Kipping Pull-Ups: Fix Your Kip Before Adding Volume
Updated: 23 hours ago
Before your next pull-up workout, lean your phone against a plate, set it level with the bar and a few steps to your side, and film one set of kipping pull-ups. Not your best set. A normal one, the way you move in the middle of a workout.
Watch it back twice: once at full speed, once slowed down. Most athletes are surprised. The set that felt smooth looks busy on screen, with knees folding, elbows bending early and a body that seems to fall off the bar at the top of every rep.
That footage matters because volume amplifies whatever kip you already have. If your kip is efficient, more reps make you better. If it is a leg-driven swing with bent arms and loose shoulders, more reps mostly make you tired and irritate your shoulders. So before we add a single rep, let's go through the tape. Each section below is a fault you are likely to spot, what it looks like, why it happens and how I fix it when I coach it.
IN THIS ARTICLE
The knees fold first and the feet swing like a pendulum
Pause the video on the first swing and look at what moves before anything else. If it is the knees, bending and then kicking forward, you have found the most common fault of all. Let the clip play and you will usually see the feet tracing a big arc under the bar, like a pendulum that nobody is controlling.
This happens because most athletes think of the kip as a leg swing. It isn't. A kip is a controlled swing between two positions, driven by the shoulders and trunk, and the legs follow rather than lead. In the hollow, your arms are straight and you press the bar down and away as if pushing it toward your hips, ribs down, glutes tight, legs together and slightly in front of the bar. In the arch, your chest pushes through in front of the bar, shoulders open, legs behind you and glutes squeezed, so the arch comes from the upper back and shoulders rather than the lower back. Pressing the bar away creates the hollow. Letting the chest move through creates the arch. If the movement starts with a knee bend or a leg kick, it is not a kip yet.
The fix starts on the floor. Hollow and arch holds, 3 sets of 20–30 seconds each, teach the shapes without any grip or swing demands. If the hollow is shaky or your lower back lifts off the floor, bend the knees or bring the arms forward. Then take it to the bar with kip swings: 3–4 sets of 8–10, arms straight, body tight, swing small and even. On your next recording, the feet should move in a short arc, not a big pendulum.
The elbows bend before the hips have done anything
Now watch the arms. On a lot of videos, the elbows start to bend while the body is still in the arch, and the rep turns into a muscled pull with a swing attached. On others, the athlete swings beautifully, then waits too long and grinds out what is really a strict pull-up. Either way, the momentum from the kip is lost.
This is where most kipping pull-ups fall apart. The pull should start as you snap from the arch into the hollow, when the hip drive lifts you and your body feels light. Pull too early and you lose the momentum. Pull too late and you are doing a strict pull-up with a swing attached. The most common thing I see on athletes' video is exactly this: elbows bending during the swing. Keep the arms long until the hip drive.
The drill I use is the kip swing to hip pop. After 2–3 swings, snap from the arch into the hollow and drive the hips up toward the bar so your body briefly lifts and gets light. Do 3–4 sets of 3–5 reps. That weightless moment is where the pull will eventually live. Once you can find it every time, add the pull back in stages:
Kip swing into single kipping pull-ups: 4–5 sets of 1–2 reps, focused on timing.
Kipping pull-ups in sets of 3: pull, push away, arch, repeat. 4–5 sets.
Build toward sets of 5–8 before chasing longer sets.
The body drops straight down from the top
Scrub to the moment your chin clears the bar. Does your body travel away from the bar and back into the arch, or does it simply fall vertically, feet swinging forward underneath you? If it falls, the next rep usually starts with an awkward extra swing or a full reset. On video it looks like a series of separate pull-ups rather than a cycle.
The missing piece is the push-away. At the top, once the chin clears, push the bar away and return to the arch under control. That push-away is what sets up the next rep. If you simply drop from the top, you swing out of rhythm and have to start over. When you drill sets of 3, make the push-away the thing you judge yourself on, not the pull.
Coach's cue: Keep your arms long until your hips do the work.
Rep six looks nothing like rep one
Put your first rep and your last rep side by side. In a lot of footage the early reps are tidy and the later ones shrink: shorter range, chin craning at the bar, elbows breaking early, hands shifting on the grip. That gap tells you the kip is doing work your muscles can't yet control.
Kipping moves your shoulders through a big range of motion with momentum. That is fine when the shoulders are strong and prepared. As a guideline, I like athletes to have at least 3–5 strict pull-ups before doing high-volume kipping in workouts, and to keep training strict work even after they can kip. That means strict pull-ups for 3–5 sets of 3–8 reps once or twice a week, scapular pull-ups for 2–3 sets of 8–10, pulling the shoulders down from a dead hang without bending the arms, and, if you are still building your first strict reps, slow negatives for 3 sets of 3 with a 3–5 second lower.
Volume needs the same patience. Tissues adapt more slowly than skill, and a sudden jump from 30 to 150 pull-ups in a week is a common path to sore elbows and shoulders. Add total weekly reps in small steps rather than doubling overnight. In workouts, break early and plan sets you can hold with good technique, such as 5-5-5 instead of an ugly 10 followed by singles. Put skill and volume practice early in the session, before heavy fatigue. And if the kip gets sloppy, the elbows bend early or your hands are raw, stop the set.
Some muscle soreness after new volume is normal. Sharp pain, a pinching feeling at the front or top of the shoulder, or pain that lingers for days is a signal to stop and see a physio. Look after your hands too: keep calluses filed down, use chalk and consider grips for longer sets to reduce the risk of rips.
Fast, but no two reps look the same
Some of you filmed butterfly pull-ups. They use a circular path that lets you link reps faster, and they are usually the fastest way to cycle high-volume pull-ups. The catch shows up on video: reps that are quick but inconsistent, with each one taking a slightly different path until the set unravels under fatigue. Butterflies demand more coordination and more control of the shoulders at speed.
My recommendation is to own a solid, consistent kipping pull-up first. A good kip teaches the timing and positions that butterflies rely on. Once you can do 10 or more smooth kipping reps, butterflies become a sensible next step.
Your next recording
Give the fixes a few weeks before you judge them. A simple week that fits around class looks like this:
Day 1: kip swings 3 x 10, kip to hip pop 3 x 5, strict pull-ups 4 x 5.
Day 2: class workout with pull-ups, broken into planned small sets.
Day 3: kipping pull-ups 5 x 3–5 with a focus on push-away and rhythm, scapular pull-ups 3 x 8.
Then film the same set from the same angle and compare. You are looking for quiet knees, long arms through the swing and a body that travels back into the arch at the top.
If you want short, structured gymnastics development alongside your regular classes, Sphere Programming gives you that each week in the app. If you want a coach watching your kip and adjusting your plan personally, take a look at individual coaching. And if your hands are the limiter, the grips we train with are on the gear page.
Your turn. Tried this? Tell me how it went in the comments below. I read every one, and your questions help shape what I write next. If it helped, tap the heart so it reaches more athletes.
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Coach Fritz Bautista · Head Coach, ATHLETESPHERE
CrossFit Level 2 Trainer (CF-L2) ✓ · CrossFit Programming Certificate · MBA · Digital Marketing Certified · Coaching athletes from all walks of life online
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