Making the right shapes is the FIRST step in getting your toes to bar to work for you, and eventually do them efficiently in a workout setting.
Arch Lifts
Technique
Lying flat on the floor, squeeze your glutes and lift your arms off the floor. Keep your heels together as you do so. Your legs and arms should leave the ground.
Do not shove your belly into the ground and hyperextend the low back. This is not part of the arch position and it’s not a good habit to get into.
A nice arch is long and distributed, with tight lines and no one point in your back doing all the work.
Kip Swing variations
The kip swing itself can be tricky and a good kip swing sets up good habits for the future. Hugely bent knees do not contribute much power when moving from arch to hollow, and a longer body line is more helpful.
To combat common bad habits like a loss of tension and a large knee bend, we can use targeted positioning of resistance bands to make sure you are keeping your shapes all the way through the kip swing.
- Beat swing to band (heels)
- Beat swing to band (hollow)
- Beat swing to band (chest)
- Beat swing to bands (both sides)
- Beat swing
- Kip swing
How do I use these?
Try them all. Figure out which ones you find the hardest, and spend time on those. Remember that the things that make this hard are losing tension and length, or starting with a kip that’s bigger than you can currently control. Be okay with a smaller movement to start while you build confidence and ability here.
Technique
Set the band up according to the video. Start in a dead hang, and do a small beat swing. The band will throw you out of position, so you will have to fight back with extra tension and intention to make sure it doesn’t cause you to lose rhythm.
Hollow Rocks
Technique
From a hollow body hold, rock back and forth. Ensure that your whole spine rolls across the floor, you shouldn’t be going thud-thud between your shoulders and your hips because there should be a nice curved spine to roll across.
Entry Jump Sequence
We have 3 variations of this in our kipping bar muscle up program:
- Entry jump (banana jump)
- Entry jump to arch
- Entry jump to kip swing
What is it?
Watch the videos to understand the key components of the entry jump for a toes to bar:
- Fairly close behind the bar – no need to create lots of extra momentum here.
- Jump into a small pike position so your toes lift as you catch the bar (your body should not be in a straight line when you catch the bar
- Swing into a long, tight arch, so that your toes are behind the bar when your shoulders are in front of the bar
Practice good entry jumps – they will save you a lot of pain when doing higher rep sets in the future!
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