Why it took me 2.5 yrs to get muscle ups

     I started crossfit at 40 back in September 2011.  Before that I was an ultramarathoner for 12 or so years.  Before that I was a weightlifter, wanna be meat head (never quite got HUGE...).

     If you don't know what a muscle up is, here:


     I did my 1st one of these probably about .....9 months into my crossfit.  I was super excited.  Then from that point (about June 2012) until just this April (2014) I struggled to do them at all.  Every few months or so I would maybe get 1.

     Now I have them.  But why?!  I will tell you what I figured out that NO ONE had ever told me.

     I heard for years (literally) that it would come, that I was strong enough, that I was "almost" there.  I drilled every drill I could drill.  Worked with different coaches, concentrated on them, blah blah blah.

     I'm one of those athletes that has a little too much mobility in the spine.  I am super flexible in both extension and flexion.  Part of the kipping movement of the muscle up is to arch

 your back on the back swing and then forcefully contract your abs creating a "hollow"

while pulling your self up to the rings.  Once you are up to the rings, you throw yourself forward and are on top of the rings basically.

     HERE WAS MY PROBLEM......

     There is a neuromuscular reflex called 'reciprocal inhibition' that inhibits opposing muscles during movement. For example, if you contract your elbow flexors (biceps) then your elbow extenors (triceps) are inhibited.  

     I was working so hard on the arch portion of my backswing that my abs were effectively shutting down via the RI principle.  So when it came time to initiate the aggressive abdominal contraction to come out of the backswing, I had to start from zero.  I had arched so aggressively that I'd effectively shut down my abs.  When I went to turn them back on, there was a lag time and I was unable to generate the needed force to get me up to the rings.

     My buddy Alex saw this as me "losing tension".  All I could think was that I was not losing tension, I was forcefully tensing up my spinal extensors very aggressively.  But as soon as I trusted that he might be on to something, I tensed my abs DURING the arching backswing.  It immediately felt counter-intuitive because it felt like it was (and it was) limiting the amount of arch I was able to obtain in the backswing.  

     BUT....I was able to engage my abs immediately and very aggressively.  I immediately popped up over the rings.  Then I did another and another every minute or so.  

     Since then I've been able to do them without any real problem at all.  I have to remember though on every rep to maintain abdominal tension in the backswing or else they shut down and it gets hard to get up to the rings all of the sudden again.

     Hope this helps some of you!!