After decades of lifting, I am a heavy dude. Stomach is flat. Never been more than a two pack, even as a skinny and active kid, but is that now. Met my longtime goal of having a BMI bigger than my favourite jeans.
I still enjoy doing pull-ups and chins. I can bang out a moderately impressive number. This becomes harder as one gets heavier.
But despite doing CrossFit for a while, never was good at doing muscle ups. The occasional dudes who can bang out a bunch at the gym tend to be the wiry Al Kavadio type of muscular, where I look more like an apartment sized Refrigerator Perry.
Got me wondering. Who is the heaviest dude who can pull off a muscle up, toes to bar or pull-ups for reps?
And while on the subject, anyone here do muscle ups, dragon flags or other impressive big man flexibility moves?
Maybe we should have a contest predicting the heaviest guy who can do one muscle up? Doing twenty strict pull-ups doesn’t mean you can do one muscle up…
That was closer to a kip up. But that is what I mean about technique. The closer you can get your hips to the bar, the easier the “muscle up” is doing on the slight back swing.
Description: A kip-up is a gymnastic move where you go from lying on your back to standing up in one fluid motion. It leverages momentum rather than sheer strength.
Execution:
Start: Lie flat on your back with your legs bent, feet close to your buttocks.
Momentum: Use your arms to push the ground as you swing your legs up and over your head, creating momentum.
Hip Snap: At the peak of your leg swing, snap your hips forward, using this momentum to flip your body up.
Finish: Land on your feet, potentially with a slight jump to absorb the impact.
I just went down the rabbit hole of highbar kip up vs muscle up.
My objective conclusion as someone with zero chance of doing either -Mitch Hooper did a muscle up with “cheating” momentum. Highbar kip ups look a lot different in my clueless opinion.
One of the best ways to learn how to do a strict highbar muscle up is learning how to do a muscle up on the still rings. You can accomplish the still rings muscle up quickest if you use a false grip. That is, you are supporting your weight on your wrists nearest your little fingers as you hang with arms extended. Pull up and at the top, rotate your hands to get into the dip position and complete the dip.
Once you figure it out, get proficient at it. Then you will be ready to translate some of the same motion to the highbar.
I learned all my gymnastic tricks at a body weight of 165lbs. The first year and a half I did some gymnastics while I was starting lifting weights. I got to about 175lbs while I was still doing gymnastics.
When I left college and went back home, I lifted weights at the YMCA. They had a highbar. I looked at it a few times and wondered if I could still do giant swings. I weighed about 195lbs. One day after working out I said why not. I hopped on the bar and took a big swing, did a kip up to a handstand over the bar, and around the bar I went. As I reached maximum velocity near the bottom of the swing, it nearly ripped the bar out of my hands. Well… that was the end of me trying giant swings.
There wasn’t a day when I was doing gymnastics at college that I didn’t try to do an iron cross. I never could descend into an iron cross. I was too weak to support my weight. There was a day when I had my weight up to about 200lbs that a friend at the gym was a coach at a high school in town. The school had a trampoline and we played “Add-a-Trick”. When we were done I noticed they had still rings in the gym. I figured I give the iron cross another try. This time I could stop the descent into an iron cross. I never got another opportunity to do anything on the rings or the highbar after that.
