subject: Is This The Best Exercise For Conditioning Your Entire Body? [print this page] Is This The Best Exercise For Conditioning Your Entire Body?
Copyright (c) 2010 Caroline RadwayThe Turkish Get-Up is the exercise my clients and customers 'love to hate'. And I must admit, I feel exactly the same way about them! They are hard, no two ways about it, but the feeling you get after a successful set is second to none - you can feel the satisfaction of having achieved them, as well as the wonderful feeling of having successfully worked every muscle in your body - you can almost feel the body fat run and hide!So, what is a Turkish Get-Up?As with many of these killer exercises, the principle is pretty simple. You can start either standing or lying - I prefer the lying start. From the lying position, you hold a kettlebell at arms length directly above your shoulder, keeping the arm locked straight.While keeping the kettlebell directly above the shoulder at all times, and while keeping your gaze on the kettlebell too, you manoeuvre your body from the lying position all the way up to standing. Then you reverse the movement and return yourself back to the ground.As I said, this does sound simple, doesn't it?But when you consider what you have to actually do to achieve this, and what your body is going through to do it, you realise it's not so simple after all...8 Simple Steps To A Turkish Get-Up:1. From the lying position with your arm out-stretched and straight, bend the leg on the same side as the kettlebell and place the foot flat on the floor.2. Place your free arm out to the side, at about 45 degrees, and rock over onto that side of your body, using the forearm for support (keeping the kettlebell directly over the shoulder and looking at it).3. Tuck the leg under you so you are on your knee and toes, this is now your back leg. You should be at the bottom of a lunge position here, with the knee on the floor.4. As per a regular lunge, come up to standing using your leg and core strength.5. Step back with the same leg, into a lunge position.6. Reach your free arm to the floor and rock onto your forearm and the side of your thigh.7. Un-tuck your legs and lower yourself back down to the ground.8. Breathe a sigh of relief that you have managed one rep, then repeat! To start with, alternate arms each rep. Eventually aim for 5 on each side before swapping sides.
