Hey man, quite the goal you are setting for yourself here, good on you.
Even though it is just a single excercise, I think there are a TON of little details we could focus (and over-focus) on, so I think it is best to keep it simple in the beginning. As you have already figured out, there are certain pre-requisites you probably have to pass before you should even bother in the attempt, but even those things are not very clear. There are a lot of opinions out there, and few or none of them ever helped me, because the people doing the exercises didn’t seem to know how they got where they did in the first place. Let’s get the most obvious thing out of the way first: having a good strength to bodyweight ratio matters a lot here. At 6 feet and 175, you seem to already be in a pretty good bodyweight place for this. Your height will pose some extra challenges, but not like you can do anything about that.
But while strength is the foundation here, what you are really looking for is POWER. For the sake of this discussion, the difference between the two is that Power is about what you can do over time. In other words, doing it fast. More on this in a bit.
Also, Muscle Ups are a 3 Stage Rocket. The Pull, the Transition, the Dip. You have to learn all three, and probably also in that order. The good news is that if you manage the first two, the Dip is not going to be an issue. I am not saying you don’t need to train it, but chances are if you can get to that point, then it won’t be the thing stopping you. I have seen people fail that part of the movement, but in literally every case they were skinny kids who used a huge kipping motion and took advantage of low bodyweight to propel them into position in the first place. That ain’t you.
So if the Dip is stage 3, then the Transition is stage 2. You can also ignore that for now, it would be like trying to teach someone who has never seen a bike how to ride a bike over the internet. It is a technique and timing thing, and you cannot learn it until you are actually sitting on the bike. Or in this case, until your pulls are strong enough.
That leaves stage 1, the Pull. Like me, you have probably seen things like “be able to do 20 PUs and then you are strong enough”. Like it is some magic solution. But that is equating strength and endurance with POWER. You do not need to be able to do 20, 15 or even 10 PUs in order to be able to do a MU. What you DO need to be able to do, is a few Pull-ups with a ton of power. And sure, while the former will eventually help you do the latter, these are ultimately two different skills. It would be like the difference in pressing a dumbbell over your head 20 times compared to throwing a shot-put as far as you can just once. So this is what you are aiming for now: doing explosive pull-ups. There are going to be some videos out there on that subject too, but the basic gist of it is that you need to be able to pull yourself up with enough speed and force that you can (and will) literaly slam your chest into the bar. Or if you are using neutral grip, slamming your shoulders into the grips. We are talking near-bruising impact. If you can do that for 3 to 5 reps…then you can probably muster the force for an MU.
Now that said, how do you get there? Do it all and do it frequently. High reps sets for speed? Sure. Slow and controlled reps? Yep. High rep lightly weighted? Yep. Super heavey weighted for low reps? Yep. Isometric holds? Yep. All of these on the same day? Yep. Do some of these things on a day where I am just squatting or whatever? Yep. Your motto should be “I never met a bar I didn’t want to pull”. But no kipping at this stage. Kipping is just false power. It will have to come back in Stage 2, but only because we have no choice in the beginning.
So, do all kinds of pulling. Your goal is these explosive pullups, so test them frequently. Make sure whatever rig you are using is solid, because you should be smashing it. Preferably with traditional overhand grip, as that is the same motion you will use for the MU later.
