Carry Over Between Ring Moves

[Júlíus G. Magnússon]

Originally I had intended on getting a solid deadhang muscle-up before moving on to back/front lever progressions. Lately, since I still haven't gotten my deadhang muscle-up, I've been questioning if that was a smart decision.

Do the front/back lever progressions have much of a carry over to muscle-up strength? Should I have been training those all along?

Is there some other form of gymnastics training I should be doing to complement my muscle-up progressions?

I'd love some input on this, as I'll be having more flexible workout times and as such more control over skill/strength work for the next couple of weeks than I've been having lately.

[Garrett Smith]

From my personal experience, front & back lever training didn't transfer much at all to muscle-up training.

[Grissim Connery]

i find that i can train pulls more frequently than pushes. they make my body feel better. now granted a muscle up is a pull and a push, i feel that the muscle up has a particularly heavy duty push. personally i love handstands, so i'm constantly striving to keep most of my other workout very pull oriented so that i may balance out a lot of the handstand work.

i also feel that dips take more of a toll on the shoulder than handstand work. dunno if that's substantiated at all.

[Blair Lowe]

Yeah, with HS work I can do quite a bit of volume.

I don't think lever work really helped my gains with MU. I worked a lot of strict CTB pullups on a bar and false grip pullups or false grip L-pullups ( because the rings were low ). Another bread and butter exercise was ring support, lower through the dip and transition to the false grip ( typically in L to clear my feet from the ground, the L isn't an issue, ever ).

Besides MU, you should be training the levers, handstand and basic movements like skin the cats and bridges maybe some L-sits or straddle L-sits ( probably worth more of your time as they are fantastic for HS presses and hurting your hip flexor while still working the L-sit strength ).

Honestly though, I only do skin the cats or have my boys do them at beginning stages of strength training or we do a lot of swings on rings to skin the cat or 2 skin the cats to warmup for rings or we do 3 sets of 2 skin the cats on the rings or a bar for the general warmup. However, I do use skin the cats to for strength testing every 2 months.

[Steven Low]

Muscle ups are their own skill. Master that one before you move onto back and front lever and such.

But pretty much what Blair said.

[Troy Kerr]

I found that working on pullups in general and ring dips really helped out my muscle up. I also did muscle up's off my knees to train the transition between the pull-up and the dip. The carry over between the MU and the levers may be so minimal due to the fact that the muscle-up is a dynamic movement, the levers on the other hand are isometric-contractions. The movements themselves may not complement each other, however the training you put into obtaining the skills( improving pull up strength) will carry over. I found that working weighted pullups has improved lever progressions significantly.

[Steven Low]

If you guys got any other Q's feel free to ask.


Here's the "general statements"

Heavy pulling work will help back lever, front lever, iron cross, elevator, etc.
Heavy pushing work will help planche, maltese, inverted cross, etc.