Read this first
Let's be real here for a second. I'm not a trainer. Never coached anybody, no certification, not in the best shape of my life yet. I'm a guy who films himself at the gym five days a week and puts the whole thing online, the makes and the misses.
First muscle-up ever, July 10th. Two in a row, August 12th. That's the whole résumé. Everything in here is what I did in between, and it's on tape, so I can point at it.
If you want somebody who's been at this ten years, there are better people.
The five moves
The five I kept coming back to. Not because a program told me to. Because they fit in a rack with a bar, and they're what the muscle-up is made of.
1.Weighted pull-ups.
I started with a 12 pound vest, because the vest was what I had. When it stopped feeling like anything I went to a dip belt with a plate, then added plate. The point isn't the weight. A pull-up you can do heavy is a pull-up you can do fast, and the muscle-up needs the fast one. My first-ever muscle-up day ends with weighted pull-ups after it. That was on purpose.
2.Dips.
The half nobody trains. Everybody works the pull, then gets their chest over the bar with nothing to press with and falls right back down. If you can't press yourself up over a bar, you don't have a muscle-up, you have a nice pull-up with a scary ending.
3.Bent-over rows.
The boring one, and the one that actually moved it. Barbell, hinge at the hips, pull it to your waist, put it back down. I did these for months before anything unlocked — ten row sessions sit in my index between July 7th and August 17th, the bent-over barbell version from July 15th on. The logic is simple: if I can do more weight on those, then I’m obviously pulling myself easier as well. What I said on camera the last time: “it’s a bent over row… let’s try it out.”
4.Inverted rows.
Set the bar low, get under it, heels on the floor, chest to the bar. Least impressive move on the list, and the only one I've done every week since the first week. When bodyweight got easy I put the vest on. Same bar as everything else, so there's no equipment excuse.
5.Band-assisted muscle-ups.
The one that teaches the shape. Loop a band over the bar, get inside it, and let it carry the part you can't do yet so your body learns the transition. Honest source of that tip: a guy at my gym asked me how I did it and that's what I told him. On tape it's "if you do it like banded a little bit, you'll get to the technique" and "you gotta get inside the band." Four days later I was running band work on myself.
The order
Pull-ups for weeks before anything fancy. Then weight, because weight makes the pull violent enough to get you above the bar. Then the band, so your body finds the transition before you're strong enough to muscle it. Then the thing itself. Dips and rows, both kinds, run underneath the whole time.
Now the part people leave out.
The failures, since they're on tape anyway
July 10th, day one
There's a rep on that tape that looks like a make in a screenshot and is a miss in real life. I had to correct my own archive a month later.
Assisted pistol squats, August 13th
I'm holding the rack and I say it out loud on camera: "the assist is a bit too strong." I knew my arm was doing the work while I was doing it. Filed it anyway.
The weighted muscle-up, August 12th
Put the vest on, went for it, talked myself out of it mid-clip. "Safety first. Get back to regular cable programming." A whole clip of me not doing it.
Two muscle-ups in one session on August 12th, and my latest muscle-up session is still a folder full of attempts. Both things are true at once.
What not to expect
I'm not promising you a timeline. Mine ran from picking the camera up in June to a first muscle-up on July 10th, at 27, five days a week, in a body already doing pull-ups. Yours is a different body with a different history and it doesn't owe me a schedule.
I'm not giving you sets and reps either. I didn't track them and I'm not making them up for a free guide.
And I'm not qualified to tell you what's safe. All I've got is what I do, which is when a rep feels wrong I stop and say so on camera instead of forcing it. Form over ego. It costs you nothing to be the guy who racks it.
The part nobody wants
I named one of my videos "Nobody Wants This Part," and it's still the truest thing I've made about the gym.
Nobody wants the 37 minutes. There's a clip from August 17th where I say "37 minutes and I haven't got to my real workout yet." That's not a complaint, that's the job. Nobody wants three takes of a handstand push-up you never got into, or a session spent failing somebody else's advice in public.
And here's what I keep saying, even after the double, even after a stranger at my gym asked me to teach him: I still feel like I'm faking it.
I don't think that goes away. You just keep going anyway.
i'm not special. i'm just gonna stay consistent.What I'm chasing now
The muscle-up was the last goal. These are the current ones, so you can watch them go from attempts to receipts, or not.
The L-sit. Sit on the floor, hands down, lift everything and hold it. I started practicing these in July and my hip flexors still file complaints. Nowhere near a clean hold yet.
The freestanding handstand. The wall version came first, July 6th. By August 11th I could hold a freestanding tripod for over twenty seconds. The full handstand, no wall, no tripod, is the one I want.
The handstand push-up. This is where pike push-ups live now. They were never really about the muscle-up, they are how you build pressing strength upside down. My last wall-assisted session was three takes of attempts where I never got up once. All three are filed. That is where this goal currently stands: at zero, on tape.
When any of these lands, this page updates. That is the whole deal with this site.
That's it
Five moves, one bar, and a camera you already own. Pick the bar up this week. You're going to be terrible at it, in public, longer than you'd like. That's the price.
No course. No catch.