Getting Strict Ring Muscle Ups As A FEMALE?

A muscle up is a massive milestone for anyone. Younger, older, bigger, smaller, bar or rings. It doesn’t matter. You’ll always remember your first.

But there’s another factor that just gives it that extra panache; and that’s being female and nailing your first strict rep(s).

Why?

Well it’s just harder for women to get this kind of strength standard. I’ve coached handfuls of males to multiple reps on the ring muscle up (and bar but that’s another topic that I’ll get to a little later), but I’ve never done what I consider to be the holy grail of coaching…

Taking a female from untrained (no pull ups, little to no dips) to their first strict ring muscle up, or multiple single reps or dare I say double reps…

Until recently! Where I can proudly say I had the opportunity to tackle this task and help a woman bring this goal to fruition.

I met Becky late last year and we began some one to one sessions together for calisthenics, with a focus on general strength, basic skills introductions and some handstand work.

She could barely do a bodyweight dip and pull ups or chin ups were nothing more than a thing of fantasy. Yet some 6-7 months later she has more than a dozen total strict muscle ups under her lifetime belt.

So how is it done?

Are there any key points to accelerate the journey?

And do you need a certain body type to make it easier?

Firstly, I can answer the last question by saying the ring muscle up was never something Becky actively wanted herself. Rather it was me who led her down that path as I got to know her and saw she had many of the things that I wholeheartedly believe make ring muscle up training easier, for anyone really but definitely for women.

• Good elbow flexion mobility & tolerance (the more you can flex your elbows the better and more importantly, the more you can flex your elbows under load, the more you can adapt to and tolerate transition work)
• Good shoulder extension – both active & passive (Becky has good range in both which allows the upper arm to move behind the body easier; a crucial thing for easier transitions)
• A low bodyfat percentage & not a massive lower body (Becky is lean and doesn’t have massive thighs and a huge butt, which makes her more efficient and need less strength to pull off the muscle up)
• Good wrist flexion and understanding/tolerance for false grip work (this means the grip becomes more normal quicker than for some)

If you were to not have these things ticked off on the checklist the ring muscle up would become much harder and take longer. Having good elbow flexion means you can have your hands closer to your body as you transition, thus shortening the lever arm you have to overcome. If you didn’t have this your hands would have to be wider around your body, which takes more strength.

Similarly, good passive shoulder extension allows you to catch your dips very deep, which means you don’t have to pull as high in order to successfully transition. Good active shoulder extension means you can pull your arms back behind your body easier, which is a key component of the muscle actions that make up the transition phase; being able to row the elbows behind you at the right point can make things so much more silky smooth.

And of course, higher bodyfat percentages often mean a decreased power to weight ratio, which again means inefficiency; you’re not efficient at moving your bodyweight around. The other problem women face more is they’re naturally ‘lower body dominant’ compared to men. Which is great for us men to look at and admire, god knows how much I love a developed bum and legs on a woman….but for ease in muscle ups it’s a hinderance. So super thick thighed and bottomed girls have it harder here for sure, especially coupled with their lack of fast twitch upper body muscle fibers when compared to men.

Wrists play a key role too as the more you can comfortably flex your wrists (which is tied to your flexibility there), the more you can grip firmer on the rings and get more hand over the rings, which means more strength and generally a shorter lever arm for pulling. The easiest way to see what I mean is to try a ring chin up with a normal grip and then with a full false grip, and see which one is higher. The false grip will always be easier to pull higher with.

What about training & prerequisites?

Everyone always wants to know or weigh in on how many pull ups and dips you need for a muscle up. Fuck, I’ve been asked that more times than a simp has asked girls out. But the truth is there’s only your answer.

You may need 15 pull ups and 30 dips or you may need 5 pull ups and 10 dips. It could be more or less depending on how you score in our checklist from the last section.

Take Becky, she only has 3-5 false grip pull ups and no more than 5-6 strict ring dips even now. In fact when she got her first ever ring muscle up the numbers were probably less!

But she has been well trained in the transition and scores highly on the checklist too, so this reduces the amount of pull ups and dips she needs in order to be able to combine the two.

Is this making sense now?

If you haven’t done any isolated transition work and find the whole zone to just be mind-boggling, your 15+ pull ups and 30+ dips still won’t be useful. Even less so if they’re barely chin above bar/hands and elbows only to 90 degrees on dips.

With all this in mind I actually saw it as a challenge this time to see how early we could get Becky the ring muscle up, with as little pull ups and dips as possible. And this case has to be right up there and is testament to the transition training we did very early on.

See, regular pull and chin up work was always on the menu from day one but I made sure the rows we did to supplement and develop the pull/chin ups, were done with a false grip all the time. These were sprinkled in with regular foot assisted transitions, false grip hangs and false grip ring to chest holds…the results are lethal. This way you strengthen the transition and acclimatise to it while your pull up strength and dip strength rise, allowing it all to be seamlessly tied together.

It’s crazy how many people I know who have chest to bar pull ups, 10+ deep ring dips and still struggle to execute a slow, smooth and momentum-less ring muscle up transition! I was even one for a while myself!

And it’s because you don’t put the time into scaled back versions of the transition. This is why Becky can do it with just 5 pull ups and 5 dips and you can’t.

In summary

Address your mobility. Passively stretch your elbows, shoulder extension and wrist flexion.

Then do some active work here too: false grip top holds, row top holds, behind the back stick lifts and some good old fashioned false grip hanging.

Start working the transition as soon as possible and don’t stop working on it. Even if it’s super light and the feet do a lot of the work at first. You can eradicate that with time.

Work with a competent coach who has led many others down the same path and will be able to screen your bottlenecks and help you hone in on what might be stopping you currently. This is where someone like me comes in; I work with dozens of people remotely and in person and program individually for everyone. The results speak for themselves. If you need help email me (straighttalkingfitness@gmail.com).

More importantly than anything I’ve said so far though and the best until last, STAY CONSISTENT. You will have days where you feel you’ve gone back, days where it doesn’t seem possible and days where you’re tempted to mess around with a new shiny object (aka a new program with an entirely different focus), BUT DON’T. Keep plugging away under the guidance of a good coach and you too can be a girl (or guy of course) doing strict ring muscle ups sooner than you think.