Best Exercises You're not doing - the Turkish Get Up

Aside from helping you cut a steely core, the TGU increases stability and upper body control – powering you to a stronger overhead press.

Why muscle up the motivation to train if your workout doesn’t benefit your body outside the gym? Trust us, there’s little worth in size without strength. This month master the Turkish Get-Up: it’s the best multi-tasking exercise you’re not doing.

As one of the best functional movements – exercises that emulate real life tasks like lugging luggage or shifting heavy furniture – the TGU hits all the major muscle groups. In one rep you test hip and shoulder mobility, core strength, rotational control and scapular stability. Get it wrong and you risk coming face to face with heavy metal and an awkward conversation with your boss, explaining away a black eye.

However, don’t be put off by this or retro images of strongmen doing the move with 100lbs or more. This exercise is as much for the beginner as it is for those with brawn.

You can use the getup to get ahead in your training one of two ways. The first, in warmups. Add light load TGUs as a prequel to overhead lifting. They’re a nice way to build base strength and experience load in the overhead position. That’s because, rather than press the load up, you sneak the body underneath the weight – a little like building a pyramid underneath the kettlebell.

Alternatively, stop being a planker and reach for a heavy kettlebell to hammer your core at the end of the workout.

Like the deadlift, there’s few people that won’t get bang for their butt from this move. So what are you waiting for?

You need:

A kettlebell, barbell, sandbag or dumbbell all work. Training at home? Practice with bodyweight or a 2ltr water bottle.

Master the move:

1. Lying on the floor, safely move your weight of choice into a locked out position inline with your right shoulder. Slide your right foot in towards your bum until it’s next to your left knee.
2. Drive up onto the elbow of the left arm by firing the abs and pushing off the opposite leg – think of punching the weight to the ceiling or ‘crunch and punch’.
3. Drive your hips to the ceiling while engaging the glutes and abs to create enough space to slide your leg beneath you into a half kneel position.
4. Step up from half kneel to standing keeping the weight above your head and core tight. Breathe.
5. You’re not done yet. Reverse steps 1 to 4 to get back to the floor.

Exhale......

Pro athletes around the globe have been paying a lot of attention to a muscle they can't see or touch: the diaphragm.  Having studied under the US based Postural Restoration Institute, I set about trying to understand why....

We are pre programmed to survive.  Our brains will do everything they can to make sure we don't die today.  Ensuring our hearts pump blood around our bodies and that we breathe air in and out.  Although we don't consciously control our hearts, we can control our breathing - and thats why positional breathing techniques can be so powerful and effective.

Our diaphragm is a respiratory muscle - it is 'designed' to draw air into our chest, however,  much the same way as changing the angle of a bench can make a chest press more or less difficult, changing the position of our hips, ribcage, or indeed any other part of our bodies can put the diaphragm in a position of weakness.  If and when this happens, our brains have to figure out how to get air in and out another way...

Not breathing is not an option, so with the diaphragm out of play we will have to breathe from the top of our lungs which involves trying to 'shrug up' the shoulders to create space.  This shrugging up, or over extension,  can cause tension and trigger points on the shoulder and neck, tension in the jaw, headaches, and even debilitating migraines.  Working down the chain there will be a tendency to hyperextend the lower back - causing a cascade of compensatory patterns in the hips, knees and even feet!

Our bodies are not designed to live the way we do.  We spend far too much time in one position, whether sat at desks, or exercising always in the same way.  Essentially we are forcing our bodies to live a 2D symmetrical life when we should be living in a more asymmetric, or 3D kind of way.

If you were to draw a line down the middle of your body, we would not be the same on both sides.  And yet if you think bout the activities we partake in to move our bodies - especially in gym settings - we are expected to do everything symmetrically:  run in a straight line on a treadmill, sit on a spin bike, perform a squat or a deadlift in a neat parallel stance....  These activities all fit into a world we have created around us, but it is not how we are meant to be.  We need and thrive on reciprocal rotation in order for our bodies to work correctly.

The founder and godfather of PRI - physical therapist Ron Hruska - discovered that common problems such as shoulder or back pain are caused by improper posture and therefore improper breathing.  By fixing the posture and optimising breathing patterns we can cause the most extraordinary changes to almost every aspect of human performance.  All we do is train your brain to breathe efficiently in a more optimal position.  A little like pressing the reset button on a mobile phone!