The Muscle Up

When I first discovered the muscle up, I thought it was nothing more than a gimmick.  It looked impressive enough, guy pulls himself from under the bar to over the bar.  But it was an exercise I only saw being performed by Crossfitters, and I was completely against Crossfit at that time.  Nevertheless, I began trying to do muscle ups on straight pull up bars.  I quickly realized, that even though I could do nearly 20 consecutive pull ups at a bodyweight of 235, I had no shot of getting a singe muscle up.  For the next four months, every once in awhile I'd try to a few muscle ups, failing over and over.  It wasn't until a few weeks ago, after plenty of research and months of training, that I was able to do muscle ups. Now they've become a frequent part of my bodyweight training.
In my eyes there are three main reasons that muscle ups are an effective exercise for building upper body muscle, strength, and power:
1) They force you to learn to be explosive with your upper body.  When performing a muscle up, especially when you're first learning, you have to pull your body back AND up simultaneously in an explosive manner in order to get your body high enough to get over the bar.  Then you have to quickly transition into a dip in order to lock out and complete the movement.  Some might say that bodyweight experts and bar athletes are capable of doing muscle ups slowly, but even they have to be fast and explosive at the moment when they transition from the pulling motion to the pushing motion.  Explosive movements are great for building muscle and power because they teach muscles to contract faster on command.
2) Just like the power clean, the deadlift, the squat, or the snatch (any variation), the muscle up recruits a large number of muscles.  In order to complete the movement with good form, the abdominals, upper back musculature, lower back, chest, shoulders, biceps and triceps must all activate explosively.  The more musculature activated, the more muscle building testosterone is released in the blood.  The more NATURAL testosterone in the blood, the more muscle will be built, the more fat you will burn, and in the long run, the healthier you will be as a man.
3) Simply put, muscle ups are fucking hard!  They take a practice, technique, strength and power.  Anytime you have the opportunity to push your mind and your body to a new level of strength and athleticism, TAKE IT!

Check out these masters of the muscle up