All right boys! We've had a lot of people recently that have made videos on whether the muscle up is
overrated or not. It's time for the muscle-up king to finally spill the truth. So, let's hop into it.
It is actually overrated?
In short, yes and no. Yes, because the muscle up is the core of calisthenics. And no, because the
muscle-up is the core of calisthenics. Let me explain why. Okay, so why is it overrated? Well,
what's the first thing that pops into your head when you think of calisthenics?
If you were to pop in calisthenics and search it in youtube or google right now, I
guarantee you within one of those compilations or workout videos you're going to find someone doing
a muscle-up. The first thing that pops in my head is the muscle-up. Everyone who does
calisthenics - the first-ever skill or move they learn is the muscle-up. But, let me also tell you
this though. The muscle-up isn't the greatest move when it comes to strength or muscular development.
There are better exercises. The muscle up really only contributes to the amount of
strength you have in high pull ups. In terms of muscular development there isn't enough
time under tension or stress being applied to the muscles you're trying to build. The
muscle-up is a pull up to a straight bar dip, but since the muscle-up is too fast of an exercise-
you're not going to be building muscle through that exercise. But also, another thing
that people are... I guess talking about is that the muscle up isn't the best exercise when it comes to
your health. Jeff Cavalier was saying in his video that a lot of people will start feeling
a lot of elbow pain when they perform the muscle- up. For me personally, when you do the muscle up it
does hurt, you know. If you're just starting out and trying to achieve the muscle up it's going
to hurt. You're going to feel it everywhere. It's not an easy exercise. Your body isn't used to it.
But, let me tell you this though. Once you start getting used to the muscle up, and if your goal
is to become really really good with the muscle up. It won't hurt anymore. There was a point
in time where I was so good at the muscle-up, I would do it as warm-ups for my actual workout.
And every time I'd do the muscle-up it's just (whoop), (whoop). It became very easy for
me to perform and there was no medial elbow pain. I felt nothing. There are always going to be
better exercises when it comes to the calisthenic world. With the skills that you learn
and exercises you want to achieve, in this sense, then yes the muscle-up is an overrated exercise.
But then again if you're a calisthenic athlete most of you 'can' do a muscle-up and most of you are
not stopping doing muscle-ups because the amount of tenacity and perseverance it takes to actually
achieve one and perfect it. Now subjectively speaking, I personally don't think that the
muscle-up is an overrated move. I remember the first time I ever saw someone in person perform the
muscle-up. Visualize this for example. I'm gonna paint you some really good imagery. I was at
my family friend's house, when my family friend's Dad performed the muscle-up on one of those
children's playground set. And keep in mind that those bars aren't cylinder. They're not bars.
They are rectangle bars. So, when he performed that muscle up, for one the transition was way harder
but also the cleanness that he performed the muscle up on that day... You know, I was taken aback.
As soon as I saw him do that muscle up, the next day I went to the park and I tried to perform one.
And, by miracle, I could perform one although it was very very very bad form. I could complete one. After
that day from seeing him perform that. It just gave me a boost of inspiration and I guess... drive to
wanting to achieve that move and perfect it, and clean it. For one it's a very impressive move, If
you were to go out to the playground and perform it. And another thing - especially here in Australia,
if you go out to the gym and you perform a muscle-up you're the only one in that gym that can do a
muscle-up. Because chances are everyone else in there are gym junkies and they can't do muscle-
ups. All they do is weighted movements, most of them aren't functional. But the ones that are, they
might be able to do it if you teach them the correct technique. Now the reason why i think this exercise
isn't overrated by any means is because truly - 1. it's the stem, and 2. If you have goals when you
are training you're going to excel in your training journey - your calisthenics journey,
much faster than anyone else. I've known people personally that refused to learn the
muscle up for whatever reason. It was just "I don't want to learn it." But it's also like. "Why not?"
It's the same thing when people go to the gym or they do CrossFit or gymnastics, and
they simply have no goals while they're at the gym. They sign up to a gym membership and they
just go there without a plan. They go there without goals. They know deep down - visual goals. They
can picture themselves of how good they want to look and how strong they want to be, but on paper
they never have it. And if you don't have your goals on paper... you're never really
going to get where you want to be. And the muscle-up was the stem of my journey. What happens when you
actually set one goal and then achieve that goal? Once you crush that goal, you want to achieve much
more goals. The start of me - cleaning and perfecting, and achieving the muscle-up,
enabled me to achieve other calisthenic exercises like the front lever, back lever, tuck planche and
handstand push-up. From one goal it builds the bridge to you developing, even more. It's like
what Will Smith said, "it's laying brick by brick to build a foundation." The muscle up is the
foundation. That's what started it for me. People who set out to achieve the muscle up compared
to the people who don't, they're not getting anywhere in their training, they've hit a plateau.
They don't know where they're at. They've recently achieved goals - very easy goals for the most part,
and they're not setting out to do anything harder. Most people when they look at
the muscle-up, it's like "Man why should I learn that?" They're trying to come up with a reason
of why they shouldn't go through the pain to actually achieve something that's difficult.
And that's what it is. You achieve something that's difficult, you're going to grow as a person.
'Me' setting out to achieve the muscle up - as painful as that journey was... it enabled me to
grow as a person but also excel my journey in calisthenics as a whole. Whether the muscle-
up is overrated or not won't matter to you if it interferes with how bad you want your goals. If
your goal is to perform 20 clean muscle-ups in a row without stop - whether I tell you it's overrated,
or bad for you or not, you wouldn't care. I'm not gonna be the person to tell you, "this is bad,
don't do it." I'm not gonna say, "This is a trash goal, don't do it." I'm not gonna say that,
because I wouldn't even listen to myself if I said don't do the muscle up because it's the
stem. It grows you. It builds the foundation. It may not be the the healthiest exercise in terms of
longevity and you growing. It's not going to contribute to significant strength gains in other
exercises like the front lever. It's a exercise on its own. It's in its own realm, it's own level. And you
know, in contrast, if you're debating whether you should achieve this exercise if you can't do it
already, and you're watching these videos like "Okay, this guy says that it's overrated and that it's bad
for me, while this guy says it's okay." Well, just make the judgment on your own behalf. If you are
getting injured, and I mean 'injured' while trying to do the muscle-up, then maybe you shouldn't do
it. But if you have the perseverance and you really want this, and you know you say to yourself I don't
care what anyone else says and you do it, you know, kudos. I respect you! Personally it's not
an overrated move, it's not an underrated move. It's what us calisthenic athletes are known for. So if
you want to achieve it - achieve it. If you don't want to achieve it - you don't want to achieve it.
It all comes down to your goals. I just felt that I had to make this video since a lot of people
have been talking about it. And you know it's not false information by any means, it's very
valuable information in its own contextual right. But yeah, hopefully you guys found value in this
video. Hopefully, you learned something from it. If you enjoyed it - subscribe to the channel. I got more
stuff like this coming up very soon. Like the video and I'll see you guys in the next one. Peace out...