The muscle up journey began when Sean Lind left to go to Montreal for circus school late summer of 2008.  He told me that he had a present for me that should arrive any day.  I was very intrigued to see what it was.  To my surprise it was a set of gymnastics rings, this was my first pair!  With that present he told me that I had to get my muscle up by the time he came back in town.  I practiced and practiced, watched lots of videos and tried every progression out there. The deadline passed and I was without a muscle up 🙁  I also injured my wrist pretty bad attempting the movement and that put a damper on my progress.

Sean came into town last summer (2009) for a few weeks and ran a gymnastics seminar.  It was great to have him help out with the flaws in my transition and show me why I injured my wrist.

Since then, I took a break and focused on strengthening my wrists, forearms and began to wear wrist straps to prevent further injury.

For such a long time I was sooooo close to getting my muscle up, at one point I was even on top of the rings and then my right elbow shot out and I fell out.  After taking a few months off of practicing, Sean was back in town again.  He came back with lots of confidence in new transition drills that he had learnt.

Since he has been home this summer we have only worked through the transitions once a couple weeks ago and then again today.  Before we trained today, he said that I was going to get my muscle up once and then we would get the camera and I would get it the second time.  I have lots of confidence in him, so I drilled that into my mind.  We worked through a few transitions.  The first one was a ring row into a muscle up, focusing on pulling the elbows in and transferring the energy upward.  The second was a jumping muscle up, practicing swinging forward, back and up.  I got those down great, so then he spotted me on a set of higher rings for a full muscle up.  I then decided that I would try a muscle up with out my wrists straps.  Sean wrapped my wrists for a little support and cushion over my wrist where the false grip sits. Sean told me to hang from the rings and see how the wraps felt.  They felt great, so I decided to go for it…. I swung once, twice and up, up, up I made it to the top of the rings!  I was in soooo much shock, like I have heard before, it felt easy.

I then had to do it again for the camera of course! So check out the video above to see my second muscle up! It felt just as easy, and I had so much confidence to do it again.

Here are some tips that I have learned, to help those of you who have not yet found your muscle up:

• Go to Sean’s Gymnastics Class!  He will get you your muscle up or at least the tools and confidence that you need.
• Have a spot to help you get above the rings, it makes all the difference when you know how it feels to go through the full transition
• Keep looking straight ahead through the whole movement,  don’t look up or down
• Focus on transferring the energy up! Don’t lean back!  That is one thing that a lot of CrossFitter’s do wrong.  They lean back in the kip and then try to drive the hips up and pop the chest over the rings.  You need to keep the chest up and pull the rings to your ribs.
• Keep your whole body tight through the movement
• Be confident in yourself!  You  can do it 🙂

COME ON GIRLS!!!  THE LEADERBOARD IS LONELY!!!

Today’s Workout:

Buy – in: Squat snatch skills –> 3 rounds of 2 snatch grip deadlifts, 2 hang power snatches, 2 overhead squats.  After this, try a few sets of squat snatches building up to your WOD weight.

WOD:  “Snatching Nancy”

This is an adaptation of the CrossFit benchmark WOD “Nancy” (20 min amrap of 400m run and 15 overhead squats).   In this wonderful version, you get to snatch the bar up for every overhead squat rep!  Make sure you attain proper squat depth (i.e. hip crease below top of knee) on each squat snatch and stand up completely out of each one.

Enjoy!

Elite:  Amrap in 20 minutes (count total reps of squat snatches) of –

• 400m run
• 15 squat snatches (65/95)

Zone 4:  scale snatches to 55/75

Zone 3: scale snatches to 45/65

Zone 2: scale snatches to 35/45, adjust distance of run or time of amrap

Zone 1: scale as needed

Cash-out: circle team stretch – focus on quads, glutes, shoulders

NEW GYMNASTIC CLASS  TUESDAY NIGHTS!!!

******Tuesday July 13th: 7:30pm

Skills: Forward rolls, backwards rolls, Front & back levers, Glide swings

WOD: (20) HSPU,  (25) strict pull-ups,(20) Toes to bar