(upbeat music)
- What's up, it's Chris Heria.
Welcome to another vlog.
Today I'm gonna be showing you an exercise
that changed my life.
And if you learn it
it's definitely gonna change your life as well.
That exercise is the muscle up.
Now, aside from the enormous amount
of muscle, strength and skill that you're going to acquire
without the need of weights by doing this exercise,
the muscle up was the exercise that got me interested
in the world of mastering your own body weight
or calisthenics.
I knew I wanted to learn it
and it was the first calisthenic skill goal
that I had for myself.
And I had to work really hard
to finally achieve it with mastering the muscle up.
Showed me how an exercise that once seemed impossible
or unattainable was actually within my reach
as long as I put the work in.
And that opened up the door and possibilities
for me to learning harder exercises like the front lever,
full plant, one-arm pull-ups, handstand, pushups,
free-styling on the bar and so much more.
Basically changing my thought process
from I can't, to I can, not just in fitness
but every other aspect of my life.
Now, the muscle is both a pushing
and pulling exercise requiring both of your upper body
anterior and posterior muscles to work together
to execute the exercise.
And it's super effective
at building strength and muscle in your upper body.
There's many different variations
that's gonna benefit you
that you can use when doing your muscle-ups
like wide grip, close grip, false grip, explosives,
360s and many more.
But mastering them all starts with a proper foundation
for the muscle up.
If you want to learn, step-by-step how to muscle up
check out my video, "How to Muscle up, The Best Way."
Once you've watched and followed along with that video,
you're gonna have a good understanding of how to
muscle up as well as being able to do your first one
and potentially many more if you followed along properly.
But for those of you who watched and followed along
and still may be having some trouble,
whether it be still not having enough strength
or technique, today I'm gonna be showing you
some extra tips and exercises that will help you
with what you may be lacking
and to make the learning process flawless
and guarantee you learned the muscle up,
the exercise that changed my life.
So if you're ready to go,
just make sure you've watched that video
before we get started
because we're going to be using some of those techniques
and make sure you've downloaded the HeriaPro app
in the app store or Google play store.
If you haven't already,
so that you can properly follow along.
Open up to the YouTube workout section,
you should find this routine.
Smash the like button on the video
and we're ready to get started with the first exercise,
a move I like to call the X pull up.
I gonna go for six reps,
show you what it looks like, and then break it down.
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All right.
So then we have X pull-ups,
a name and exercise I had made up
when I was trying to train the muscle of back in 2010, 2011.
And this was the first exercise
that I was able to utilize at a beginner fitness level
to start developing some explosive, pull up strength.
And not only was I developing more explosive
pulling strength and muscle, but I was also learning timing
and body mechanics that allows you to explode even higher
and easier.
So this is definitely an exercise that you want to drill
if you need to build your explosiveness,
pulling strength and body mechanics
needed for the muscle up.
And because this exercise involves releasing your hands
from the bar, this will also help you
with the muscle of transition when you need to transition
from a pulling position to a pushing position.
So when doing this exercise,
you can start off in a straight line shape.
You want to do an explosive pull up
with your hands together
and bringing your knees to your chest
as you explode to your highest point,
you want to catch in a Y position
and your feet should fall through as well.
Once you catch the bar,
you want to control the motion all the way back down
to a hang position and then explode right back up.
Switch your hands and feet back to a closed grip
when you get to your highest explosive point
and then come right back down in a controlled fashion.
And moving on to the next exercise that I have for you,
that's gonna be a false grip hang.
I'm gonna go for 15 seconds.
Show you what it looks like, then break it down.
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Three, two and one.
All right.
So there we have the false grip hang.
Now, if you notice, while I was hanging,
I had an over-grip in my hand position.
Over gripping the bar is going to give you
an enormous grip strength
and getting used to over gripping the bar
is gonna get you a lot more comfortable
with doing muscle-ups.
And if you use this grip on a muscle up,
it makes it a lot easier to transition
from the pulling to pushing when doing a muscle up
because there's less re gripping of the bar
when you're coming over the bar,
your hand is already in an over-grip position
and you usually see a lot of beginners struggling
with the wrist when it comes to the muscle up.
Many times when they're going from the muscle up,
their wrist is right underneath the bar
and that's gonna make it very difficult
for bringing your wrist on top of the bar
if you're not experienced.
So the higher your wrist is,
and the more of a false grip that you have
when doing a muscle up,
the easier and stronger your transition
of your muscle is gonna be.
If your wrist is directly under the bar,
you're gonna have to do a very aggressive re-grip
when doing the muscle up transition from pulling to pushing.
So train your grip strength,
simply by hanging with a false grip.
You're gonna see that just by training your hang time
and increasing your grip strength,
you're even going to see your pull-up repetitions increase.
And you're definitely gonna be able to do
your first muscle up.
You're not gonna have to be worrying
about hanging on to the bar.
You can completely just focus on technique
and doing it perfectly.
Now moving on to the third exercise
that I have for you guys.
That's gonna be a hanging lat pull down.
I'm gonna go for five repetitions,
show you what it looks like, and then we'll break it down.
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All right, there we have the hanging lat pull down.
Now this is a very important move,
not only to strengthen your lats, but also to understand
and to complete the pulling motion of a muscle up.
And you've never done a muscle up before
and you look at how it's done.
It seems to be pulling just straight up
but then when you try to go for it
if you have enough strength to pull all the way up,
hit your chest and the come right back down.
That's because the pulling motion needs to be a combination
of a lat pull down with a pull up.
You need to be able to go around the pull-up bar
to get on top.
So not just practicing the rowing motion,
but practicing the lap pull-down motion as well.
And once you've strengthened both,
you're able to put them both together
and pull to your belly button
or get over the bar in a muscle up.
So make sure you're practicing this movement.
You want to build the strength up to being able to do
at least 10 in a row with perfect form.
This could very well be the only missing link
that you have stopping you from doing your first muscle up.
Now moving on to the next exercise,
we have elevated Australian pull-ups.
For this exercise we're gonna be using a short bar.
I'm gonna be using the side of the dip bar.
If you're in a gym, you can use a Smith machine.
If you're at home, you can use a pair of rings
or you can even use your dining room table.
And for an elevated surface
you can just use one of your chairs.
So I'm gonna go for five reps,
show you what it looks like, and then break it down.
(upbeat music) ♪ Heria music ♪
All right, so there we have the elevated Australian pull up.
When you're doing a muscle up
you want to pull up as high as possible.
And the highest point is normally gonna be
your belly button line before you're at the top
of a muscle up.
And that's not gonna happen
if you're pulling with your elbows flared out.
And if you notice while I'm doing the
elevated Australian pull-ups,
I'm pulling into my belly button line
and I'm doing it with my elbows
and exactly how you should be doing it
when you're doing a muscle up.
And that's actually another common mistake in beginners.
When they're trying to go for a muscle up,
they may be going up with one arm and the other
or just have trouble getting over the bar period.
And a very common reason for that
is because their elbows are flared out and they don't
have enough pulling strength to pull with their elbows in.
So practice this movement.
That's definitely gonna develop your strength.
You're gonna see how pull-ups are gonna get extremely easy.
And it's definitely gonna give you the strength
required to master the muscle up.
Moving on to the last exercise, we have muscle-ups
with the resistance band.
Now this move I did mention before
in my previous videos on how to muscle up,
but it's one of the best exercises that you could
supplement with to put all your training together
and see how much you developed
from all the other individual exercises,
as well as increase your repetitions for the muscle up.
And master the exact movement path as well
as really work the negative portion of the muscle up,
which I explained in my previous, how to muscle up video.
It's one of the most important things
for developing the true, raw strength needed
to pull your body up and over the bar.
So I'm gonna go for five muscles ups
with the resistance band, show you what it looks like
and we'll break it down.
(upbeat music) ♪ Heria music ♪
All right,
so there we have the muscle ups with the resistance band
and when you're doing it with the resistance band,
you get to fully focus on your form and technique
while simultaneously building upper body strength
and muscle for this movement.
And even if you're completely fatigued,
it's still a great tool to progressively overload
your muscles, allowing you to continue to
train muscle-ups, increasing your reps, building strength
and improving your technique.
So even if you can already do muscle-ups,
doing them with the resistance band
after you've already maxed them out,
is gonna take your training to the next level
and turn you into a beast.
Not just looking strong, actually being strong.
And if you need a set of resistance bands,
you can always pick up ours at annex.com/shop.
And to really take it to the next level,
you should pick up the weight vest at chrisheria.com.
Max out as many muscles as you can do
with the vest on and take out some weight off the vest.
Try it again until you can't do anymore
and continue to progressively overload
building insane muscle and strength
by take off the vest, doing it with body weight,
maxing out, then doing it with the resistance band
the maxing out again, and start going down
all the progressions that I showed you today.
And that's going to be it for today.
Congratulations if you were able to follow along
and execute these exercises.
Continue to train them,
save this video and come back to it later.
You're gonna be mastering your muscle ups in no time.
Thank you so much for watching.
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Mad love, peace out.