Muscle-Up Turnover: Hips Up Versus Toes Up

Muscle-Up Turnover: Toes to Rings versus Hips to Rings
Written by Gaje McDaniel

Early this week, I wrote about my favorite kipping drills for athletes who are working on muscle-ups. These drills are helpful in tweaking your back swing, forward swing, or both.

Today, we’ll go through the next part of the muscle-up, which is the turnover – getting ourselves to the top of the rings. I’ve watched multiple games athletes, non-competitive athletes and first-timers complete muscle-ups, struggle with muscle-ups, and also miss muscle-ups. As a coach, I want to have the knowledge to explain to each of them what they need to do to not miss, be more efficient, or string multiple muscle-ups together. To do this, I experiment; I don’t believe there’s any one way to achieve a muscle-up, but there definite techniques that can help. After you’ve established a good kip and practiced it often, I’d suggest two different techniques for the turnover that you can try out on your own.

The first technique works well but also has a downside. This is the “hip up” to the rings technique. Many athletes try this by simply pulling your hips to the rings on the forward swing with the momentum created by the pull through. This is a good technique for people to ultimately get their bodies higher toward the rings but the key to this is not the hips touching the rings but rather the pulling of your knees to your butt with speed to trigger your upper body to fall over the rings.

To practice this, grab a pair of rings that are hung to about hip height, place a band hand to hand and take a seat on it. Lay back, elbows straight, and create a hollow body. Think about the momentum coming from your toes throw your heels to your butt and translate that motion from your lower half to create momentum to your upper body. While doing this toes to upper body movement, get your hip up to the rings keeping your arms straight and lats activated.

People can lose good position in this movement by bending their knees on the forward swing, allowing their legs to come apart, and not tucking heels to their butt. When this happens, you will end in the catch position with your feet straight in front of you (like an L-Sit). Even if you are proficient at the muscle-up this can happen when you are tired and lazy. A good tip to try when this is occurring is to put a towel between your toes to make your feet stay pressed together. Try to keep your toes visible on your drive to get your hips up and use the momentum to keep your whole body moving as one.

The second technique for the turnover, and my personal favorite, is as a good way to transfer momentum from our lower half to our upper half to fall into the catch position with proficient positioning (and not in the dreaded L-Sit). This is done by leading with our toes and skipping the “hip up” technique we talked about earlier.

In this method, when you forward swing, let your toes be visible further than a hollow position. You will then throw your legs down violently while pulling through the rings. This momentum transfer usually allows an athlete to be quicker with their turnover and keep their feet under them.

Try out both of these or your own variation and never stop practicing. To become a great gymnast, you have to spend time doing plenty of variations and practicing them often. Find out what works best for you and have fun!