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- What's up?
Today, I'm gonna show you guys how I started calisthenics.
Now, a lot of you guys may or may not know before YouTube
my professional calisthenics career started back in 2012
when I represented USA for the world championship,
the World Street Workout Calisthenics Federation
World Championship,
which was the first international competition
for calisthenics and the very first championship
that had ever taken place was back in 2011.
So I had gotten in really early in 2012,
the second year they ever did this.
It was featured on Eurosport and Eurosport 2
and it was the first real taste that I had gotten
of the calisthenics community and seeing it
from the outside world, outside my little spot in Miami.
And in 2013 I won the World Cup in Germany
which qualified me for the Super Finals.
Now for the World Cup, there's different stages
all around the world.
And the winners of all those stages
battle it out at the Super Finals at the end
of the year in Moscow, Russia.
Again, I represented USA at the Super Finals
and it was one of the craziest experiences of my life.
After the Super Finals, I came back home
extremely inspired and opened
the world's first calisthenics gym
to focus more on my training.
And in that time I continued to travel
and teach from all the things I learned
from all these competitions
and from being a part
of all these international competitions,
meeting all these extremely talented
international athletes.
I was able to pick all their brains
and be able to use what I felt like applied
the best to me and towards my craft.
And with that I began to really focus on my training
and I would continue to travel and teach basically
everything from my experience.
And along those years,
eventually able to revolutionize the way
that people view calisthenics.
And now there's calisthenic gyms all around the world.
Kind of like when skateboarding first came out,
eventually came the skate parks.
But if I can bring it back to the very very beginning
it basically all started at a really young age
when my parents put me into martial arts.
And the way we trained and conditioned in martial arts
was all with body weight training.
We didn't use any weights to work out.
And specifically at my school, one of the main things
that we had focused on was core.
Core was drilled into our minds that
that is like the most important thing.
All your strength comes from here.
So we would always drill crazy ab workouts.
So at the age of like seven, eight years old
I already had a six pack.
And another monumental thing that was embeded into us
from martial arts was discipline
and being able to see results from progressive discipline.
So naturally, these aspects had started to spill
into my calisthenics training when I began calisthenics.
But outside of the basics, when I really started
to venture further and really got into calisthenics,
one of the moves that really broke that barrier for me
was a seated explosive L sit pull up.
This was even before I was able to muscle up
and this is one of the moves that I used to be able
to get a really high pull up that eventually got me
to my muscle up.
Let me show you guys.
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So this move right here is literally one
of the first, first moves.
I remember I was doing this on the beach,
on Miami beach, on South Beach.
They have some parallel bars out there.
And this is exactly what I would do.
I would sit in the sand like this.
Get a nice over grip.
That's super important making sure your palms are over.
Keep an L sit and then try to pull up
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And touch your lap to the bar.
Now when I first started this
of course I couldn't get that high
but I kept at it.
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And this eventually got me my strict muscle up.
Being able to just pull straight up.
That move right there so
that right there is gold guys.
These are mental jewels right here.
Drill this move right here
and you're gonna master your pulling game.
All right, so the next move
after I had gotten really comfortable with that
I soon began to start free styling on the bar.
And one of the, I would say, monumental moves
for me was the back lever flutter kicks.
This move specifically because it really worked
on my core like no move has ever done for me.
It also gives you an insane grip.
It gives you a real taste on what holding
a static is gonna feel like from the beginning
and you're already training with your arms locked out.
And being able to keep your legs straight,
doing some flutter kicks while doing this exercise
takes a great deal of discipline.
So, let me show you guys this next move.
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So that's the back lever flutter kicks right there.
I'm telling you, looks a little weird but
that gets you super strong.
In fact, once I really mastered this,
I was able to really get comfortable with the bar.
And after that, I began to learn some 360 muscle ups.
Now a 360 muscle up, man when I was doing these
this is when my training really started
to take another level.
Back then, doing a muscle up was like impressive
if you did that out there.
If the beach or the gym people are like whoa,
what the hell was that?
You know, so, this is when I really started feeling
like I was progressing to uncharted territory
and really taking this to heights
that necessarily haven't been done before.
Here we go for it.
Let's do some.
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(sighs)
Think we can get a little better than that.
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Love that move right there.
If you have this move on lock
any dynamic move is gonna come to you naturally.
So once I was really able to get this down,
started adding more movements under my belt.
I was really starting to feel like I was beginning
to master the dynamics part of calisthenics.
And then I started to venture off further
into more controlled static styled exercises
and movements and that is when I first began
to learn one of the most important moves for me
which was the L sit to handstand.
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Now the L sit to handstand,
this one broke a huge barrier for me.
Especially because one, you're moving
while you're in a handstand.
And this move basically led me to
handstand push ups, 90 degree push ups,
full planche, full planche push ups.
Everything else really unlocked
after you unlock this one move.
And this move gives you crazy crazy strength
when it comes to holds and when it comes to moving
in a transition.
You know try not to swing when you're doing this move.
Try to really control your body and activate those muscles
to get you up and down.
Let's go for it.
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So there you have it.
Drill this move, unlock this move right here,
and everything else is gonna get a lot more natural.
Which brings us to our next exercise
full planche push ups.
You see it's crazy but if you really think about it
all these moves have some type of aspect
that eventually branches you off
into the next harder progression.
Even when we come back down into one
of the hardest progressions that I've been able
to acquire now like the full planche push ups,
I use a lot of the other things that I learned
from other moves into this exercise right here.
A lot of back lever, believe it or not,
will improve your planche
and will help you acquire a stronger planche.
Back lever has a lot of lower back.
You use straight arms just like when you're in planche
and you have to keep your body straight
just like when you're in a full planche as well.
So try to master all aspects of calisthenics
because those are eventually gonna transfer
over into other things
that you will eventually learn,
a lot harder things.
And it's gonna be a lot easier to come by
and it's gonna be a lot easier to achieve
once you have that type of background.
So now we're gonna go for some full planche push ups.
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(sighing)
Some nice good old fashioned full planche push ups.
So there you guys have it.
This is basically my little journey
into where I am basically today.
But the most important thing that you can take
from this video is that I would consistently
try to achieve something a little bit harder,
little bit harder.
I would stay progressing basically.
So its super important to have goals
and set milestones so that you're able
to continue to progress and achieve
harder and harder things.
And don't just focus on one aspect of calisthenics.
You need to utilize all aspects because all types
of exercise and movements at the end of the day
are going to have you master your body weight.
So with that said, guys thanks for watching.
Smash that like button if you enjoyed this video.
I will see you guys this weekend in Toronto, Canada
for the hand balancing workshop
and the weekend after that we're gonna be
back out in Europe doing more workshops.
So if you guys want to attend any
of our events or workshops then visit
thenex.com/blog/events to secure your spot
while there's still availability.
And I will see you guys at the workshop.
See you next Thursday and get ready
for the weight vests on chrisheria.com.
We got those weight vests coming really soon guys.
See you next time.
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Smash that like button guys.
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