The full Turkish Get-Up is one of the best total-body exercises you can do.

It requires strength in just about every major muscle group, but especially the core, shoulders and legs.

Essentially, you take a weight (either kettlebell, dumbbell or barbell) and hold it at arms-length above your body, while lying on the ground. Then, while maintaining that locked-out position with the weight, you perform a sequence of movements until you're up into a full standing position.

It's a GREAT exercise and one definitely worth exploring and performing on a regular basis, if you're not familiar with it.

This exercise just focuses on the very bottom/starting phase of the Turkish Get-Up, specifically training the "force transfer" aspect of the core involvement.

The idea here is NOT to do a "crunch" with the weight...the idea is to use your legs to help push the weight up towards the ceiling while your core transfers the force from the lower body through to the upper body.

This "partial" movement, while being a lot less technical than the entire Turkish Get-Up exercise, will definitely give you many of the benefits of the full movement (more in the core and legs/glutes than the shoulders).

I'm using a 125 lb dumbbell for this demo, but definitely start lighter the first time you try this.

Sit on the floor and pull the dumbbell up onto your thighs.

Lie back onto the floor then lift the weight into position with both hands.

This is the start position...arm locked out, other arm on the floor, the leg of the working side should be bent with your foot flat on the floor, other leg straight.

Now use power from your bent leg to push the dumbbell up towards the ceiling. This is not a press or a crunch. Your core is engaged simply to transfer the power from the lower body to rotate the upper body.

Lower your shoulder back down, then repeat. Go for 3-5 reps.

As I mentioned, the first time you do it, start light to get an idea of the movement, THEN start moving the weight up. You're going to benefit most from this one by going heavy (and trust me, you will feel the effects in your core the next few days).

After you've done your reps, lower the weight to your chest with both hands.

Switch up your grip then get into position on the other side. Repeat the exercise with the other arm.

This "partial" Turkish Get-Up is a fantastic way to develop strength in preparation for increasing your weight on the full exercise or as a standalone exercise for improving core strength and force-transfer capabilities.

You can view the exercise in action on my YouTube Channel here...

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