Author: Eric Moss
Turkish Getup with Pauses (exercise variation)
My personal training studio is right across the street from the Boonton Holmes Public Library. So I create presentations designed to teach people about various things relating to health and fitness, since if you want to reach people you have to teach people.
This past Friday I did a presentation about the Turkish Getup…an exercise very near and dear to my heart.
Following the presentation, one thing that was asked of me was how it would go in a “fitness boot camp” type of setting. If you are unfamiliar with fitness boot camps they usually reference some kind of circuit training type of format, often with timed intervals.
It doesn’t have to be since it’s really just an umbrella term that can refer to just about anything.
The Turkish Getup doesn’t really work with this sort of format since ideally, it would be done with grace and control as opposed to rushing through it as you would when under the stress of a timer. With the Turkish Getup, I like to have people try to go heavy (which normally needs adequate rest periods) and also recommend striving for mastery and grace.
Here is a version of the getup that promotes the latter of the two. It’s called the Turkish Getup with pauses.
When you are doing a getup, and you purposefully insert pauses during various portions of the movement, it forces you to own your potential weak points by building in speed bumps. You see, in weight training, there is something called the force-velocity curve. A quick way to explain it is that as you get the weight moving, your various muscles stop working.
Why? Think of it like this. There is a car stuck in the snow and five guys try to push it out. As they start pushing and the car starts moving a couple of the guys let up because the other guys have got it covered.
Your muscles work kind of the same way.
During your pauses, your muscles and your stabilizers are all working statically to hold you in place. It forces control in owning the movement, and when you want to go heavier, it helps you grind through the repetition because you’ll have built a bit of endurance.
And the recommendations of striving for mastery, grace and heavy are why I recommend against doing them as part of a timed interval. However, you could use it as the timed interval.
What I mean by that is make the Turkish getup itself the clock, although I still don’t really think it’s optimal, but still a decent idea.
I think it’s better to have everyone on their own custom program, just training alongside others, which is what I do. But hey, I’m biased.
Eric Moss is a world-record-holding modern-day professional performing strongman, author, motivational speaker, and personal trainer. In the tradition of the strongmen more common during the turn of the century, he performs feats of strength such as bending steel and breaking chains as part of a show and speaks on goal achievement for corporations, nonprofits, government as well as for schools and universities. His exclusive personal training studio is located on Main Street in Boonton New Jersey, is close to Mountain Lakes, Denville, Montville and Parsippany New Jersey.
Having trouble with your nutrition? Try this…
When I sit prospective personal training clients down for a goal assessment interview I’ll ask them in-depth about their goals. This helps me determine what steps are going to be needed in order to get from where they are to where they would like to be. Then I also determine whether or not they are committed enough to their own goals.
If they aren’t committed, I turn them away. Why? Because I can teach the top strategies for losing weight, getting strong and looking great. But strategies only work if the person works. If they aren’t committed, it’s like they are telling me “I’m not going to do what I need to do.”
Maybe the timing just isn’t right. That’s ok. Come back when you really are ready to make the changes necessary.
Even when a person is committed, change presents challenges that may be unforeseen. But for every problem, there is a solution and having been a personal trainer for over 15 years I’ve got a couple worth sharing.
One of them is quite simply preparing your food in advance.
One of my newer personal training clients posted this picture on his Facebook page.
I can already tell he’s going to be very successful 🙂
You see when it comes to transforming your body, though I think building strength is more important to the total transformation (I’m talking about gaining muscle, strength and getting “I got this!” levels of confidence) but when it comes to burning fat, your diet is going to be a bigger factor.
And when it comes to dieting, often what fails is your ability to apply whatever your diet may be to whatever your situation is. With something as major as the food in our lives (much of our day revolves around food), there are all sorts of obstacles that get in the way.
You’re running late and/or are incredibly busy with personal or professional obligations so no time to make the healthy choices. Sound kind of familiar?
So we cave to convenience by going to a drive-through or getting some other kind of fast food, and in doing so we sacrifice a bit of our health with it each time.
But a way to combat this is to simply be proactive about it. When it comes to nutrition, simply prepare meals that abide by the rules of your nutrition program for the week in advance. It helps to dedicate Sundays and Wednesdays to this.
A trait common amongst successful dieters is that they eat the same healthy meals on repeat. So you don’t have to make 10,000 different kinds of food on Sunday. Just make one or two things in bulk and pack it into individual Tupperware containers. Then you simply pack what you need with you for the day. You can freeze them and save them for a later day too.
Believe me, you’ll be a lot less likely to cave to convenience if you have your Plan A is already conveniently with you.
Eric Moss is a world-record-holding modern-day professional performing strongman, author, motivational speaker, and personal trainer. In the tradition of the strongmen more common during the turn of the century, he performs feats of strength such as bending steel and breaking chains as part of a show and speaks on goal achievement for corporations, nonprofits, government as well as for schools and universities. His exclusive personal training studio is located on Main Street in Boonton New Jersey, is close to Mountain Lakes, Denville, Montville and Parsippany New Jersey.
re: How much exercise is enough?
This past week, I gave a presentation on how to include fitness and nutrition strategies into an already busy schedule. In it, I provided examples and case studies from the personal training clients I’ve worked with over the years.
One thing common amongst my personal training clients is that they are all professionals, mostly between the ages of 40 and 60. Many of them either have kids, hold down more than one job or are business owners like myself.
For me personally, I have 2 businesses (my personal training business, and a business as a professional entertainer for corporate, associations and education)
2 businesses and I have 2 young children. My youngest turned 6 months old the other day.
And technically, because I’m a professional athlete my training has to matter. I don’t really have time to waste on unproductive training methods.
So as I was perusing the interwebs looking for ideas about what to write about, I came upon an article called “how much exercise is enough?”
It’s kind of a loaded question really. The answer, like most things health and fitness related, is “It depends.”
I’ll give an example. A couple years back I had someone tell me “I train 6 days a week, 3 hours each time. I workout 10 times as hard as everyone else and I feel like I have nothing to show for it.”
I told him “I have some theories. But you probably aren’t going to like them.”
“Well what is it?”
“I think you’re overdoing it. You’re not giving your body a chance to catch up so it’s holding onto your body fat. With me, you’ll be training 30 minutes 3 times a week and nothing else except some easy walking to help with recovery”
He lost 18lbs in a month. But that was a bit of a unique situation because his body was so used to going hard all the time, that it had developed the ability to have a speedy recovery from training. Not all situations are like that.
However, you can still get great results on short programs. I have a guy training right now about 25 minutes twice a week. Is he going to get results like the Amazing 12? Not likely, but he’ll still get great results.
The Amazing 12 is a program that’s about optimizing everything involved in a body transformation. It’s about optimal technique, optimal nutrition and optimal progression of the loads. With all those things in place it creates such amazing results in a shockingly short amount of time.
But it also requires the optimal situation. It’s approximately 5 days a week in my personal training studio, plus cardio homework. Not everyone has a schedule that will allow it.
I have a personal training client right now who would have loved to do Amazing 12. He works full time, has a part-time job and is trying to build a business. Right now, Amazing 12 isn’t right for him.
So then optimal changes because it’s context-dependent. Optimal is the best answer for whatever the situation allows. For my guy, he trains approximately 25 minutes twice a week. It may not be the optimal situation but pretty good is still pretty good. He just told me he feels good and accomplished. Like I said, pretty good is still pretty good.
As far as how much is enough? Well, training is about coaxing adaptation from your body. Your body adapts by getting stronger, leaner, fitter etc.
And in order to get an adaptive response, you need to give it a stimulus to adapt to. You might be surprised how little you actually need.
People new to training can make especially fast gains. It isn’t uncommon for some of them to actually double their strength (based on how hard they perceive something to be) within the first month. And that is done with a low volume and generous rest periods.
So how much is actually enough? Whatever it is you can safely do that challenges you. Little hinges swing big doors over time.
Eric Moss is a world-record-holding professional performing strongman, author, motivational speaker, and personal trainer. In the tradition of the strongmen during the turn of the century, he performs feats of strength such as bending steel and breaking chains as part of a show and speaks on goal achievement for corporations, nonprofits, government as well as for schools and universities. His exclusive personal training studio is located on Main Street in Boonton New Jersey, is close to Mountain Lakes, Denville, Montville and Parsippany New Jersey.