Turkish Get Up Introduction

Hey Cody Rhinehart here with LH Crossfit.

Today what I’m going to do is go over one of my favorite kettlebell techniques and that is the Turkish Get-Up. The Turkish Get-Up is really good to help build overhead or shoulder and thoracic spine stability as well as core stability.

It’s really just a really good full body movement. It really helps working on your shoulders and balance and a bunch of other things. So here we go, let’s go ahead and get started.

 

Starting Point

So, now that we’ve done the half get-up, the next step is to move into the full get-up. Now, what I normally do is I have people do the half get-up for a week to two weeks, to really get comfortable with this first portion, this foundation portion, before you move into the next piece.

So, what I do is after I have them do it without the weight, I’ll add a light weight into it. Generally, for women it’s going to be anywhere from a, 18 to a 26 pound kettlebell, which is the pink or the blue. Guys will use the 26 or 35 and then from there I can kind of base off of how strong they are. Then when we go to the full get-up.

I usually take the weight away and have them do the whole thing again without any weight and then we can slowly start to add weight into it, to make sure that we have all the foundational pieces before you start increasing it, be getting to a heavy, heavy weight.

So, the way that the Turkish Get-Up was actually designed is to have a heavier weight above your head. Not having a really heavy weight isn’t going to activate the stabilizers and the things that we’re trying to build with the Turkish Get-Up.

So, you need to make sure you can do it properly with a lighter weight. Then when you get there, you can move up to the heavier weight, it’s not going to be any different. Okay.  So let’s go ahead and get started.

Half  Turkish Get Up

All right! Now that we’re getting into the full get-up today, we’re going to start off with that half get-up, like we all ready did, and then we’re going to add a couple more pieces to that. So, I’ll go over that really quick.

All right. So if I’m laying on my side here, laying on my right side which is what I’d be using on the kettlebell, going to come up.

Boom.

Hand goes out. Leg goes out. Just like that. Okay. And then from this angle, it’ll be coming right to here. All right. So, posture up. Make sure you’re rolling to your hip first. Lock it out.

Full Turkish Get Up Additions

Then from here, I want to go into what I like to call, “Tabletop.” Okay.

So, when I’m in this tabletop position, what I try to do is raise the hips up off the ground and I’m going to drag this leg underneath me.

Okay. So, I’m in my overhead position, my lat is engaged, my knee is right on top of my heel. I don’t want to be anywhere here or way outside, be right on top. Tighten my stomach, press up, and then I’m going to drag this leg underneath right to this position right here.

Now I’m going to tighten my stomach and sit up.

So if you see what this does with my legs is it puts it in kind of a 90 degree angle, one knee pointing this way, the other knee pointing this way. What I need you to be able to do to stand up is I need to get into a lunge position.

Now I’m going to take this foot, I’m going to step it across, and then I’m going to tuck my toes in the back foot and I’m going to stand up. Okay. That’s it.

Then from there, do the whole thing in reverse going back down to the ground.

 

Everything in reverse

So, reverse lunge first.

Untuck the toe. Then I’m going to step this foot across so it puts me at a 90 degree angle. What, some people will do is they will forget about this step and immediately try to go down.  And if you notice, here from this angle when you try to go down the hip kind of blocks it from allowing you to get as much mobility in it that you could.

So, instead, we want to step this foot off to the side. So as this hand comes down to the ground I’m going to be able to hinge a little bit more. What you want to avoid here is you don’t want to go and sit back on your heel. Okay.  You just want to hinge enough so we can put our hand on the ground. Just like that.

So, coming from this angle, the bell goes up overhead, I’m going to hinge, arm comes down to the ground, tighten my stomach, press in through my heel and my palm, and I’m going to drag this leg back out, reverse tabletop, bring it down, bend through my elbow, sit, to my back.

 

Additional Reps

Now if this was my last rep, I would bring the arm down and as I bring it down, I’m going to kind of roll into it. Just like I did when I first started. If I was doing an additional rep, I would go from this position on my back, right back up again, and posturing up. So that is the Turkish Get-Up.

Now that we’ve done it without weight, I’m going to go ahead and go through it with weight and show you what it will look like and a couple of little pointers to pay attention to.

All right, so I got my kettlebell here. I am going to be using a little bit lighter of a bell than what I would normally use if I was using it in a workout. What I generally do is I use it in a warm up. I’m going to be using the 35 pound kettlebell as a technique.

Generally what you’re trying to do is move up to, guys you’re generally in the ballparks of 53 to 70 if you can get that heavy. Obviously if you can go even heavier that’s, that’s going to be good, but make those slow increments to get up to there.

Okay, from rolling on my side here. Coming up and the arm extends as I roll. Make sure the shoulder’s nice and tight to my socket. Foot is off to the side. Hand is off to the side. I’m pushing through my heel and coming up right overhead.

Now, what I’m trying to do is make sure that I’m rotating around my arm. Okay. Going to have posture up. Bring it up. And there you go, that is a Turkish Get-Up.