 Welcome back to the school of calisthenics. Before we get into the lesson today, just click on subscribe there so you don't miss out on any of those videos before Tim tells us what we're doing today. It's definitely worth it, because this is gonna be amazing. So, we're gonna talk about today why you can't do a muscle up. And it's not like pointing fingers, we put up on a board, it's about this. It's about speed. Now, not many people talk about this, so we're gonna get into some science, this is a lesson after all. So, follow along, take some notes, and if you've got questions, stick them in the comments below. Let's get into it. So, why can't you muscle up? There's a few reasons why you might not be able to do a muscle if it might be that you're struggling to get shoulder extension for that transition, you might find that you're pulling up just straight and you're hitting the bar, or maybe you can't actually pull up high enough or you can't create really good internal rotation of the shoulder to help with that transition. But one of the big things that people can't muscle up for and they don't understand why, they don't know that they're lacking it, is the speed of your pull out of that dead hand position, and Tim's gonna go through the science behind why that is. So, the muscle is effectively a power-based movement and we're gonna talk about a force velocity curve to put a little bit of background as to why it might be a particular challenge or something we need to train a little bit differently. And it's different to the rest of calisthenics because in the rest of most of things like handstands, human flags, levers, they're static isometric holds and we're not actually moving, we're trying to stay still, whereas in the muscle, we're trying to be able to move faster. Yeah, absolutely. So, let's take this, the graph we've got here. So, we've got force at the one axis and velocity across the bottom. If we take the curve here, we've got this relationship between force application or the amount of force that we can apply and velocity, the speed at which we can apply it. So, up here we've got max strength. So, this might be like a heavy, let's go like normal weightlifting turns of a heavy bench press. So, we might put our one rep max or up to a three max rep max on a bench press. We can't move that weight particularly quickly, but we can put quite a lot of force down. At the opposite end of the spectrum, we might take a medicine ball chest pass. So, we've got a 5K med ball. We're just going to launch it as hard as we can. We haven't got a lot of force. We've got a huge amount of speed that we can put that movement down with. In the middle we have our power phase. So, we've got this relationship here in the middle of force and velocity. So, moderate amount of force with some speed. So, this is where our muscle ups sits. If we're struggling to get above the bar and we're just kind of like the strength that the amount of force that we can put down means that we can only really get one pull up, we're going to be kind of sitting into this area of our max strength. The speeds are kind of things of being like exclusively speed based. Well, you might have speed, but when your body weight is hanging off the bar, you're not strong enough to shift that, whatever, I weigh 75 kilos. You're not going to be strong to shift that weight. So, it doesn't really apply that much apart from when we sit in with this relationship here. So, a muscle up, we need some level of force to be able to get our body weight moving. So, we've got to be strong enough to do that, but we need to be able to put it down at velocity. And it's this component which we're going to work on today because people generally don't train calisthenics fast. And that's why we have people who can do 10 pull ups, but can't do a muscle up because they've got no twitch and they can't move quickly. Yeah, and we might be doing our pull ups and ending on being able to do pull ups to our chin, but actually what we're trying to do is create momentum with this velocity to be able to get yourself nice and high. So, once your chest is above the bar, then we've got the right to be able to rotate and transition over the top of it. But until you're able to produce enough force with that speed to create momentum, then you can get over and around the bar, so that's got to be getting to this high pull position and that's what we're going to look at today. Let's go to the practical side. Okay, so our first exercise, guys, we're going to have a look at is about, I'm just going to show you a basic pull up movement where you might be struggling. So, you see if you can relate to this. And then I'm going to get a jacko to put a band on and we're going to show you an assisted movement which is going to help us train the central nervous system is effectively what we're trying to work on with this movement to get more velocity and how that looks like to try and get high above the bar. So, we see people doing pull ups like this all the time and then there's a massive reason they can't do the muscle up is because it's just enough struggle to get up there. Even if Jacko could rep 10 like that, he can get his chin over the bar 10 times. If he's not getting out of that bottom position with any speed, then that's where we're going to have an issue. So, to train that, we're going to get him to grab the band and we're just going to use an assisted movement, super effective. And again, the purpose of this movement is not about getting necessarily strong, it's about being able to apply that strength that you have got at more speed or at a higher velocity. If you haven't got a band, there's a link in the description below for these rubber band, it's a special kind of strength band. Okay, so Jacko's going to put his feet into the band. He's just going to get into a normal pull position. We're not too worried at this stage about the line that he's putting on and some of the intricate of the muscle up. But what he's going to do is going to go dead hang and his job is to try and pull as high as he can and he's going to try and get the bars low down his chest as he can. So, he's kind of going waistline there but you can see I want him to go dead hang still and on that mark of when he gives that trigger to go is literally trying to catapult himself up as quickly as he can. Obviously, we can then progress that and make it more difficult by using a low attention band so you're doing more of the work. But the real reps of this, you're going to go five to eight reps, focusing on that speed. As soon as you feel like you're losing that height above the bar, take a rest and then come back at it. We're also going to talk about rest guys. We're also going to go quite longer rest periods in these. So, we might be working sort of three minutes between sets to really maximize your training opportunity. The system we're using is explosive. It needs time to recover. So, don't try to rep 10 of these off 30 second rest because you're really not going to get that much appetite off the back of it. Yeah, so it's a different way of training. Training the nervous system as I suppose you're just trying to build muscle. Think about that force loss you could have Tim was talking about, we're training the speed but here, even if you're good at pull-ups get really fast at them. And like you say, if you can see me I'm out of breath but in a few reps you need to let yourself have that good amount of rest so that you can fire maximum. It's not about working hard. It's about being smart and being for that speed you need to be fresh and it needs to be max. Max means, ah, max. Not. So, progression number two guys is just take the band away and we're now going to go back into our normal pull-up movements but we're going to emphasize the acceleration phase. So, this is not about putting a load of reps together. It's about going from a dead hang position preferably and then can you snap out of that? Now, we talk a lot about dead hangs on workshops and it's a real foundation for a lot of our pulling movements but being able to hang into that slack position and then get into active tension quickly is a real skill and something you need to train. So, I'm going to get Jaco to work into a dead hang and then his movement from this exercise is going to go quickly into an active hang as he then transitions into that pull-up and he's doing the same thing. How high above the bar can he get? Okay, so we're getting ribcage there which is great easy high enough for a muscle-up. You can see he's just going to get that hang position and it's a quick switch on the power. Put that force down. Think that relationship moderate force, high speed. Get those two things working together and the brain likes an outcome, right? So, the central nervous system is going to operate well. All you really got to think about is get your chest as high above the bar as possible. The mechanics of how you go about doing that will fit into place but just get high. Just think about pull-ups. You think about getting your chin above the bar. You got to take that away. You're not training pull-ups now. We're training for a muscle-up and the stakes have changed. It's now getting chest as high and high as high. You can get to your hips, then you've been laughing. Rep stay low, rest periods are still high. Link those two things together and we're doing all right. Okay, so once we're started working well on those high pulls and another way to progress that and accelerate our learning in that is doing clap pull-ups which are great because we're giving the brain, it likes, the brain way it works, it likes to have an outcome. So when you're saying try and pull yourself as high as you can, great. But if you've got to give the outcomeers kind of clap above the bar then all of a sudden you're giving the brain that cue to go to it. It's like if I ask you to jump as high as you can compared to jump on a really high box or touch the ceiling, when you've got that outcome to go for, the brain starts with the way it likes to work and having that thing to aim for. So Tim's going to jump on the bar, he's going to show us a couple. We're just going to pick up a couple of key points. Firstly, like we said right from the beginning we must be strong through the rain. So we must be get to this bottom position. There's no point in doing these all repping together all high at that top position with the elbow always bent. He's going to come down each time and do these as individual reps. So you're going to start low at the bottom, snap out of that bottom position until he can clap and then catch the bar. Then he comes back down, he waits, he's in that dead hang. Then he goes active, creates tension, bang, clap, back down onto the bar. They are hard doing them like that compared to just show us a couple Tim where he doesn't come back down when he tries to stay. If he stays high and see that bend in the elbow he's never accessing that deep position which for your muscle up that's one of those key areas where we're just not strong out of that bottom deep position. And if you don't spend any time creating tension out of that deep position there then you're not going to get strong there. It's as simple as that, we get what we're trained for. So train the full range that you're trying to work through. Give the brain an outcome it wants to work towards like the clap and then you're starting to get explosive as well as high above the bar you've worked. The force, the velocity on that force velocity curve and as you start to get higher and higher and higher above the bar and you get pulling to here that transition becomes easy. So that's it guys, we've talked a lot today about speed and the relationship with force and that may be one of the reasons why you can't get your first muscle up because you're just not fast enough. And a lot of training is a common thing that people just don't move, they don't train for speed. It's a very specific motor ability. So you need to some specific exercises in your training program that are gonna really start to enhance your ability to move with speed, with power and be able to kind of nail some of these more advanced movements. Everything else in calisthenics, levers, handstands, it's a lot around just kind of isometric strength. This is power, so you need to train for it specifically. And leave the ego at the door guys, something that I am girls, something that I've been doing a lot of to clean my muscle ups up is using the band working on that explosive pull with the band where it's just flying me up there but I'm training that speed and it's helped me absolutely no end. Yes, there are other elements to the muscle up in terms of you dip out that bottom position, the transition, we're gonna give you some more stuff on that but this is one of the key things we've highlighted when we see people who push ups, we're not fast out of that position. We've also got a ring of muscle up people coming out soon that's gonna cover absolutely everything in there. One last knowledge bomb from me, we talk about a lot of sprint training but if you wanna be fast, you've got to train fast. Yeah, exactly, yes. It's simple. Yeah, we get what we train for. So plenty of that stuff going and coming to you will bring you some more tips and that for your muscle up as well. But in the meantime, if you haven't yet, so you don't miss any of these new bits coming out, make sure you click subscribe. If you haven't got and you're just starting, you haven't got our free beginner's guide, that is a must, it's free. There's video tutorials of every exercise you need to get started. That is down there, Tim, you're right. And then for other how-to videos, click up in that corner. Guys, that is it for today, I think we've done good today. Thanks for watching. Thanks for watching. If you have any questions, comment below whether it's about muscle ups or it's about for Q&As or anything, comment below. We wanna hear from you and we wanna help you out. Class dismissed.