How to get a Muscle-Up.
FREE Workout Program

This workout program is designed to help you unlock your first ever bodyweight muscle-up.

After achieving your first muscle-up, you can also use this workout to build the strength to perform multiple reps.

Open the app to log your workouts, track your progress, view exercise demonstrations, add workout notes, and more. It's free to use!

Hi I'm Lydia. I struggled A LOT on the journey to my first muscle-up. As a self-taught adult, starting in my 30's, with no gymnastic experience, the journey was really challenging. I created this muscle-up workout program from the lessons I learned, and I'm sharing it in the hopes it will help make your muscle-up journey easier.

This Muscle-Up Workout Program will cover:

• Prerequisites
• Warm Ups
• Full Workout
• How To Progress
• How Often To Train
• Muscle-Up Technique
• Muscle-Up Strength Targets

Prerequisites For This Workout

Before attempting this muscle-up workout, I'd recommend being able to perform the following:

Warm Up Exercises for Muscle-Ups

Muscle-Up Workout

1. Banded Muscle-Ups
SETS: 2
REPS: 2
ASSISTANCE: Resistance Band/s (Enough help to make the reps challenging but doable)

Start your session with Banded Muscles-Ups to learn and practice the skill while you're fresh.

2. Weighted Chin-Ups / Weighted Pull-Ups
SETS: 3-5
REPS: 3-8
WEIGHT: Choose a weight that makes your Reps challenging but still doable

Note: If adding weight isn't possible yet, use Bodyweight or Banded Chin-Ups / Pull-Ups to build your way upto Weighted Chin-Ups / Weighted Pull-Ups.

Next perform Weighted Chin-Ups / Pull-Ups to increase the height, strength, and power of your pulling motion.

3. Weighted Dips
SETS: 3-5
REPS: 3-8
WEIGHT: Choose a weight that makes your Reps challenging but still doable.

Note: If adding weight isn't possible yet, use Bodyweight or Banded Dips to build your way upto Weighted Dips.

Then Weighted Dips to increase the strength and power of your pushing. This strength is crucial for pushing ourselves around the bar as well as the transition phase of the muscle-up.

Note: If you're unable to perform weighted chin-ups / pull-ups or dips, you can substitute these exercises with their bodyweight or banded versions.

That's it! It's a small but highly effective workout. These are the exact exercises that I used to achieve my first muscle-up.

If you consistently train these exercises, I promise you'll be well on your way to achieving your first muscle-up.

How Often Should I Train Muscle-Ups?

Practice your muscle-up workouts 2-3 times a week for the most optimal results.

Ideally with at least a day of rest between workouts, for example you could train muscle-ups Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

Consistency is the MOST IMPORTANT factor in achieving your first muscle-up.

How To Improve Your Muscle-Up Workouts

How To Structure Muscle-Up Workouts
For a more complete and detailed explanation on how to progress with your muscle-up workouts, checkout this free muscle-up training guide I created.
It covers Reps, Sets, Intensity recommendations and more over a 12-week block of training.

How To Track And Monitor Muscle-Up Progress

You can track your muscle-up progress using a gym journal, a note-taking app, or an exercise app.

It's important to monitor your progress so you can stay motivated and see how you're trending over time, even if you don't improve every session.

I've created a free muscle-up progress tracking workout for you. You can access it here.

How To Do A Muscle-Up With Correct Technique

It's not just about strength. The skill of the muscle-up pattern is equally important.
This can be difficult to learn. It's such a fast paced exercise requiring a high level of coordination and body awareness to control.

I breakdown the muscle-up technique into 12 seperate steps. Use this guide to level up your muscle-up skill, one step at a time, eventually bringing it all together to become a muscle-up pro!

Read: 12-Step Guide, Muscle-Up Technique Breakdown

or

Watch the video

Muscle-Up Strength Requirements

How strong do you need to be to do a muscle-up? I'd suggest being able to hit the following targets:

For context, at the time of achieving my first ever bodyweight muscle-up, I was able to do:

If you have any questions about Muscle-Ups or Weighted Calisthenics, connect with me on YouTube or Instagram

Join my Calisthenics Newsletter for more free guides, tips, and tricks on how to optimize your gains with your training.

Good luck with your muscle-up journey!

Coach Lydia