Check Your False Grip
If you’re working towards your first strict muscle-up, looking to increase your unbroken muscle-up reps, or searching for more advanced gymnastics rings training, this blog is for you.
In this blog, I'm gonna share some ideas around false grip training for gymnastics rings muscle-ups and more.
I also cover these checks in this YouTube video:
Check number one is all about finding your false script.
The best false grip for you depends on where you are in your muscle-up journey.
If you're working towards your first muscle-up, then the false grip will be different than if you're training towards multiple reps of your muscle-up.
Here's why.
When we begin our muscle-up training, we're often taught to grab the front of the ring.
We put our hand through the ring, and we grip the front edge of the ring.
We then rotate the ring and bring the ring towards us. And this gets us a full grip.
Now, holding the front of the ring allows us to pull higher in the false grip chin-up, which makes the transition easier.
The problem is that the ring will move inside the strap as we move through the transition.
This isn't bad because when we push out of the ring dip, we want to have the hands or the grip at the bottom of the rings.
Trying to do a dip when your hands are holding the front of the rings is going to be painful or impossible for some people.
When we work through the eccentric muscle-up transition, we establish a false grip with the grip at the bottom of the rings, which means the next time we pull up, for the second rep, we will not get as high in that pull-up.
It will make the second rep harder than the first because, in the first rep, we're holding the front of the ring.
I am okay with beginners learning to do their first muscle-up while holding the front edge of the ring to establish a false grip.
But if you want to start doing multiple reps of muscle-ups, you'll need to learn to do it with a false grip at the bottom of the rings.
As I said, holding the bottom of the limits of the ring, our ability to pull as high because the grip is lower. So it's going to make the transition harder.
One way to improve your false grip chin-up height is to train false grip bent arm hangs, spend time in that top position, and build strength at the top.
We should also spend time training the straight arm false grip hang. In the straight arm hang, the shoulders are active here, pulled into depression.
The shoulders need to be active because this allows us to get higher in the pull-up. If we have passive shoulders (elevated shoulders) and we're only pulling with the biceps, we're not going to get as high. The transition will be nearly impossible unless you're kipping the muscle-up or you're a callisthenics beast.
A lot of gymnastics skill seekers have trouble holding the false grip in the straight arm position.
They lack shoulder flexion.
How often do you see people doing multiple reps of a ring muscle-up where they never go to full lockout at the bottom of their pull-up?
So what's missing?
This is check number two.
We're talking about shoulder flexion range of motion.
If you can't hold the false grip with straight-arm, chances are you're missing shoulder flexion.
A simple test we can do here is one that I also like to use for handstand testing. Do you have the flexibility to do handstands
No amount of muscle-up training, especially if you're doing partial reps, is ever going to allow you to get into the straight arm false grip hang position.
You need to isolate the flexibility work to improve your muscle-up.
Shoulder, external rotators, and weak lower trapezius muscles are also gonna impact your shoulder range of motion.
We need to be working on shoulder external rotation. We need to be working on trap-3 (lower trap) raises to:
Increase shoulder stability
Decrease the chance of injury
Increase upper body pushing and pulling strength
Improve our shoulder mobility.
You'd be wise to include external shoulder rotation and trap three in your training every week.
Check number three is more about advanced gymnastics rings training.
What do I mean by this?
When we learn the muscle-up, we often pull the rings in front of the chest at the top of the false grip pull-up. This is easier than a wider grip as it helps us get higher, which allows us to transition through the muscle-up.
But if we're in this neutral grip, we can't do more advanced gymnastics movements such as forward roles or backwards roles, or let's say, moving from the German hang into the ring support position.
We can't do it because we need the torso to fit between the rings, and if you've got the rings close together, that's not going to happen.
So, we need to be in a wide grip, and we need to be able to do a wide false grip muscle up.
Now, a wider false grip pull-up is a lot harder than the neutral false grip pull-up, so you need to be stronger to get enough height to do that muscle-up transition.
Again, this comes down to shoulder strength, scapular depression strength, and it comes down to your pulling strength.
Spending time in a wide bent-arm false-grip pull-up will help you get through that transition.
Check number four is protecting the wrist, or it's more of a tip, really. When we're training full grip and doing a lot of work, especially if it's a hot climate or we're sweating, we're going to start to tear the skin on the wrists.
Once we start to tear, we want to stop training for the day because if we keep tearing the skin and we get to a point where it starts to bleed, that's going to take a lot longer to heal, which means we're not going to be to train the muscle up for two to three weeks while we're waiting for the wrist to heal.
Training frequency is important.
If we want to get the muscle-up, we need to be consistently practising the muscle-up. If you've torn the skin on your wrist and can't put any weight on it, you can't train the muscle-up.
Taping the wrists removes the chance of tearing the skin. It allows us to do more volume in our muscle-up training, which means we will progress faster.
I recommend buying some athletic tape.
Don't tape it too tight. You need to be able to flex the wrist and straighten the wrist as you work through the transition.
This comes to check number five, which is training frequency.
Muscle-up training frequency depends on where you are in your muscle-up journey and your goals in the beginning.
If you're starting to learn the muscle up, I'd suggest only training transitions once a week.
The transition puts a lot of pressure on the elbows, so you may experience elbow pain, especially if you're training it more than once a week.
It takes time to strengthen the connective tissue of the elbow.
So gradually train it, allow it to recover, train it, allow it to recover.
All our online clients working towards their first strict muscle-up are training transitions once a week.
This is enough for them to progress and achieve their muscle-up goal.
If you're a more advanced gymnastics skill seeker and you're working on forward roles and backwards roles, and you're doing ring routines, and there's a lot of other stuff going on, well then you're going to be doing the muscle-ups more than once a week.
But we want to progress to that slowly and slowly.
Increase volume, increase frequency, and if you start experiencing elbow pain, you'll probably have to rest the transition for a little while.
Work on strengthening that connective tissue and then returning, gradually building up the frequency again.
Frequency depends on your goals, what you want to accomplish there, and your training history and experience.
I hope you found this helpful post.
Happy muscle-up training.
