Biography of Artemus Vazhui
Age: 35 years
Height: 1.83 m
Weight: 65 kg. Languages: Russian and Belarusian (native)
Languages: I am currently studying English and Spanish.
Education: Graduated from the Belarusian State University of Physical Culture.
The first 29 years of my life, I lived in Belarus. During my school years, I hated sports. I was fully exempted from physical education classes all the way up to 11th grade. Around the age of 22, I became passionate about calisthenics. At that time, there were no good calisthenics parks in our city, so I would find old Soviet-era outdoor sports grounds and train there alone. The people who trained there usually just did pull-ups, dips on parallel bars, and occasionally push-ups — with very little variety in exercises.
These workouts helped me shape my body and build muscle mass. It was at that time that I began to develop the habit of exercising, although I still lacked consistency and discipline. When gyms started opening in my city, I went there for several months. However, having grown used to training outdoors, I didn’t really like the closed, stuffy atmosphere of the gym.
At the age of 18, I moved to Minsk, the capital of Belarus. I enrolled in the first college, the Industrial and Pedagogical College. I was completely alone there: no mother, no father, and I lived in a dormitory. I was determined to keep training. Although at first I couldn’t afford a gym membership, I worked out in front of the dorm, using the corner of a fence for dips and the scaffolding of a building under construction as a pull-up bar. I was new to the city. Studies took up a lot of time, and there were moments when I thought about quitting sports because I couldn’t afford a proper gym. Street training remained my only option. Over time, as the weather became colder, I started going to the gym. However, every three to four months, I would get bored due to the lack of fresh air, space, and suitable equipment for bodyweight functional training. Nevertheless, I tried to stay healthy by doing other sports and activities, such as swimming in the pool, long-distance running, and mountain biking.
However, in 2010, I finally got completely tired of gyms. I realized that although I was gaining muscle mass, every time I stopped training I would lose the results I had achieved, without acquiring any new skills in return. From that moment on, I started training at a construction site where I found a pull-up bar at the perfect height. Even though I was training at night in not very safe areas and in various weather conditions, I felt free and was experiencing something new and extraordinary.
Over the following months and even years, I worked hard to constantly raise my level. I started reading a lot of Soviet-era books on gymnastics and sports, which were available only in their original Russian version.I no longer just looked physically fit and athletic — I had become a very knowledgeable and experienced athlete. I rarely shared my results anywhere except on the social network X. In the early days of my training, I searched YouTube for new workout programs I didn’t know about. In 2009 and even in 2015, terms like “street workout” or “calisthenics” were not yet popular, so I searched for “Ghetto Training” and found videos of Denis Minin and Hannibal for King. Denis Minin’s story, from the city of Dnepropetrovsk in Ukraine, was especially inspiring to me. To my surprise, competitions in this discipline were already being organized, although still on a small scale. In those videos, I discovered many new exercises and techniques.
I set myself the goal of mastering elements such as maximum pull-ups, the Handstand, and the V-Sit. I can’t say it was an easy process, because there were no online tutorials or trainers I could turn to. I basically had to experiment with different techniques until I succeeded. I felt that my height made performing some movements more difficult. For example, in the handstand, I could only hold the balance for about one second before falling. But I decided that consistency would be the key to achieving my goals. Whenever time and weather allowed, I trained in the gym or in the park, using pull-up bars I found near my house. In early 2013, I met several teams and trained with them for some time. They mainly focused on practicing basic exercises to build strength and endurance. I worked hard to stay determined, and in 2014, I achieved my goal: I went from 0 to 15 pull-ups, significantly improved my Handstand, and was able to perform a perfect V-Sit. This greatly enhanced my overall physical capabilities.
In late 2015, I started traveling a lot around Belarus and other CIS countries. I trained everywhere I went, seizing every possible opportunity. My philosophy was that, no matter the difficulties, it’s always better to find a way to train at least once a week — because restarting after a long break is much harder. During my travels, I visited places with favorable climates and realized that my progress in Belarus had been relatively slow due to the weather and the lack of a proper training spot. In September 2019, I moved to Barcelona and set myself new goals: to learn Muscle-Ups on the bar, master the Iron Cross, train regularly at least three times a week, and dedicate no less than one hour to each intense session. This decision proved to be the right one. By the end of 2014 (note: likely a typo in the original, probably meant 2019/2020), I was already able to perform 5–8 Muscle-Ups and had made noticeable progress in several other elements I wanted to master. In addition, I took up mountaineering to further improve my athletic skills and continued striving to train consistently.
In 2020, although I wasn’t fully dedicated to training, I began to notice how it was becoming increasingly important in my life. When I didn’t have access to pull-up bars, I felt bored because I couldn’t continue progressing. That year, I created an Instagram account as a regular user but didn’t post any content. I realized that outdoor training was rapidly gaining popularity all over the world. Almost every day, someone was posting a new trick, which led to the fast development and evolution of the sport.I met a friend who trained in the same park. His focus was mainly on dynamic elements, while mine was on statics. We decided to train together and sign up for calisthenics classes to also practice dynamic movements such as the 360 swing and bar-to-bar jumps. However, after injuries that I had never experienced before started appearing, and with the long recovery process, I decided that I didn’t want to continue with the dynamic side of calisthenics.
A few months after leaving the calisthenics gym, I returned to outdoor training. In 2022, despite the injury, I continued making progress in mastering the elements I wanted. However, I still lacked one crucial thing: complete discipline and total focus on my goals. In the middle of that year, my family told me that my father had passed away — a blood clot had broken off. Losing him so early forced me to seriously reconsider my life priorities. He was a healthy man and still quite young. At that moment, I faced a clear choice: let the tragedy break me mentally or fight back with determination. I chose the second path and realized that if life is so short, my previous efforts were simply not enough. So I started going to the park regularly, even in the rainy weather that year. I bought a weighted vest, dumbbells, and kettlebells, and decided to give everything I had in this one and only life. By the end of 2023, my discipline and consistency had brought excellent results, significantly increasing my strength and training capabilities. Since then, I have focused on prioritizing quality over quantity.
It was in that same year that I met Gabriel Moreno during one of my training sessions. We became friends and decided to start creating content together. All the videos and photos you see on X are his filming work. We began with videos for X, but soon our followers asked for more — especially YouTube videos explaining my training approach. Although I loved my workouts, I felt that pull-ups (both bodyweight and weighted) didn’t optimally engage all muscle groups. To compensate for this, I decided to add kettlebell exercises and weighted vest training to my routine. I discovered that any additional weights perfectly complement calisthenics, making it easy to target the legs, lower back, and other specific muscle groups.
In early 2024, I started recording videos for our YouTube channel as a test and decided that the content would be in English. I was pleasantly surprised by how well the audience received me. The channel grew quickly — from 10 new subscribers per day in the first few days, to 100 per day within a month, 1,000 per day after two months, and up to 2,000 per day after three months.I had to overcome many obstacles and work extremely hard to achieve this, but I never doubted my abilities. Every failure motivated me to work even harder and find solutions to the problems I faced. Later, I was forced to delete the channel because it was an experiment and I didn’t intend to run it on a permanent basis. At the moment, I have training methods and courses that don’t exist anywhere else yet. My teaching methods continue to evolve, and my knowledge keeps expanding. Development and progress are my top priorities. I strive for perfection in every video I release and every workout, integrating new experiences and ideas. I’m confident that I can deliver a valuable message because my training methods have developed their own unique style and possess a distinct essence. My goal is not to prove other training methods wrong, but to share the best practices I have discovered and implemented in my own program. I’m proud to be able to share them with all of you in the future. In short, I don’t dwell on past mistakes or time wasted; instead, I view everything as valuable experience and a learning opportunity to move forward. I will continue to grow, and every stage of our development will be shared with you to motivate you and instill the confidence you need to achieve your goals.
That test run of my YouTube channel was not just an experiment. I was testing things and gaining real experience in social media management. And I can proudly say that 2026 will be the year I launch YouTube and Instagram on a professional level. Thank you for reading my story. Now you know who I am on the X platform.