Hey everyone, it’s Sho!
I finally nailed my first RMU! It took me about a year of practice, but I’m thrilled to finally be able to do it. Here’s what the movement looks like:
Today, I want to share the challenges I faced and how I overcame them. If you’re struggling with the same issues, I hope this can help you out. Sure, you can find tons of tutorials on YouTube, but sometimes, even after trying them, you still can’t get it, and you’re left wondering why.
That’s where personal experiences can be super valuable. Hearing how someone else tackled the problem might be just what you need.
First, some context: I’m 177 cm tall and weigh between 85-90 kg. I can do about 10 strict pull-ups in a row, give or take. My grip strength is around 40 kg on the left and 45 kg on the right. Here are the problems I ran into:
The Problems
- I couldn’t get my body high enough to get over the rings.
- Just hanging on the rings was tough. After each practice session, I needed a long break, so I couldn’t get much volume in.
Let’s break down each issue.
1. About the First Problem
1) Not Doing Kipping Correctly
One common mistake when kipping is bending your knees during the backswing, which creates a “slack.” This is a problem because it prevents you from generating enough height during the hip pop in the front swing. It might feel like you’re generating a lot of power (I used to think so), but in reality, you’re losing force. To fix this, I practiced swinging with a towel between my legs to prevent my knees from bending. Also, instead of focusing on swinging my legs during kipping, I concentrated on engaging my hips and glutes, and keeping my gaze towards the floor during the backswing. This helped me create a bigger backswing and a cleaner swing with less slack.
Additionally, when doing the front swing, I used to only focus on tightening my legs and abs. But I realized that engaging my lats, like when doing a bar muscle-up, was crucial. By focusing on activating my lats, then abs, and then hip flexors in that order after the backswing, I was able to generate a much more powerful front swing.
2) Weak Hip Pop
a) Not engaging the glutes fully and effectively during the hip pop
To work on this, I did hip lifts on the floor and practiced using the rings. I’ve included a link to the specific exercises I followed below. Practicing bar muscle-ups while focusing on the hip pop also helped a lot.
Exercises I found helpful:
b) Lack of back strength (pushing down on the rings with straight arms)
For this, I focused on exercises like cable pulldowns and using resistance bands on a box to build that strength.
2. About the Second Problem
Without sufficient grip strength, it’s hard to get enough practice reps in, which slows progress. Plus, without a strong grip, you can’t transfer enough force to the rings when you pull. To improve this, I did the following exercises:
Dead hang
Farmers carry
Plate pinch
By the way, you might hear a lot of people say you should master strict pull-ups before working on kipping, but I disagree. The reason is that kipping requires its own specific technique, which needs to be practiced. Sure, having the strength to do strict pull-ups is important to prevent injuries, but that kind of strength doesn’t come overnight. If you wait until you’re perfect at strict pull-ups, you might never start practicing RMUs. So, I think it’s better to work on both.
Finally, I want to share some advice from a coach I’ve been following lately. His explanations have helped me improve a lot. I highly recommend checking out his work.
Thank you for reading
See you soon.
Sho