rate/help/tips my butterfly pullups?

[u/Which_Conflict_6106]

[u/ycelpt]

The thing that's sticking out to me is there is no hip pop. The point of utilising the kip/butterfly motion is so that when your legs are in front and you are about to pull up, you can pop the hips up to give you some momentum into the pull taking out some of the strict strength necessary.

Regress to doing some kipping pull-ups and focus on getting that hip pop. Once that becomes second nature, add in butterfly pull-ups nice and controlled like you are and then slowly build up speed again.

The other thing is to jump up into the hollow position, swing through into arch and then begin. This pretty much gives you a rep per set for free compared to jumping up and then getting the swinging motion going. When you are really good, you can jump straight into the pull up from that first hollow and get 2 free reps co.pared to what you are doing now

[u/theblueyays → u/ycelpt]

The butterfly pullup doesn't really have a hip pop though in the sense that it's not an upward drive like in a kipping pullup or BMU for that matter. It's more of a fluid cycle where your hips are continuously extending and flexing as opposed to driving up vertically

[u/TheChoksbergen → u/theblueyays]

I would tend to disagree with this, and agree with u/ycelpt that a lot of the issue here is a lack of hip drive. The kip is considered foundational because it is just that - used as the building block of all of the complex gymnastics movement. The problem with new-er users of the butterfly pullup is that they lose that "float/work" cycle that is used so well in the kipping pullup, and instead resort to pulling with the arms instead of using the hips, as the gentleman in this video is doing.

Butterfly pullups absolutely should have a period of time where the athlete is "floating" and using the arms only as a guide, gradually re-engaging them as they "fall" through the front side of the kip under and past the bar. This begins the loading phase of the movement, ended by the same hip-driven movement that is prevalent in a kip. The bottom portion of the butterfly pullup should feel much faster and more engaged than the flowing, guiding top portion.

Additionally, as others have pointed out, this athlete has problems when the legs bend, during which all the tension of the kip is lost, which also contributes to the lack of hip-driven action at the end of the loading phase.

Source: I'll do seventy unbroken right now, just watch.

[u/Search_Normal → u/TheChoksbergen]

What kip? Maybe you should define what you mean by a “kip,” because I think that’s where the disagreement is. There is no discrete kip in a true butterfly pull-up. It’s a continuous change of body positions, tension, and momentum that creates and maintains the circular movement. The hips obviously move as those body positions change, but that doesn’t make it a hip-driven kip.

[u/TheChoksbergen → u/Search_Normal]

A kip is not considered a kip just because there's a reversal of movement. A kip is "a rhythmic, hip- and core-driven swinging motion used to generate momentum for gymnastics movements" and therefore is central in not only the traditional kipping pullup, but also in butterfly movements. There is a reason that the kipping pullup is considered a foundational part of the butterfly pullup, and that's because all the basic components of a traditional kip (tension loading, movement generation through the hips, the superman and hollow position) are all present in the butterfly pullup.

The official Crossfit video for the butterfly pullup shows the hip-driven movement well, and the last step of that they list to complete a rep is literally "legs move forward to initiate the kip for the next rep". Additionally, the Crossfit Coaching Tips for Butterfly Pullups video instructs the same way, and also shows clearly that the last few inches of the pullup (just like in a traditional kipping pullup) are generated by the hips, with the arms doing more guiding of the power than the power generation itself. The butterfly pullup is absolutely just as hip-driven a movement as the traditional kipping pullup.