Progressing Mobility: A Half Get Up To Optimal Performance
The original publishing date of today’s article was back on March 31, 2016. I pulled this one from the archive because I wanted to make sure to cover today’s topic of helping you to learn a method to progress and improve your mobility in the most practical way possible.
You might be familiar with the Turkish Get Up. However today I want to cover another unique movement to help you give your mobility a significant upgrade. Make sure you read today’s article and apply this method to your own training!
The key to mastering mobility is being intelligent about how you take a trainee from one step to the next in the most sensible and idiot proof way possible. Today is going to be an example of how you can go about doing just that. Today I’m going to do this with a great strength drill that I like to introduce to my trainees in the iron game on a fairly regular basis. If you’re looking to optimize your mobility and open up your kinetic chain for greater strength and agility then you’re going to like today’s article.
Progressing Mobility
Progressing your mobility means that you give your fitness and function a complete upgrade. To learn how to do this from head to toe make sure you check out my 120 Day Functional Fitness Program on sale now. Click the image here above!
Anybody that trains with me knows that I like to hammer out the fundamentals and stress the importance of technique. After all, without having a solid handle on foundational movement you can quickly throw out the idea of progressing. I mean how can quality results come from poor technique? Unfortunately I’ve witnessed many coaches over the years who focus more on quantity rather than quality.
This is an unfortunate trend that has sparked the harder is better attitude. This is a common misconception. Just because something is harder doesn’t make it better…only doing something better makes something better!
When it comes to mobility a big part of improving your ability in this arena involves the stabilization and mobilization of your joints, particularly with your shoulders and hips. I point out the shoulders and hips because they are the primary mobile joints that function directly off the trunk of your body.
Progressing Mobility: The Half Get Up
The TGU is one of the most powerful strength drills you can include into your personal fitness program. This drill corrects mobility, develops function, and enables you to eliminate weak links throughout your body. Learn more how I inject this movement into my 120 Day Functional Fitness program by clicking the image.
When it comes to working in a great deal of mobility there are few drills better for you to perform than the turkish get up (TGU). However when looking at the get up it can be a rather challenging and all encompassing drill to throw at a newcomer right out of the gate at times. The reason is that there are not only a number of steps to address with the full TGU, but the drill itself can also introduce significant flaws and cheats that a trainee may fall victim to if they are new to moving their body.
Common cheats that tend to occur when performing the get up is that a trainee will typically fail to maintain a perpendicular angle with their lifting arm to the sky throughout the drill. Another might be them improperly setting up the drill by lunging with the wrong leg placing them out of a natural position to finish executing the drill. I could go on and on.
The point is that as a coach I like to address some of these in a very practical way. When beginning I like to teach a trainee to perform the lift without a weight in hand to begin…and then later have them move on to perform the drill while lifting and controlling a kettlebell or dumbbell.
To simplify this process altogether I even prefer to start by teaching trainees how to perform a half get up instead of a full get up. This teaches a trainee to control themselves in the middle of the movement so that it’s much easier to coach them through the rest of the get up that involves going all the way to the ground and back up.
As you can see this is a very simple set up for most any trainee. It doesn’t require any equipment whatsoever. As I stated earlier I can address some other problems that generally arise with the get up.
Your arm should maintain a rather perpendicular angle to the sky as you progresses through this movement in it’s entirety. To learn I would usually have you perform the drill with a deck of cards, or with your shoe!
As you can see this is a practical application to prepare you for the get up. This will help you train on holding the proper arm position during the movement. The key to performance is making sure that you are proficient in the fundamentals. Quality always trumps quantity.
I hope you enjoyed today’s post. If so then don’t be shy about posting up in the comment section here below. What kind of mobility work are you doing? Are you implementing the get up into your training at the moment? Stay strong, be better, and don’t fall victim to the victim mindset!
What are you currently struggling with the most in terms of your functional abilities?
What functional strength movements are you currently incorporating into your training program?
Please post up in the comments below and share.
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