Every concept is prone to oversimplification and misunderstanding, but “functional training,” as overused as the term may be, has led to a wonderful re-exploration of human movement. Namely, how to balance and emphasize certain movements over the course of a training program.

As a consequence, many have dispatched with the notion of training “pecs and delts” in favor of a combination of the push, pull, squat, and hinge categories. These essential movement patterns are a blast to train and, by breaking the “muscle by muscle” workout focus, infinite exciting training templates become available. Still, there are more move categories than just these four.

As I mentioned in my latest piece on the loaded carry, we often focus our training emphasis on a limited number of fundamental patterns, excluding some of the most important. Hinging, squatting, pulling, and pushing are truly essential and truly awesome. Yet, when we only explore fitness through the lens of these four categories something is missed.

The Top-Down Approach

So much of our fitness operating system works from a top-down approach. We explore what the most elite athletes need and scale down from there according to our comparable level of fitness. The problem is that elite athletes usually have a base level of fitness that we take for granted as well as a tremendous level of adaptation from the demands of their sport that we forget to include.

As athletes become more elite, they’re able to address their many needs with even fewer exercises. For example, an elite soccer player might pistol squat, barbell snatch, push up, and row, which combined with their sport, keeps their body capable of almost anything they’d want to do. When you can pistol squat, getting up and down from the floor is a fairly modest ask.

When you can do weighted push-ups, a basic plank has lost its utility. With mastery of this bouquet of exercises, we can be reasonably sure that life’s demands for crawls, get-ups, climbs, and carries can be met. As athletes gain elite capabilities that allow absorption of many skills at once, they can reduce the emphasis on some exercises, but should still be very wary of ignoring the massive benefit of loaded carries and get-ups altogether.

For most people, particularly aging populations (and aren’t we all aging?), fitness should have a very different operating system. Rather than obsessing on movement patterns like squatting and pushing, they should try to train movement skills.

What are movement capabilities most essential for our continual thriving? What abilities might we be allowing to fall detrained that are essential to our living optimally doing what we love for as long as possible, pain-free?

In short, what movement patterns are, broadly, most essential to being a human? From this lens we see that almost every need can be hit with locomotion, loaded locomotion, getting up and down from the floor, and getting up and down from the floor with load.

Train the Skills You Need

It is the getting up and down from the floor that is mostly lost today (although, the atrophy of our locomotive capabilities is equally troubling). Couches, elevated toilets, elevated beds, and every conceivable convenience conspire to mitigate our need to get down to the ground and back up.

Masses have completely lost the capacity to get up and down from the ground (a surprisingly good workout when done repetitively), without massive compensation and discomfort. But life demands this simple capacity. We play with babies on the ground, pick up dropped spending change, and clean up after dogs who eat a bit too fast for their sensitive stomachs.

As we lose the ability to lower our body to the ground with stability, we pick things up at compromised angles putting our spine at greater risk. Most deadly of all, we lose our natural instincts about how to manage falls. Our lack of familiarity traversing to the ground combines with our lost stability from not getting up and down to eventually make falling our greatest threat. If we are lucky it’s a broken wrist. If not, it’s the broken hip that kick-starts an unexpectedly quick demise. Perhaps this is why the Sitting and Rising Test is considered by many to be an indicator of longevity.

When we look at fitness as a hierarchy of needs, we’ll find that the foundation from which we build everything upon is locomotion and getting up and down from the ground. The next level would be to add load to both which creates a united body and iron core. Any other need of the body is met through adding elevation, speed, and variety of movement planes.

For example, locomotion should be trained going up and down hills and stairs. This can progress from unloaded to loaded, from slow to fast, from linear to lateral and everything between. Likewise, we should add load to our practice of getting up and down. Speeds should be dreadfully slow early on but can be done for speed and time as we progress. As with any smart training, loads should start modestly and progress gradually.

These essential movement skills also require a degree of development of all the other patterns. We hinge to pick up weights and pull our shoulders back as we walk. We navigate ourselves to the floor by squatting or lunging and then utilize our capabilities for pushing and squatting as we bear crawl in a myriad of ways.

These movement patterns are still essential. I’d just argue that perhaps we’re still beginning our approach with too much compartmentalization. The squat, hinge, push, and pull could be reconceived as drills contributing to the broader movement skills of locomotion and getting up and down from the ground.

If we are looking at pure training utility, the development and immersion into these two movement skills offer everything we need to thrive including variety. Just examine the millions of ways you can practice locomotion. Crawling, rolling, walking, jogging, running, hopping, all of which can be done in three planes of motion and with varying loads and placements of the load.

Sleds can be pushed, or even pulled while carrying a heavy sandbag with a bearhug grip. Getting up and down from the ground can be a simple consequence of moving between two locomotive exercises early on. For example, a great workout is to alternate between farmer’s walks and bear crawls going as far as possible in a given amount of time. To get down into a crawl requires going from standing to the ground.

The idea behind the get-up is to give ourselves as many options as possible for getting up and down safely and against varying stability and load. We should practice getting up and down with limitations. This is best done with Dan John’s get up circuit where you get up and down culminating at your back, then your front, then each side, and then doing so with a rotation of hands locked to knees, and finally both hands behind the head. Once you get good at get ups, load them. Carry a light backpack under one arm as you practice getting up and down slowly.

Next, learn the sandbag get-up and eventually learn the Turkish Get Up. While I recommend starting with a shoe and moving to a light kettlebell, the options are endless for continual progression and variation. You can do them with dumbbells, barbells, or anything else. You can get-up with a locked arm or try doing them with a kettlebell in the rack position. These skills are the essentials for everyone and they can still be endlessly progressed and turned into elite level fitness feats.

What Else Should I Train?

So what else is there to hit? The only other movement skills that can bring a lot more fun and unique benefit are climbs and swims, but neither approach the basic necessity and comprehensive training capability of locomotion and get-ups. When we exhaust the variations of the get-up and locomotion pattern, we hit every need of the body.

Truly, this is all most people need. While I love heavy squats, single leg deadlifts, kettlebell snatches, and practicing my front levers, the emphasis on these training goals can distract from what is most essential. Rather than fringe outside the box training methods, the skills of locomotion and get-ups should guide our approach to training.

Put It to Practice

Look around the office place, or at the other people in line at the movie theatre. The vast majority are in poor health and are being led by habits that will only continue to make things worse. Nothing could be more important for them than to begin practicing fitness as a daily habit. This only works as a gradual lifestyle change.

With our new lens, we can see that they don’t need to concern themselves with a steady assortment of fundamental movement circuits. They’d do best to begin practicing the lowest level of our primary movement skills: get-ups and locomotion. Our most severely detrained should just walk, baby crawl, roll, and get-up and down from the ground repeatedly.

With consistency in this approach, they’ll soon be ready to progress to more advanced locomotion and get-up variations. Their fitness journey could be complete without the gym, but rather, an immersive exploration of these two broad skill sets.

If you want to implement my movement philosophy you can try my at home 4-week workout plan, The Will and The Wayor, my workout plan for any gym, including globo gyms, Push, Pull, and Thrive.

The post The Only 2 Movement Skills You Need to Train appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

“Everyone loves the Turkish get up. Except me. But they are so darn good for me I do them anyway. I do 20 per week usually with my snatch weight bell but sometimes just with a shoe… the Turkish get up is the cod liver oil of exercise lifts.”

He’s right. The Turkish get up (TGU) is good for you, but it also leads to frequent expressions of disgust. This article will outline the benefits for TGUs, provide progressive steps and tips for performance, and suggest basic programming in attempts to motivate you to incorporate this movement into your weekly training routine.

Benefits of the TGU

Andrew Read has already described the benefits of the TGU in great detail, but sometimes we need a reminder of why certain things are good for us, especially if they taste a little sharp. Some of the distaste associated with training the TGU may be that it seems too complicated and the investment to learn the exercise outweighs the obvious rewards. The TGU may not be as trendy as dynamic barbell movements, but I can assure you that its benefits are definitely worth your time.

Here is why you should care about the TGU:

• Shoulder stability and mobility: The TGU is preventative medicine for your upper body. Holding a kettlebell overhead builds stability and mobility for your shoulders. Additionally, heavy TGUs will lead to pleasant surprises in your pressing strength.
• Thoracic extension and rotation: We do a number of exercises in the horizontal and vertical planes, but not many that call for rotation. The TGU builds rotational strength and patterning that is helpful for athletes.
• Linking motor patterns: The TGU builds bodily awareness and trains patterns that translate across athletic endeavors. This type of patterning is not available from bilateral exercises alone. Brandon Hetzler describes how the TGU mimics many of our developmental movement patterns such as rolling and crawling. Hetzler and other noted rehabilitation specialists, such as Gray Cook and Brett Jones, use the TGU to rebuild proper movement patterns.
• Functionality: Getting off the ground is arguably the most functional of exercises.

How to Perform the TGU Step 1: One-arm Press

• From the fetal position, roll onto your back and press the kettlebell up with your right arm.
• Keep your free hand over the right hand for extra stability.
• Your right knee is bent and your left leg is flat on the ground at a 45-degree angle from your body.
• Your left arm is positioned on the ground at a 45-degree angle from your body.
  Note: The 45-degree angle is a starting point and will vary depending on your torso and arm length.
• Lock your eyes on the kettlebell and keep them there for the next few steps.

How to Perform the TGU Step 2: To the Elbow

This step is often the most difficult because many people mistakenly just try to do a sit up. Keeping your torso as stiff as possible and your shoulders back and down, exert force into your right leg and left elbow to extend your right arm to the ceiling and rotate yourself up. This step is like throwing a punch. When you throw a punch, you don’t move your shoulder first and then rotate your body. Rather, your whole body rotates to extend the arm.

How to Perform the TGU Step 3: To the Palm

This step is relatively easy. Keep your shoulders down and back, and imagine a straight line from the kettlebell (right hand) to the ground (your left hand). You want that line to be as solid as possible.

How to Perform the TGU Step 4: Low Sweep or High Bridge

Mark Cheng introduced the high bridge to the TGU as a tool to open up the hips so the left leg can sweep through. When you are in the high bridge position, your body will form a tripod with the sweep leg and left arm, and the right foot will be directly below the kettlebell.

How to Perform the TGU Step 5: To the Knee

Next, sit your hips back to bring yourself into a kneeling position. Your left leg will be at a 90-degree angle to your right leg. Pivot your left leg around like a windshield wiper so it is aligned with your front leg. Your gaze will now shift to the horizon instead of the kettlebell.

How to Perform the TGU Step 6: Lunge Up

The lunge seems like a simple step, but treat it just like a squat in that you don’t want your knee to travel past the toes or track inward.

How to Perform the TGU: The Way Down

So much effort is spent figuring out how to get up that understanding how to get back down is often an afterthought. Here are important tips to make getting down easier. 

1. Control the descent. It’s not a race to the finish, so remain as tight and organized as you were on the way up.
2. People often forget which leg initiates the decent. Use your free hand as a guide to tap the leg that will go back.
3. From the knee, remember to “windshield wiper” the back leg 90-degrees. Rather than falling and finding the ground with your hand, this position allows you to hinge you hips back and use your hand to gently find the ground.

How to Perform the TGU: Programming

One of my favorite programs for the TGU is Pavel Tsatsouline’s Simple and Sinister program. When I have used the program in the past, my deadlift and press have gotten stronger. My friend, a former Navy Seal, uses the Simple and Sinister program before hunting season so he is conditioned to spend days tracking elk across the mountains.

Here is the protocol:

• 5 Minutes: 20 swings per minute
• 1 minute rest
• 10 Minutes: 1 Turkish get up per minute (alternate sides each minute)

You Don’t Have to Like TGUs for Them to Work

Spend time watching the videos to build your proficiency at the TGU. You might still dislike the movement, but as with most things that are difficult, it’s worth the effort. You’ll be surprised at how much stronger and more durable your shoulders feel, even if you do the exercise without weights. Ten TGUs a day, four times a week is optimal, but your recommended dosage will vary on your needs. Make sure you get in your weekly dosage of get-ups and over time, your face might not scrunch up in disgust.

More Kettlebell Movements to Cure What Ails You:

• 5 Kettlebell Drills to Add Real Function to Your Fitness
• Don’t Let Mobility Stand in the Way of Your Gains
• Joint Safe Strength and Conditioning With Kettlebells
• New on Breaking Muscle Today

Teaser photo courtesy of Craig Marker.

The post Movement Medicine: Breaking Down the Turkish Get Up appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

Side note: I think many people fall in love with kettlebells not because of the tool so much, but because they end up doing far better exercises than what they had been doing previously with barbells and dumbbells, i.e. the standard commercial gym workouts.

The get up is one of those great exercises that accomplishes a lot in just this one movement. The basics of this exercise are to stand up while keeping a weight overhead the entire time. Often, this is then reversed and you get back down to the ground while still maintaining the weight overhead.

The Turkish get up as taught by the StrongFirst training method.

The Power of Overhead Movements

The word overhead is important. The weight really does stay “over your head,” but as your body shifts around, this overhead position is maintained by working the shoulder through a significant degree of motion. This is one of the reasons the get up helps in rehabbing shoulder problems for many people.

While the movement can be awkward when you first try it, once you are trained in the exercise you will be able to handle a good amount of weight. It is said that old-time strongman Sig Klein would have people at his gym train with the get up until they could handle 100 pounds before he would start them on other exercises. A hundred-pound getup is a solid goal worth shooting for!

 “For the ultimate challenge, try working this movement with the barbell.”

As with the bent press, the get up can be done with a number of tools. The kettlebell tends to be the easiest and is the best starting place because the offset weight helps keep your arm in place. The kettlebell basically pulls back slightly, helping you to use your anatomical structure better.

Dumbbells are great, too, and provide a bit more challenge as the weight is slightly further away from you and thus at a worse leverage. But for the ultimate challenge, try working this movement with the barbell.

Experimenting With Equipment

If you have never done this exercise before, it’s worth giving it a shot. If you have done the movement with kettlebells or dumbbells, then I recommend you start experimenting with a barbell. When I got started with the barbell, I found that by changing the recommended form slightly I could handle more weight. My instructions for doing this follow.

1. Start lying on the ground with the barbell to the side of you, but in line with your body.
2. Roll over to one side, grasp the barbell with one hand and cup the other hand around your first hand. It is absolutely essential to grab the barbell in the middle. Specifically, put your middle finger directly in the center of the barbell. I use a piece of tape to indicate where this is so I can easily place my hand each time.
3. Using both hands, push the barbell up into lockout over your body. The barbell should be parallel with your body.
4. At this time, let go of the extra hand and maintain the weight over your head.
5. Bend the leg that is on the same side as your lifting arm, so the knee is in the air and the foot flat on the ground.
6. Roll to the non-barbell side, until you are on your side.
7. Press into the ground with your free hand. You will scoot upward, making little movements at a time, until you come to a position where you are leaning against your elbow.
8. From here extend the elbow so you are resting on your hand.
9. Press using your leaning arm and your leg with your food flat on the ground (the same side as the weight), and raise up your hips just enough to get your leg pulled through. (With the kettlebell, get up you go through a high arch in this position. That is great for training movement quality, but when you’re working with a heavy barbell you’ll want to skip that added movement.)
10. Come to a kneeling position in an action similar to a side raise, picking your leaning arm off the ground.
11. Drive off with both feet coming to a standing position with the weight overhead.

From there, you can lower down in the same manner or simply drop the barbell. When working with the barbell, I usually just do the standing portion and don’t go back down. After you are done with one rep, begin once again on the other side.

Tips for a Successful Get Up

• Make sure to keep the lifting arm locked out at all times and your eyes on the barbell. As mentioned, this is much harder than the kettlebell version because of the balance involved.
• Be prepared to drop the barbell. But, of course, only train this in a suitable place for dropping weights. It is recommended to use bumper plates because you will likely drop during some attempts on this exercise.
• This is an exercise where I typically only do singles. Just do a few of them working up to a progressively heavier weight.

The get up fits in great as a skill-practice exercise done at the beginning of your workout before doing other movements. The last time I worked on this exercise regularly it essentially served as my entire warm up.

Give the get up a try and see what you think. It’s a great whole body exercise for developing good movement and challenging your strength. If you have questions, post them to the comments below.

Check out these related articles:

• The Get Up: Why It’s My Favorite Exercise
• How to Do the Perfect Get Up
• The Value of the Get Up (Broken Down Into 6 Pieces)
• What’s New On Breaking Muscle Today

The post How to Perform a Perfect Turkish Get Up With a Barbell appeared first on Breaking Muscle.