After learning the dynamic muscle-up, I decided to continue my calisthenics freestyle journey
by learning another basic move called the swing 180.
The swing 180 looks easy.
People on YouTube make it look easy, and I thought I would learn it in something like
3 days.
I cannot believe how hard it actually is.
I will share with you what works and what doesn't.
If you are one of the talented people who can learn it instantly, congratulations.
But if you are like me, I think my experience will help you out.
On day 1, I started by making sure I could rotate 180 on the ground and then catch the
low bar.
After that, I started swinging on the low bar and attempted to do the 180 because I
was too afraid to do it on the high bar.
In hindsight, this was a mistake because I didn't even know how to swing properly yet.
Even if I had known, swinging on the low bar would mess up the swinging mechanics because
I would have to contort my body unnaturally to avoid my legs hitting the ground.
Eventually, I lost control and hit myself on the wooden pillar.
On day 4, I went to the park closest to where I lived, but I was too scared to even attempt
the swing 180 because the bar was so much narrower.
Therefore, on day 7, I went back to the first park and practiced swinging on the low bar
and attempted to do the 180 again, and of course I made zero progress because I was
practicing the wrong thing.
On day 10, because I got off work late, I decided to go to another park, closer but
with slightly narrower bars.
However, the height of the bar is perfect because my feet are only a few centimeters
from the ground when I deadhang on it, so it's the least scary high bar possible to
swing on.
At that time, I was mad at myself for not being able to learn this seemingly easy move,
so I tried extremely hard that day.
However, I still didn't have a proper swing, so no matter how hard I tried. Nothing worked.
Eventually, I hit myself on the pillar again, but this time the pillar was made of steel,
so I couldn't laugh it off as I did last time.
I injured myself again and had to stop training for 2 weeks.
During my injury, I decided to do more research and eventually discovered a swing technique
commonly used in parkour, and found it to be the best for me.
The main idea is to hollow up the core during the back swing, and then do a kick during
the front swing.
It makes a lot of sense because I can generate a lot more power this way, compared to keeping
a neutral core during the back swing and keeping straight legs during the front swing.
I also decided to take things slow from this point on.
It doesn't make sense to try to rush a video up out and end up injuring myself.
Therefore, on day 24 when my shin was feeling better, I decided to play around and do some
dynamic moves on the parallel bars just to get myself back into the groove.
On day 27, I returned to work on the swing 180.
I focused on rotating 180 with one hand with zero swing.
I did it first on the low bar and then the high bar.
This helps me understand what rotating 180 feels like with zero risk of hitting myself
on the pillars.
I also worked on the new swing technique that I learned.
I realized that swinging is pretty damaging to the skin on the palms due to the constant
friction, and this is something I have to get used to.
On day 30, I started attempting to rotate 180 with one hand with some swing.
It was scary, but I was slowly getting used to it.
On day 33, I continued to increase the intensity of the swing.
After more practice, the swing was becoming big enough that I was starting to feel like
I could let go and turn my left arm to complete the swing 180.
Eventually, this happened.
Woo.
Is that it?
Unfortunately, that is not it.
I showed Daniel my attempt, but he told me the correct swing 180 requires me to land
on the bar with both hands at the same time.
Throughout the next few practice sessions, I discovered that landing on the bar with
both hands would require me to have both arms not holding onto anything during almost half
of the movement, which seemed completely impossible.
I thought maybe the key is to try to delay landing my right hand as long as I could,
but it seems impossible to delay it long enough to land at the same time as the left hand.
I thought maybe the key was to try to let go of my left hand as soon as I could, but
eventually I reached a point where I felt if I had let go even earlier, I would have
flown away and hit something.
I was leading with my shoulders for the rotation this whole time, and I thought maybe that
was wrong, so I tried leading with my hips for the rotation, and that didn't feel right
at all.
I tried looking at the bar during the entire movement, but that just made me dizzy.
I trained, trained, and trained, but it seemed that nothing was working, but eventually I
figured out the problem; the pivot of my rotation was wrong.
I was rotating along my left arm, but in order to do the swing 180 correctly, I had to rotate
along the centerline of my body.
In order to do so, I would have to swing harder, and fully commit to the movement.
Finally, this happened.
Oh.
Yes!
Man.
Finally.
Naturally, I tried to combine the swing 180, dynamic muscle-up, and front roll, but it
was surprisingly difficult to do the dynamic muscle-up right after the swing 180 because
the momentum after the swing 180 was so big that it threw off the timing of the dynamic
muscle-up.
I will try to figure this out, but this belongs to another video in the future.
Thanks for watching.
Make sure to like, subscribe, and check out my website geekclimber.com.
See you in the next video.