emphasizing the importance of not falling for fitness cults. What tends to happen in the fitness industry is that certain training cults emerge.

The most recent one is Hyrox while there have been many past ones including Crossfit and F45. The way to identify whether it’s a fitness cult or not is through the loyal adherence of its members to ONLY training in a specific way… And this is accompanied by a strong condemnation or dismissal of people who choose to train in other ways.

You could even go as far as saying that I have already fallen into the calisthenics cult by beating down on the concept of body building style training ha ha… Although I would like to stress that my opinion on this is based entirely on my own experience, results and the way I feel from the training. There are also no other people involved in my training except my coach.

What I’m trying to say here is that the achievement of balance is key. For example, I still do some body building style movements because they are highly complimentary to my calisthenics training.

AND now that I have solid knee mobility again, I plan to add sprinting into my training schedule. Basically, your goal with training should be to transform yourself into a well rounded athlete in many different areas… Not fall into an ideologically based fitness cult…