How to do the Turkish Get Up
What is it?
The Turkish Get Up is an amazing whole body exercise. It challenges every muscle in your body and gets you thinking about how your body moves during the exercise.
Why do it?
The Turkish Get Up can highlight where there are muscle imbalances in the body as it gets you working on your joint stability and one side of your body at a time. As a runner this is a great way to ensure you don’t get injured by keeping your body balanced and mobile.
You have to make sure your body is stable and strong as you go from a laying, to kneeling to standing position all with one arm straight above your head.
As well as having increased mobility there are a number of movement patterns in the Turkish Get Up, which include hip hinges (great when deadlifting), overhead holds, shoulder stability, core and glute activation, leg strength and power.
It gets the smaller muscles in your body to help stabilise the bigger muscles which in turn will help progress your overall strength.
How to do it?
Roll onto your back and extend one arm above your chest, bend your knee and place your leg out to one side, push up onto your hand, extend your hips by pushing up onto your feet, sweep your straight leg underneath your body and onto your knee so you’re in a half kneeling position, then stand up. To lower back down, do the same movements in reverse.
Top Tips
Start with a light weight or even just a closed fist in the air
Keep your eyes looking at the top of your hand above your head when on the floor and look forwards when in a standing position.
