A few months ago, I learned the slow muscle-up in 23 days.
I thought that would conclude my muscle-up journey and it was time to move on to learning
the front lever.
However, I got enough comments saying that the explosive clean muscle-up is harder than
the slow muscle-up, so I decided to take a pause in learning the front lever and attempt
to learn the explosive clean muscle-up until I can do 3 in a row.
After watching a few popular tutorials, it seems to me that compared to what I did before,
all I need to do is simply keep my legs together and not bend my knees when doing the muscle-up.
On day 1, I honestly thought I made it in my first few tries, but when I went back home
and reviewed the footage, I realized my legs were not completely together and I slightly
bent my knees subconsciously on the way up.
I went back and tried again, but I discovered again that my legs were not completely together
and I still slightly bent my knees subconsciously on the way up although I constantly told myself
to not bend them.
I experimented tying my legs up with a rope, but it still didn't work.
Due to the circumstances of this time period, I had to pause in learning the explosive clean
muscle-up at the park.
Since I really wanted to resume training, I decided to buy a pull-up bar that's possible
for me to do the muscle-up at home.
While I was waiting for it to arrive, I came across a video where a guy was doing 22 clean
explosive muscle-ups in a row.
I decided to analyze his video frame by frame.
I discovered that his legs were pretty relaxed mostly, but when he was on the way up, it
looked like his legs tensed up a bit, and it became more and more obvious during the
end of his rep when he was getting more and more tired.
All of a sudden I understood why my knees bent slightly in my previous attempts after
working out a few physics equations.
Here's why.
During the start of the position, the torque around the knees generated by the muscles
of the upper body and the upper legs cancels out the opposite torque around the knees generated
by weight of the upper body and upper legs.
Otherwise, we would be spinning in a circle.
Likewise, the torque generated by the muscles of the lower legs and the weight of the lower
legs cancels out each other.
I was focusing on keeping the same level of force generated by my legs throughout the
whole movement, but I totally forgot that the pulling force generated by my arms would
inevitably decrease gradually on the way up.
Since my weight obviously didn't change, and I kept the force generated by my upper
legs the same, the only possible way to keep the opposing torques the same is to lift the
upper legs slightly to reduce theta, and that is the reason why I had a knee bend.
In order to eliminate the knee bend, I will have to gradually apply more force than usual
with my lower legs when my pulling force gradually decreases from the start to the transition.
If your pulling strength is crazily strong as this guy, you won't need to adjust your
legs a single bit because there's enough pulling force during the transition.
As we can see again, as he gets more tired in later reps, he needs to lift his upper
legs, and apply more force with the lower legs to avoid the knee bend.
Eventually he runs out of pulling force to get past the transition and obviously he could
lift his legs even more to do more reps if he wants to, but he refuses to do it.
Obviously the physics equation I wrote is just an approximation and the human body is
way more complex.
For all the biomechanics experts out there, feel free to teach all of us more in the comment
section.
On day 13, the pull-up bar finally arrived.
I tested out my theory and I couldn't believe it actually worked.
But for some reason, it felt weird coming down from the first rep and somehow it seemed
incredibly hard to do the second rep.
I thought it was simply because I wasn't used to the new pull-up bar.
I trained one more day but it still felt weird.
I reviewed the footage and I realized for some reason I was always falling to the left
side on the way down.
Maybe the ground wasn't completely flat, so I dug out my old level to measure and found
that the right side was actually slightly higher.
I can't believe I made such a stupid mistake.
Fortunately, the pull-up bar is very portable, so I moved the pull-up bar to my garage, and
made sure the surface was flat.
After a few tries, this happened.
Man, is that it?
You know what?
This is it in my book.
I know this doesn't look the smoothest compared to how the other experts did it out there,
but I think it's time to move on to learning the front lever.
For completeness, here are the remaining techniques that I knew prior to my start of learning
the explosive clean muscle-up: start with a little swing and keep your body
straight.
Look up at the bar when you are below the bar.
Once you are at the end of the swing, engage your core and pull as hard as you can.
When you are on the way down, push yourself slightly away from the bar, so you will drop
back down with a little swing instead of dropping into a dead hang.
In terms of the baseline strength for performing the explosive clean muscle-up, my guess is
weighted pull-up with 30~50 percent extra body weight.
The reason for my guess is that my weighted pull-up is around 77 percent extra body weight
now, and I can have around 25 to 30 good tries for the clean explosive muscle-up per session,
which is a lot, so that tells me if you can pull up 30~50 percent extra body weight, it
should be enough.
I am sure a lot of you are wondering where I bought this pull-up bar to continue my training.
Full disclosure, I am not sponsored, but if you click the link in the video description
to buy the pull-up bar, I will receive a commission in return.
This is a great way to support my channel and it's also a great way for you to continue
training as usual.
As always, make sure to like and subscribe and check out my website geekclimber.com.
See you in the next video.