An Often Overlooked Aspect of Kipping Pull-up Mastery

August 4, 2016
/ General Interest kipping muscle-up pull-up

Muscle-ups, butterfly pull-ups and front uprises. All really fun, and all requiring kipping. Trouble is, in order to perform these movements well, you are going to need a little work on the basics. One mistake I often see missed in gyms is failing to work on the hollow and arch positions before hopping up onto a bar and attempting to kip.

Kipping basically consists of two main parts while hanging on a bar. This is a hollow:

and an arch:

If you watch the video of Dave Durante closely, you’ll see that he hits both positions beautifully during his front uprise. Trouble is, to get to Dave’s level (goodluck), you can’t skip the basics. I’ve made a few videos of my favorite exercises to work on hollow and arch proficiency to help get you closer to kipping mastery.

Arch Hold Drills

Hollow Hold Drills

I often put these drills into a warm-up or for conditioning toward the end of a gymnastics day. I know it’s basic but I find athletes have a very difficult time maintaining these position when performing more challenging kipping movements and if they really hammer these basic positions, everything else improves once they’re on the bar or rings.