HE FORGOTTEN BENEFITS OF THE TURKISH GET-UP

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BY BRANDON HETZLER, SFG TEAM LEADER

“As above, so below.”

-Unknown

We like what is new. Look at how well Apple has benefitted every time they release the latest

iPhone, iPad, or Mac. The followers of Apple are fiercely loyal. The nice thing about Apple and

this craze over their products is that they are continuously pushing the technology forward. The

downfall is the marketing craze they generate surrounding the release of their latest and

greatest product. Is the need to push the industry forward generating their drive, or is it the all

mighty dollar?? I would like to think it is mostly an internal drive to be better than they were

yesterday, but in reality they are a for profit business that is selling products that no one else

on the planet can create. If we look at the technology that Apple has popularized, they weren’t

the first to actually come up with some of their most popular products – Sony had MP3 players

on the market well before the iPod exploded. What Apple did was popularize and market it in a

manner that the public had to have it. Big mistake for Sony.

When Pavel introduced kettlebells to the West several years ago, the Turkish get up was

reintroduced. Pavel didn’t “create” the get up, he just dusted it off and pulled it out of obscurity.

Brett Jones and Gray Cook shed new light on the get up as a wonderful mini-assessment and

corrective drill with the CK-FMS, Kalos Thenos, and Kalos Thenos 2. Dr. Mark Cheng added

the high bridge to promote hip extension and the get up was forever changed – and

controversial. To high bridge or to low sweep, that is the question. The answer is always going

to be: it depends on your goals. The popularity of the get up soared! The get up was a rock star

– everyone was doing get ups, get up variations, get up breakdowns, and heavy get ups.

YouTube loved it! The pendulum had swung to the overexposure side of the board. But like it

has been said before, after every peak is a valley – we are in that get up valley.

Let’s take a deeper look at why the get up is so powerful and so diverse in its application.

Before we do that, let’s look at crawling. Crawling, much like the get up has been around for a

while – no one invented it and no one entity owns it. It is a powerful but small part of the entire

neurodevelopmental sequence (the progressive development of movement patterns and

strength that begins at birth and continues until we are vertical).

The earliest I can find that it was used clinically was in the early 1970′s by Mosh Feldenkrais. I

watched Gray Cook drop the IQ of an entire room several years ago when he asked people to

crawl. Why is it so beneficial? Here is a list of the reasons:

1. Promotes cross lateralization (getting right brain to work with left side)

2. Promotes upper body stability

3. Promotes lower body stability

4. Promotes reflexive stability of the trunk and extremities

5. Ties the right arm to the left leg, and left arm to the right leg

6. Gets the upper extremities working reciprocally (legs too)

7. Stimulates the vestibular system (1 of the 3 senses that contribute to balance)

8. Stimulates the visual system (the second of 3 senses that contribute to balance)

9. Stimulates the proprioception system (3rd oft he 3 systems that contribute to balance)

10. Promotes spatial awareness

11. Develops a front/back weight shift

12. Develops upper body strength, trunks strength, and hip strength

Quite a few things, that essentially make crawling kind of awesome. But, it’s biggest limitation

is that the orientation of the body never changes (crawling is always done on all 4′s with the he

trunk parallel to the ground) and loading it (volume, resistance, etc) defeats the purpose of

crawling. Crawling’s biggest gift to the world of movement is the neurologic adaptations it

promotes. That is pretty much it. During the NDS once an infant is proficient at crawling and

has developed adequate strength and stability, they move up the sequence to walking. Being

vertical is a much better posture to develop strength, power, metabolic loading, etc.

Developmentally that is where a majority of those attributes are developed. All that being said,

every person I see is likely to crawl. Once they have nailed it, we only revisit it as a quick

assessment. I also recommend everyone brush their teeth – this gives you a shiny grill and is

good for cardiovascular health (huh?). After meals for about 2 minutes at a time is adequate. I

don’t recommend they brush for 10 minutes, or with a heavier brush, or brush too hard.

Back to the get up. Why is it so beneficial? Here is a list of reasons:

1. Promotes cross lateralization (getting right brain to work with left side)

2. Promotes upper body stability

3. Promotes lower body stability

4. Promotes reflexive stability of the trunk and extremities

5. Ties the right arm to the left leg, and left arm to the rightleg

6. Gets the upper extremities working reciprocally (legs too)

7. Stimulates the vestibular system (1 of the 3 senses thatcontribute to balance)

8. Stimulates the visual system (the second of 3 senses thatcontribute to balance)

9. Stimulates the proprioception system (3rd of the 3 systemsthat contribute to balance)

10. Promotes spatial awareness

11. Develops a front/back weight shift

12. Develops upper body strength, trunks strength, and hip strength

Does that list look familiar? Unlike the limitation of crawling (only occurring in one posture) the

get up works thru several postures of the NDS – Supine, Rolling, Crawling, Asymmetrical

stance, Single leg stance, and Symmetrical stance. Additionally, as a lift you can proceed to

adding substantial load to the get up to magnify the strength and stability components. So,

even though we are in The Valley of get up popularity, the get up is just like crawling – only

much better.

One of the overlooked benefits of the get up is a misconception that the name presents. The

“up”. How does an infant rise to standing from either a seated, quadruped, or kneeling posture?

I’ll bet you answered with “they pull up”. You, my friend, are wrong. It appears that they pull

themselves up – but they are infants and lack the upper body strength to physically pull

themselves up. What appears as pulling up, is them placing their hands above shoulder level

and pressing down. This pushing down activates several trunk stabilizers which allows them to

push their feet into the ground to rise up. So, in essence what they are doing is pushing down

to get up. The get up is the PERFECT representative of this overlooked developmental feat –

one that crawling neglects. The only way to initiate the roll to elbow is by pressing into the giant

globe beneath us. This pressing into the ground is what generates the needed stability to move

into a vertical position.

The point of this? Everyone who has read Simple and Sinister or has the initials SFG behind

their name have the tools to apply the greatest (until someone can emphatically disprove it)

neurological movement ever. Can you crawl? By all means, go for it. But my question to you is

just like my question about Apple – are you crawling to get better or are you crawling because

you have been convinced you can’t get stronger without it? The benefits of mastering the get

up have been swallowed up by the recent craze in popularity of crawling and other movement

based systems. If it is good enough to balance out the swings in the Simple and Sinister

program, there is probably a good reason why.