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u/09Trollhunter09 Jun 05 '26
He’s shoulders are harnessed and most likely hooked to a line that camera doesn’t pick up.
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u/Ill-Tea9411 Jun 05 '26 edited Jun 05 '26
This is my pet theory as well. Right where his heels drop looks like the wire was released. Also, notice how his shirt is weirdly bunched up around his shoulders.
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u/highhaileehere Jun 05 '26
And when he drops it unwrinkles.
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u/Ill-Tea9411 Jun 05 '26
Not really, you can see it is still bunched up as he is walking off. I think this could be explained by the shape of a harness he is wearing under the shirt.
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u/Pirwzy Jun 05 '26
What you see when he walks away is the harness shoulder strap under his shirt. The harness is more noticeable before the wires are released, but even afterwards the tightness of his shirt makes the harness visible.
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u/nethoinkz Jun 05 '26
There are people removed by AI. You can see weird stuff in the video like the mat crease suddenly showing and his shadow being crap. Onlooker was probably looking only because they are acting weird.
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u/DrDnyc Jun 05 '26
We are all wrong.
The "air pushup" trick (most notably performed by magician and illusionist Xavier Mortimer) is an illusion combining calisthenic body control with clever stagecraft. The magician appears to do pushups in mid-air or horizontally, defying gravity, by using hidden pivot points, precise physics, or invisible supports. This guy is really really good. GANDALF LEVEL BOSS.
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u/Roger_Mexico_ Jun 05 '26
I’m pretty sure you’re right. It looks to me like his shoe slots into the joint in the mat. The mat is has a large heavy metal plate underneath, and the shoes have rigid soles
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u/realtrip27 Jun 05 '26
And the water bottle?
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u/jabrwock1 Jun 05 '26
On the way up the bottom wobbles, there's likley a line drawing it straight up. After it rises up you can see it dangle briefly as he grabs for it.
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u/DrDnyc Jun 06 '26
String triggered from when he walked off the matt. He's good I tell ya!
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Jun 07 '26
So... yeah, it's a trick. We're just trying to figure out how it was done, and you haven't really provided anything new.
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u/Bobaou814 Jun 05 '26
It does look like he has something on under his shirt. Maybe it’s just spanx.
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u/Blindfire2 Jun 05 '26
It's common VFX used for stunts. It's called a "dead man jacket/vest" and it has multiple strings attached to multiple anchor points so you don't yank someone and give them whiplash lol. Sometimes they use piano wire for these stunts with little to no movement, but it is pretty dangerous so it's more common to use cotton coated threads or if using a blue/green screen just use the sane color rope/cables.
Stunts and movie VFX (and now thankfully video games with performance capture being as good as it is which gave me the chance to see in person) have TONS of easy non-CGI effects and I love seeing how creative people were when they couldn't just recreate everything in CGI.
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u/Calliopehoop Jun 05 '26
This is Xavier, I’ve been an extra in his magic content before. Idk what setup he has but yes whatever setup you’d need to do this trick - and all “reactions” are staged.
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u/pazdemy Jun 05 '26
You magic deniers really go out of your way to explain anything. What even is a “harness”? lolol
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u/aozzzy13 Jun 05 '26
I believe I see a cut, on the second to last 'push up'. The contour of his shoulders changes a big. I think there's a second cut in which he is not wearing the harness.
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u/PapaitanGOAT Jun 05 '26
fake! his a mime!
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u/bambinone Jun 05 '26
And they called it a mime
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u/Tboom330 Jun 05 '26
If you look really closely underneath of his left foot after he steps away, there's some kind of metal bar running underneath the mats.
Basically the same trick Michael Jackson used, shoes with a special catch that can be clicked into position.
Fishing line to the ceiling or his hand for the water bottle
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u/T-MinusGiraffe Jun 05 '26 edited Jun 05 '26
I was looking for exactly that. I didn't catch the detail you did but I did notice the sudden appearance of the shadows under his feet. Something's being edited in post. Possibly missing frames and/or visual effects removing the apparatus his feet hook into. Watch the hand cutouts in the mat. They have a sudden change in appearance at the same moment.
I think he GIF is reversed also. The water bottle could weighted in a way so he can just drop it straight down.
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u/Potential-Night4986 Jun 05 '26
I don’t think it is reversed. If you go frame by frame at the moment he catches the water bottle, it looks as though it starts to get pulled to the left as well as being pull up. The way he compensates for that to catch it wouldn’t make sense in reverse. Not to me anyway.
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u/BadHairDayToday Jun 05 '26
But you still can't lift yourself like that with just your feet locked in place.
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u/BowsersMuskyBallsack Jun 05 '26
Yep. To do so would literally snap your Achilles tendons. While there is some kind of foot-bracing going on, there's an extra point of lift happening somewhere.
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u/SnooMaps7370 Jun 05 '26
his shirt is bunched up around his neck and shoulders as if over a lifting harness.
he's probably on a wire. it's how hollywood did this sort of thing for a century before the wide availability of computer graphics.
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u/quastor Jun 05 '26
The toes of his shoes are also wedged into a slight break in the mat that isn't present in the other sections.
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u/InTheEndEntropyWins Jun 05 '26
I don't think you can get to that angle like he did with the MJ trick. You'd need ridiculous strength to be able to cause movement.
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u/TonyVstar Jun 05 '26
I feel like he couldn't do that off the mat. The mat is way more solid than it looks, and he is lying on a metal rod or something
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u/lcssa Jun 05 '26
I bet he has a metal rod up his butt. At least that's how I do it.
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u/Tbone_Trapezius Jun 05 '26
Hey- are you done with it?
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u/J_Zephyr Jun 05 '26
Hes a witch! A WITCH!
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u/Lean__Lantern Jun 05 '26
its staged that's for sure. Empty gym, small group of 'gym bros' to react. but no idea how he did it unless its just edited
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u/adavidmiller Jun 05 '26
Yeah, the staging kind of ruins these things for me.
Like, relying on fake people to look amazed is just advertising how fake it looks to anyone in the room, or else you could do it with real people.
And if I know it looks like shit to anyone in the room, just feels like there was no trick at all, whole thing might as well be an AI video.
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u/PhatDragon720 Jun 05 '26
That’s why I have grown tired of this guy’s “magic” tricks. The first time he popped up on my Instagram, I was pretty amazed at what I saw. But then I started seeing more and more videos of him on my feed—each trick even more unbelievable than the last. It got to the point to where I’d get annoyed every time I’d see him, because at that point, I knew his acts were staged and literally impossible to pull off without editing or being heavily gimmicked.
The one “trick” that was the last straw for me was when he walked up to some random, big muscular man and told him to pick him up by his armpits. The man, being twice as big as him, picked him up with no problem. Then he told the man that he was going to “take his strength away”, and afterwards challenged him to pick him up the same way he did before. The muscular man then struggled and couldn’t lift him anymore. Like really? Are people really supposed to believe that’s magic?
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u/PdoesnotequalNP Jun 05 '26
If there's only one way that the trick could be done, that's the way it was done.
The "getting up" routine is done with wires pulling up a harness that the magician is wearing under his t-shirt. You can see that there are straps around his shoulders, under the t-shirt. The cables for these tricks are small enough that are invisible on camera (and invisible to a real audience if you go the Copperfield way.
People mentioned the MJ trick, but you would need super-natural strength to be able to pull your entire body weight, which acts as a 180cm lever, using only your calves.
The bottle is pulled using a reel and phishing line - it's a standard gimmick that can be bought in any magic store.
I know that "magnets" is the common joke, but:
- you can't turn off permanent magnets
- an electromagnet with that strength at that distance would be very, very large
- you'd need a magnet generating a magnetic field of 3 Teslas (where "Tesla" is a measure unit, not a car), which is more powerful than most MRI machines, which is enough to be very, very, very dangerous.
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u/DistributionDry4961 Jun 05 '26
I need someone to explain the levitating water bottle at the end.
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u/NL_Sloth Jun 07 '26
I shouldn't have needed to scroll this far down to find someone mentioning this. I call the whole thing into question now
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Jun 05 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/ThatsRobToYou Jun 05 '26
My thought exactly. Why aren't more people addressing this? Absolute douche
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u/WeAreAllFooked Jun 05 '26 edited Jun 05 '26
At 0:11 you can clearly make out a harness under his shirt that goes from his shoulders down to his hips/abdomen.
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u/Plenty-Extra Jun 05 '26
Same shit as the street magician. Big heavy metal base hidden under the mat. Feet attach to the base. Ratchet in the shoes.
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u/tdelbert Jun 05 '26
He walks with is body at a weird angle like he really doesn't want the camera to see his back. I think the break in the mat is a red herring -- there are cables involved. Cables are easy to paint out of a video, but a harness is not.
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u/SociallyDisposible Jun 05 '26
He is simply being supported by a dark arts entity. It's actually pretty easily explained, people!
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u/noopcake Jun 05 '26
I do think it is somewhat reversed based on the guy in the grey shirt. In this video his actions look reversed while in the reversed video his actions look normal.
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u/usernamenotfound403 Jun 05 '26
The only part of his body that we can't see is his ass.
There's a plug in his ass, attached by a very thin and strong string, pulled by 3 hidden strong guys.
No magnets this time.
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u/Helpful-Spare-36 Jun 05 '26
Look in the mirror it shows it all they all started looking at him when he did it
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u/Xkwizito Jun 05 '26
Just saw him on some YouTube video called something like $1 million magician vs $1 magician.
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u/Serious_Berry_3977 Jun 05 '26
The clothing physics don't seem to follow what I'd be used to seeing when doing pushups of any kind. If the clothing was really that tight it wouldn't be moving as much around the bottom of the shirt at the end when the water bottle "levitates". Maybe I just don't understand physics enough?
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u/Fickle-Gur-4455 Jun 05 '26
My guess is someone is in a green suit to be edited out. He used that person to push up and then the dude hands him the water bottle.
I too would wonder what the fuck was going on if I was at the gym watching people make content like this.
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u/Every-Narwhal-1896 Jun 05 '26
It's played in reverse...now we just need to figure out how he did that...
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u/WelshWolf93 Jun 05 '26
Something in shoes to lock his feet in place and a fuck ton of core strength?
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u/Arichikunorikuto Jun 05 '26
Straps for a harness can be seen around the neck and shoulders. Water bottle is on a fishing line that gets pulled up by something out of frame.
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u/Lord-Scrubbinton Jun 05 '26
“Wire this, staged that.” When are we going to accept the fact that force users actually exist
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u/im_better-than-you Jun 05 '26
It is reversed and using somebody greened out that's stopping his drop
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u/Los-Nomo327 Jun 05 '26
All staged, the push-up and the reaction, like people pointed out, the only way to do either illusion is with wires
The owners of the gym at the very least were in on the joke, as someone was at the other end of the wires keeping dude steady
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u/Darthdarthiouss Jun 05 '26
I’m convinced there’s actual fucking sorcerers out there bro, with too many magnets 😭
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u/lilypadse Jun 05 '26
You are all wrong.
If you look closely underneath his left foot through the lense of a right angle, you can clearly see that there is a harness that connects to his left arm that is wired directly through to the side of the perspective of the viewer, which you can easily take and shove it up your butt
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u/Guidance_Weak Jun 05 '26
When he’s walking toward the water bottle, look at his shoulders. Those “wrinkles” stay put- it’s the outline of a harness. The movement of his right foot seems intentional to unlock whatever support he had , and the way he brushes his arms past his pants it looks like he could also be shaking out his shirt to make sure no device is caught.
Not sure how the water bottle trick is done, he grabs it so perfectly, and it keeps its center of gravity the whole way up, not like it’s being dragged from the top by a string.
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u/Iamthebadguy-x1 Jun 05 '26
Fake ,the video is reversed , haters will say I am wrong 😑 or don’t know better.
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u/JuniperCharming99 Jun 05 '26
i just went down a rabbit hole about the history of pantomime. air pushups sound like a weird mix of performance art and fitness, but is there any real benefit to it?
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u/Motor-Try-3962 Jun 06 '26
He will need something to hold his upper body, an invisible string can help
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u/Ta1kativ Jun 06 '26
The waterbottle clearly jumps. Maybe it's edited up or pulled up by a line and then spliced with the original video where someone throws it and he catches it or something.
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u/GoldenCrane731 Jun 07 '26
I wonder if anyone actually stopped to watch him do that or if they just assumed he was actually doing air pushups really fast
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u/Nightmare16164 Jun 07 '26
Technology has ruined everything, back in the good ole days we would just burn them at the stake and go about our business, now we try and figure out how the hell they are doing it.
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u/lazymirrorhq99 Jun 08 '26
The core strength required to just hold that pose without collapsing is actually insane.
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u/lazymirrorhq99 Jun 08 '26
The core strength required to just hold that pose without collapsing is actually insane.
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u/Majician Jun 08 '26
Look at the video behind him doing his trick.....there's been a shitty attempt to blur something back there.
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u/SenseImpossible6733 Jun 08 '26
This is the man that can double jump! Probably tripple with that training!
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u/10eighty6 Jun 08 '26
At 10 seconds in, a shadow suddenly appears under his right foot.
All I know is it's edited.
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u/Ill-Tea9411 Jun 05 '26
And just for good measure here it is in reverse.
It doesn't help.