YANIV MERCHER

Hey everyone! My name is Yaniv Mercher. I’m 24 years old from Beer Yaakov, Israel. I have been doing Calisthenics for 7 years. For those who don’t know what Calisthenics is, it’s basically bodyweight workouts that with time teaches you how to fully control your body.

Almost all my life, from the day I remember myself, I live and breathe sports and fitness. From the age of 6-16 I played team basketball at a very high level and even played in the league. Despite all the sport that I did, as a kid I was fat. In our family our genetics aren’t great. We have a tendency to obesity and being fat. We don’t have one person in our family that is not fat I always wanted to be like all the crazy people from YouTube that do crazy power moves with full control of their body and look like Gods, but at that point as a kid, it was all a dream and didn’t seem realistic.As a kid, I was ashamed of my body and the way I looked. I got a lot of shaming for being fat. Kids laughed at me for being fat and told me that I will always be. I really wanted to prove them wrong but just didn’t know how. I didn’t know how to get to the point that I’m in great shape. Maybe because a big part of me didn’t believe in myself and looked at all this as a dream and not a goal. Tip: there is a BIG difference between a dream and a goal. I remember myself as a kid watching some many YouTube fitness videos, searching how to get lean and lose body fat. But of course almost everything was fake a full of crap. As time passed, I didn’t give up. I knew that there has to be a way. I mean after all, in our lives, there are answers for almost everything and I told myself that there is no way that I’ll stay the way I am!In grade 9, after I moved to a different school, I met Andrey but at that moment, I didn’t know what an animal this dude was until grade 10 when I met him outside of the school, in one of our local workout parks working out all by himself. At that moment I was shocked! The guy basically did everything that I saw on YouTube. In my opinion, he was like those crazy people on YouTube that looked like Gods! From handstands, to muscle ups, to one arm pushups, to doing different kinds of flips. He did it all!In grade 11, after being 3 months in the gym, I didn’t really like it and understood that it wasn’t for me. After I quit the gym, I got so motivated to learn the muscle up. I suddenly started noticing during our sports classes at school that a lot of people knew how to do the chicken wing muscle up and that motivated me to learn as well and from there, my calisthenics journey began!

I caught Andrey one day on one of the school breaks and told him that we should start working out together. At that moment he was close to quitting and didn’t work out for some time so from here and there he agreed and we started working out.

We trained 4 times a week like crazy. We had a proper workout plan, same days, same time, and same place and to be honest it motivated us so much to keep pushing because not only it was difficult but also because we both started seeing results really quick.

After a month of intensive training I achieved the chicken wing muscle up and after another month I finally achieved a full, proper muscle up. The feeling I had at that moment was insane. I felt so good with myself. I had so much happiness. So much motivation gathered up in me and from there I knew that everything that I’ll want, I can achieve! Slowly I started seeing the way my body was changing. From there, the dream of becoming like all the crazy people on YouTube turned into a goal! From there I understood that after a year of working out, I’ll edit my one year transformation video and upload it to YouTube, and so it happened.

After a year I succeeded! I found what I was looking for all my life. I managed to change my body in a way I never thought I could. I managed to prove to myself that capable of doing a lot in life and also, I managed to prove my haters wrong!

After a year I opened a YouTube channel, named it “Barthletics”, and uploaded my one year transformation video which totally exploded and got 200k views. From there, Andrey and I started a new chapter in our life. The start of Barthletics!

Today, I’m a certified trainer, training all sorts of people. The difficulties I had as a fat kid and the amount of injuries I had from Calisthenics is the reason why I wanted to be a trainer. I want to give people the knowledge they don’t have to prevent them from the sufferings I went through and nothing that makes me happier when my clients chase and achieve their goals!