Should the Turkish Get Up be a prerequisite to the Clean + Press…

Or rather -

“Why would the TGU be a prerequisite to clean and press?”

… Which was a comment left on one of my videos called, “10 Reasons You Should Not Be Doing The Clean + Press.”

(I’ll leave a link to it in the description below in case you haven’t seen it.)

Some coaches, even PhDs, consider the TGU a worthless exercise - a circus trick - that has very little, if any carryover into anything else other than doing TGUs.

Here’s why, from almost 20 years of doing the TGU I can definitively say they’re wrong.

The Turkish Get Up teaches you and trains your body to do the following:

1. Where your shoulder “lives” in relation to the ground and your body

2. Mobilizes your shoulder, restoring lost ranges of motion like full shoulder flexion (putting your arm straight over your head

3. Where to finish your Military Press (a.k.a. The Overhead Lockout position)

4. Strengthen your rotator cuffs - the most commonly injured shoulder muscles, especially in the over-40 crowd.

(SIDE NOTE: You DO NOT want to tear one of these bad boys. Doing so will set you back usually 12 to 18 months of rehab.)

5. How to increase intra-abdominal pressure (IAP) to protect your lower back under load

6. How to “lock” your ribcage to your pelvis via IAP - a critical athletic skill

7. How to recapture lost shoulder flexion without exposing your lower back to injury by hyperextending it (sticking your butt out) when your KB is locked overhead

8. Strengthens your “core” - abdominals and hip musculature. Bret Contreras, PhD, found through an EMG analysis that the TGU had over 100% peak activation of all 4 of the main abdominal muscles tested.

9. Increases your thoracic spine mobility, which aids in shoulder, lumbar spine, and hip health

10. Restores (somewhat) and strengthens “primitive movement patterns” like rolling over, kneeling, standing and reaching (according to Gray Cook, PT)

And...

11. Is like grappling (BJJ, wrestling, etc)… without grappling… Especially when the load gets heavy (and actually prepares grapplers to grapple - as reported by grapplers)... Which is its own unique benefit

And even though I don’t like the TGU very much, I still use it for active recovery work.

For example, we recently got in at 2am in the morning from a trip to California.

I was sleep-deprived and feeling tight from all the sitting, so there was no way I was going to engage in a regular training session. So, I did 20 minutes of TGUs instead.

Interestingly enough, even though I don’t do TGUs that often, they are much easier than they were 10 years ago.

In fact, a couple of months ago, I was warming up at my buddy’s place when I had to check the size of the KB. It was 32kg and it felt LIGHT.

I thought I’d grabbed the wrong one. In fact, at that moment I’d had a “flashback” to when I used to teach the Get Up portion of the RKC (Russian Kettlebell Challenge Kettlebell Instructor Certification) with a 16kg.

That 32kg felt like the 16kg did back then.

After thinking about it, I chalked it up to all the P3 I’d been doing (The P3 Protocol found inside “The Sore Joint Solution.”)

And particularly the Side Lying position and all the work I’d done there over the last few years.

Side Lying has been a Game Changer for me.

It explained why, even after 8 years of heavy, daily, loaded crawling (Leopard Crawls and Spider-Man Crawls) I still had issues with my right hip and right knee.

And unsurprisingly, even though I sit more now than ever before (like right now, writing to you), I have zero shoulder issues whatsoever and can do high volume, heavy Clean + Presses.

So, if you want to “up” your Get Up game…

And improve your Press numbers...

Based upon my experience and my clients’ experience, I think Side Lying, along with the other positions found inside The P3 Protocol could really help get your shoulder(s) healthy and your Press numbers up.

I’ll leave a link in the description below.

Stay Strong,

Geoff