Secrets of the Turkish Get-Up
There’s an old saying in the Kettlebell community that the one exercise you can do that will “take on” all of your body is the Turkish Get-Up. Some people just refer to the movement as a “Get-Up” — but I prefer to honor the significance of the provenance of the challenge by calling it a “Turkish Get-Up” (with the dash!) or, just “TGU” (without the dash!), for short.
The beauty of the TGU is in its difficult simplicity. Just get up off the ground carrying some weight and do it right, without falling, or dropping the Kettlebell, or hurting yourself. The end is simpler to achieve than the means. You must concentrate. You must balance.
Unlike a Kettlebell swing, which can quickly become mind-numbing in its due diligence, a Turkish Get-Up requires your full strength, and continued internal, and external, observational skills. You must always know where you are in time and space in order not to tumble down back to the ground.
Your wrists, arms, shoulders, core (torso), legs, ankles, and feet will all be involved. Doing a TGU right can cause some imbalance correction. You become a machine of perfection as you slowly move through space; and the beauty part of it is this: A Turkish Get-Up is precisely the one movement you want to perfect as you age, because a TGU involves all the skills needed to safely, properly, and correctly, get a body up from the ground after a fall.
Turkish Get-Up steps are simple, but not easy. There are many videos elsewhere online available to show you how to perform a right TGU, but here are the beautiful basics: Move the bell from the ground, to your extended hand, moving your hips above knees, lunging up into standing with the bell atop the mountain that is you.
That’s it! Easy, right?
Not so fast!
That Kettlebell has traveled through a timed sync with your body from equal with you to being held on high in victory!
I have two weaknesses in my Turkish Get-Ups that always frustrate me. I tend to want to use too heavy a Kettlebell, which then makes it really hard to stand up — which then, then — then leads me directly into my second weakness of not having strong enough legs to perform a lunge into a stand from a kneeling position.
The most dangerous moment for me in all my TGUs is in that delicate instance when I make that final, decisive, move from kneeling-to-standing without letting the Kettlebell hang over my head like the Sword of Damocles ready to fall down and chop off my head with a bulging head bang!
Here are a few other Turkish Get-Up tips:
Don’t be in a rush. Take your time. Pause at each step for as long as you need.
You don’t have to complete the full TGU. Just do the first part. Then do that again. Create steps for accomplishment.
Balance. Make sure you are always in perfect balance. Watch the Kettlebell at the appropriate time to center you in place.
You build strength through repetition, not by just adding more random weight.
Don’t move up in bell weight until you have mastered that weight for 100 TGUs for at least a month.
I love Turkish Get-Ups. They are challenging and wonderful. You can create your own special, meditative, safe, state with deep concentration embedded into each step in the movement leading you into an over and above victory!
Get up to get down!
