Friday, May 29th

The Muscle-Up
by Greg Glassman

The muscle-up is astonishingly difficult to perform, unrivaled in building upper body strength, a critical survival skill, and most amazingly of all, virtually unknown.

This movement gets you from under things to on them.

Though containing a pull-up and a dip, its potency is due to neither. The heart of the muscle-up is the transition from pull-up to dip - the agonizing moment when you don’t know if you’re above or below.That moment - the transition - can last from fractions to dozens of seconds. At low, deliberate speeds, the muscle-up takes a toll physically and psychologically that can only be justified by the benefit. No other movement can deliver the same upper body strength. Period.

This Frankenstein’s monster combination of pull-up and dip gives the exercise advantages that render it supreme among exercises as fundamental as the pull-up, rope climb, dips, push-ups, and even the almighty bench press.

We do our muscle-ups from rings chiefly because that’s the hardest place possible.

Today's WOD

"Jason"

For time:
100 airsquats
5 muscle-ups
75 airsquats
10 muscle-ups
50 airsquats
15 muscle-ups
25 airsquats
20 muscle-ups

There are a number of scaled-down variations of the muscle-up. We will work on the MU form throughout this WOD, mastering the "false grip" and concentrating on the transition between pullup and dip. The conversion of ONE muscle-up is FOUR pullups and FOUR dips. There are 50 muscle-ups in this WOD, which would equal a total of 200 pullups and 200 dips!! We won't go there.

Post time to comments
Lowcountry Crossfit West Ashley, Charleston, SC