‘Ring Muscle Ups Are Just Bad For Your Elbows’, Period?

Ask any calisthenics coach or even enthusiast that’s reached a high enough level, what their top moves are that cause the most elbow stress and you’ll be hard pushed to find a list without ring muscle ups in it.

They’re known for their intense demands of the elbow, especially through that ever mystical transition phase.

It’s almost always the case when you get your first one you have to do a little bit of grinding through that arduous zone.

Do it one too many times and you pay the price with your elbows. They’ll be sore & tender – and the tenderness gets worse with each attempt.

Yet you don’t want to stop because if you do, you might lose your precious ring muscle up – the thing you’ve worked so hard for!

So you push on to maintain it, maybe you try and add reps or weight and ignore the elbow pain, thinking it will pass…

But it doesn’t. It gets worse. And worse. And possibly even worse.

Why?

Maybe ring muscle ups just aren’t for you. Maybe your joints just aren’t cut out for these kind of forces? Maybe you should just call time on this move and not do it, ever again?

There are stories like this all across Reddit & the YouTube comments sections, alike. Even a good friend of mine has said some them lines in his time.

So what’s going on here? Where’s the truth? Are ring muscle Ups really the elbow destroyer we like to call them, and should they be flat out avoided?

Well, I have been in both camps. Firstly I got to a very high level with the ring muscle up in a reasonably linear fashion; taking a few years from starting calisthenics to get to where I had 10 strict bodyweight reps, a 30kg+ single rep, a wide straight body rep, as well as an L-sit wide rep, with many combos under my belt to go with all this.

Despite always branding ring muscle ups as ‘more joint heavy’ than bar muscle ups, to get to this point I never faced any elbow issues other than occasional aches from heavy training. And this was even after battling some pretty severe shoulder impingement in my early days (READ THIS).

Although come the start of 2021, I was getting pretty constant and sharp elbow pain as well as pain in the front of my left shoulder – particularly whenever I did ring muscle ups. Again, I have documented this extensively in the past (READ THIS).

Since mid 2023 though, things have been on an upward curve & ring muscle ups are now something that cause zero stress to my elbows whatsoever. This is even with things like wider reps back under my belt, (CONTROLLED) forward rolls, slow muscle ups, multiple isolated transitions – and I even added weight once just to see where my strength was having not done weighted reps in years (more on that another time!).

You might say that’s just because I’m experienced and been in the game a long time, but how do you account for my online (and in person) clients getting great breakthroughs with ring muscle ups, WITHOUT nagging elbow pain AND with 4-12 weeks of consistent progress with the move?

The short answer is joint prep, false grip proficiency, strengthening ALL parts of the range of motion (including addressing any weak links), and giving the body time to truly adapt.

If we look at these components further we can begin to see how they can all cause elbow stress/overuse if they’re not respected & approached the correct way. You can think of these as a roadmap or checklist to work through on your journey – this is exactly what I do in my coaching.

Joint Prep

Joint prep, in my words, is the integrity of your wrist flexion, your elbow mobility and flexion/loading tolerance, along with your passive (& active) shoulder extension range and even your thoracic mobility.

If your wrist flexion is limited you’ll find it harder to false grip comfortably. Your forearms will not be used to flexing in their most shortened range, which will push the tension upstream to the elbows. This is why I always prep the wrists with specific mobility drills designed to stretch the wrist extensors, and build resilience in the forearm flexors.

It’s simple: the better your wrist flexion, the easier your false grip will be.

My definition of ‘elbow mobility’ is your elbows’ capacity to flex but more importantly, flex under load. The more your elbows can flex in general, the more mechanically efficient your transition (the hardest section) will be. But it’s one thing to just push your hand towards your shoulder gently, and a whole other thing to actively do this with all your bodyweight as load, without your elbow tendons screaming at you.

Progressive loaded elbow stretches are a great starting point/warm up for ring muscle up training, coupled with specific tricep exercises, to mimic the higher forces the elbows will be exposed to down the line, are a winning formula to gradually build up that flexion tolerance.

Shoulder extension is an interesting one as your active and passive range can be radically different. I myself have very good tolerance to loaded passive shoulder extension (moves like the German Hang, the bottom of a very deep dip or even a loaded partner stretch), but am more lacking when it comes to the active side (pulling your arms behind your back & raising them up).

This is very common and it’s a gap that’s worth working on closing because again, efficient transitions require the upper arm to move behind the body nicely. But not just passively, the active side allows you to pull through the transition smoother, using your triceps, rear delts & scapula muscles responsible for depression/retraction.

Your chest will open easier and you’ll be able to catch your muscle ups in a deep dip with comfort, which in turn stops you needing a super high pull in order to make it over the rings each rep. Accordingly, I will always assess shoulder extension from both active & passive capacities and incorporate drills to open the chest, while also strengthening the active side of things, especially in the early stages.

Basically: more shoulder extension = you having an easier time moving from under, to over the rings as the fulcrum/lever arm is reduced thanks to the better opening of the chest.

And finally, thoracic mobility is one raved about in physiotherapy articles but hardly ever given a second thought to, when it comes to ring muscle up mastery. I believe it can be a real dark horse to those who need it though – myself being a prime candidate. See, when your thoracic extension is limited, your potential to fully engage your back muscles/scapula depressors/retractors is significantly inhibited.

Try this: do a false grip ring chin up or even a regular ring chin up and hold the top position (rings as far down the chest as you can) while leaning back, trying to create the biggest arch in your spine…

Then do the same thing with your legs out in front (slight L-sit) and a more neutral/even slightly flexed spine…

Which one is easier?

In the first case you will be using much more upper back than arms, whereas in the second case you will be using more arms and less upper back. Being able to use the upper back is key because it shares the load with the arms, and offloads them. When you have more extension in your spine available, you can use your upper back more effectively and the upper back is a key area for that range of motion beyond where the chin goes above the hands, and you begin to have to pull the elbows down and back behind you.

This has been a drastic change for me and I see people on a weekly basis in my group sessions, that have this exact problem; a complete inability to use their scapula & upper back effectively, causing them to over-rely on their arms/elbows. It’s also no coincidence they’re the ones with the nagging elbows, always having to warm up for 20 minutes before they can train without sharp pain.

Fuck that!

Filling In Strength Gaps

So many people are blindsided with thinking having 5-10 pull ups and 15-20 dips is enough for a muscle up. As I’ve said before, it can be enough or it may not be anywhere near enough. It all depends on how you do your dips & pull ups – aka the range you use and how strong you are in the very end ranges.

A false grip chest to rings pull up for 5 reps should be a minimum and ideally you should be able to pull high enough, to where your hands pronate slightly and touch below or around the nipple line for 3 reps, minimum.

And as always, more reps are better.

The other factor in the pull up department is the isometric strength in the range from the chin over hands and onwards. 10-20 second chest to ring holds should be easy enough, you could be pulled out of bed at 3am and asked to show that, and show it you can, whenever.

Again, the higher the better and if you can do it from a full hang, better still!

The strength surplus you get from these is immense. Believe me, it’s time well spent as this develops capacity for slower ring muscle ups, along with just having reserves in this range. I use holds with my guys and girls regardless of their level & I see amazing results when applied properly.

I have similar sentiments when it comes to the dip portion of the move. Many people spend no time in the deep bottom range, subsequently having no real strength there. I get my clientele to build up capacity here, so their joints are well conditioned to tolerate and operate well in this slightly more ‘extreme’ range.

This alone can be a fantastic mobility development drill!

Slowly & surely these ranges become more normal and the ring muscle up becomes naturally easier. This is without even touching upon the transition itself – the mystical & poorly understood motion of going from below and behind the rings, to above and in front of the rings.

The main stumbling block most commonly seen is an inability to want to work at a low enough level, to build sufficient training volume in order to 1) understand the movement pattern properly and 2) condition the appropriate muscles/tendons for this joint action.

All too often we see people rushing to do band assisted full reps, jumping reps etc, without putting any time/reps into foot assisted transition drills – drills that are just gold for success in the movement overall. Success meaning effortless reps & no elbow pain!

I still use foot assisted drills in my own training & every single one of my clients’ training who have anything to do with ring muscle ups in their programs. They’re that important.

But even if you are doing foot assisted transition work, it’s very likely you’re heavily using the feet and aren’t exactly sure of how to incrementally reduce the use of the feet, to where you eventually have the strength to do transitions without the feet at all.

I have a roadmap I use where we essentially work through a checklist all the way to where we can do clean muscle ups, WITHOUT pain and without much struggle, as the conditioning we’ve done all the way through means muscle ups become easy.

One last point I want to touch on is in regard to the eccentric/negative. Again, people don’t put enough focus on truly owning the negative – they think a dip followed by a controlled drop to the top of the pull up and then dropping their feet to the floor, is enough to count as ‘having the negative’. When this is far from true and my gold standard here is a consistent 3-5 second (or longer) controlled lowering, from where the elbows begin to go down from vertical.

Sometimes I like it to be where you can actually stop for a second or two at any point in that zone, from elbows pointing up (bottom of the dip) to elbows pointing down (top of the high pull up). This is the very definition of ownership.

Even if you’ve got ring muscle ups, this can be a great drill for making the transition stronger and improving your muscle up in general. The trouble is it can take time to see the results from this & it’s HARD work! Although immensely valuable in the long run.

As you can see, with a roadmap like this, ring muscle up training & ring muscle ups themselves need not be the elbow destroyers they are wrongly labelled. It simply comes down to the right progression rate and finding the right moves for the right stage in your journey. While being fine with operating below the level your ego thinks you should be.

It’s a science but not rocket science.

(For online coaching, email me: straighttalkingfitness@gmail.com).