It was one of those things I never trained for, yet always wanted to do one day.
I’d seen two people do them in person before, a 6’5″ ~165lb black kid in LA at a public park, and a 5′ 7″ 165lb powerlifter. Both were able to hit sets of 5 smoothly.
But really to me the inspiration for them was internet based, first a log on Tnation (Alpha’s log) at 16, and then a little later Kali Muscle, both doing them for reps as big guys. (The video inspiration coming years before the witnessed reps.)
Now i was reading beastskills.com’s muscle up tutorial within the last 48 hours, and walked into the gym yesterday only to have my buddy mention them to me.
I talked about the tutorial saying to pull up to behind the bar, to not just try to do an explosive pullup, how the “bar path”/ line of pull matters, and we both decided to try it.
He went, then I went, we both missed close on the 1st attempts.
The conversation between first and second attempts had us both saying “I’ll get it, you’ll get it, and I’m not bothering with video”(paraphrased).
He got it on his second attempt, as did I seconds later.
Another guy walked over to me and asked me how it feels up there as I held the top for a while and was still there, my reply…. “Euphoric, like I fucked the world”. I felt REALLY good. This was something I didn’t expect to do any time soon.
My buddy kept trying to get a second rep, sometimes with camera, sometimes without. He didn’t, and 5 or so minutes later I decided to go for it one more time after asking 4 of the 5 other people on the gym floor if they saw it, as frankly at just shy of 240 I didn’t expect anyone other than eye witnesses to believe me, I wanted video proof. (Although I could ask for and possibly get security camera footage of the rep.)
Video proof:
This was my third attempt yesterday, my 2nd muscle up ever. Hitting those reps gave me euphoria, an adrenaline dump, and checked off another one on my YouTube idea list.
I am now in the muscle up club, and the heavyweight (over 200lb) muscle up club.
Boom! I think the new found strength for the transition (my main issue on muscle ups) is related to the labor I’ve been working, I can now explode through the transition phase. Pullup almost into the dip. Speaking of labor related strength another one of yesterday’s videos:
Persistence and Tenacity!
J Out!
P.S. Within minutes I had odd soreness in my chest, and amped up arms (bicep and tricep), but this all went away by the time I left the gym.
10 hours later (~11pm) there was decent DOMS in the lats, forearms, and biceps. To be expected from wholly new stimuli.