32kg Turkish Get Up - 50% vom Körpergewicht

The TGU Consists of 9 Positions, Making It a Complex Exercise.

Getting the Most Out of Your Turkish Get-Up

The Turkish get-up… beginners hate it and experienced kettlebellers praise it. The TGU is one of the most fundamental movements because it progresses from lying to standing with a kettlebell. Along with the Hardstyle kettlebell swing, the TGU is one of the basic exercises which will prepare you well for all of the other exercises of the RKC training system.

My earlier post about the get-up was more philosophical and discussed the five things the get-up teaches you about life. Today’s post focuses more on the practical aspects of this movement pattern and how you can implement it in your training to get the most out of it.

Your body learns to work as a whole unit when performing a Turkish get-up.

This exercise integrates every muscle in your body. If there’s a weak spot somewhere, you will find it very quickly—this is also one of the reasons why beginners especially have a hard time with the TGU. The same goes for athletes who are used to training isolated muscles. I have seen many trained 100 kg guys struggling to do their get-ups with a 12 kg kettlebell.

But, this is also what experienced kettlebellers love about the TGU: when you take the time to learn this movement pattern and can flawlessly perform get-ups with a 24 kg kettlebell, many good changes have already happened within your body. The TGU creates flexibility and mobility in the joints along with the basic strength you need to playfully get up from the ground with weight.

Over 200 years ago, Turkish wrestlers already knew that the TGU could prepare them for many things in life. Back then, wrestlers were required to get up while holding half of their body weight in one hand before they could even consider participating in training specific to wrestling. This is also why the get-up is often called the Turkish get-up.

http://rkcblog.dragondoor.com/getting-the-most-out-of-your-turkish-get-up/?gl=240483538&inf_contact_key=78cf7901028c26fe69f059e7b9d03694223cf0afbaa884165472ea2a1c15a698

Does the Ornish Diet Really Work?

The idea that low-fat diets, such as those recommended for so many years by the US government and the American Heart Association (AHA), are effective at preventing atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease has now been generally discredited. Over the past several decades, clinical studies in which dietary fat was restricted to less than 25% of daily calories have failed to demonstrate a cardiovascular benefit. A few years ago, the AHA quietly dropped its low-fat diet recommendation.

There is, however, one glaring exception to the evidence that low-fat diets are not effective at preventing heart disease - the Ornish diet. The Ornish diet (and similar diets) not only restrict dietary fat quite severely (to less than 10% of daily calories), but also require any ingested fats come from purely plant sources. In both the medical literature and in the popular press, the Ornish diet is held out as having been proven effective in preventing the progression of coronary artery disease (CAD), and even in facilitating an actual improvement in coronary artery plaques.

Is this true? Despite the fact that the AHA-style fat-restricted diet has failed to prevent atherosclerosis, does the ultra-restrictive Ornish-type diet work?

The Ornish Study

All of the books, websites, TV appearances, speeches, editorials, documentaries, etc., that tout the effectiveness of the Ornish diet can be traced back to a single clinical trial, the Lifestyle Heart Trial, conducted in the 1980s and 1990s by Dr. Dean Ornish and his group at the California Pacific Medical Center in San Franciso.

They enrolled 48 patients (45 of whom were men) who had known CAD. Twenty-eight were randomized to a special program of comprehensive lifestyle changes which included the severely fat-restricted, vegetarian Ornish diet, along with smoking cessation, meditation and stress management, and a formal exercise program. The other 20 patients, the control group, did not receive this intensive lifestyle management program. During a 5-year follow-up period, patients in the study group experienced significantly fewer cardiac events than those in the control group, and also had a 3% regression in the size of their coronary artery plaques (as compared to an increase in plaques in the control group).

It is a little disturbing, to me at least, to consider that the Ornish empire is built on this one small study. For one thing, there was a substantial drop-out of patients during this study, and these patients were subsequently excluded from analysis. Drop-outs are especially important in small studies since the loss of data can significantly impact the results. The small size of the study also produced substantial baseline differences between the two groups. For instance, the control group had higher total cholesterol and LDL cholesterol values, and were older and thinner than the treatment group. Again, these sorts of problems are common to small clinical trials, and they create inherent difficulties in interpreting differences in outcomes between the groups.

More importantly, the idea that the Ornish diet causes reversal of atherosclerosis is quite problematic. Comparing results from different 2-D angiograms made at different times (as was done in this study) is famously fraught with error, since tiny differences in the angles of the recorded images can yield big differences in the calculation of plaque size. Even if such measurements were precise - and they are far from precise - accurately detecting a 3% change in plaque size cannot be accomplished with any degree of confidence with 2-D angiography. This limitation is not the fault of the researchers - better techniques did not exist in those days. (They do exist today, should the Ornish study ever be repeated.) But this limitation is nonetheless critical, and calls into great question the frequent claims made by proponents that the Ornish diet reverses atherosclerosis. Such methodological limitations would make it very difficult for a study like this even to be accepted for publication today in a peer-reviewed medical journal.

Finally, even if the reported results of the Ornish study did turn out to be accurate, it is impossible to attribute any of this benefit specifically to the Ornish diet. This is because the other three interventions applied to the study group (smoking cessation, stress management, and regular exercise) are all known to improve cardiac outcomes in patients with CAD. The improved outcomes seen in the treatment group are explainable by these other three interventions; any benefit from the Ornish diet itself cannot be inferred in this trial.

There is little doubt that an aggressive lifestyle management program is a useful thing in patients with CAD, and the Ornish study (which, after all, was called the Lifestyle Heart Trial, and not the Ornish Diet Trial) certainly employed aggressive lifestyle changes. But especially in view of the general failure of low-fat diets to improve cardiac outcomes in other studies, substantial doubt exists as to how much benefit the dietary component of this study contributed to the favorable outcomes. A well designed clinical trial would be required to answer this question.

The Bottom Line on the Ornish Diet

Based on the results of the Ornish study - the small randomized trial upon which all the famous claims regarding the Ornish diet are based - the notion that an ultra-low fat vegetarian diet improves CAD should be regarded as an intriguing hypothesis. But that’s all it is - an unproven hypothesis, and not a proven fact. I for one think somebody ought to design a study to see whether the hypothesis is true.

And if you are going to follow an Ornish-type diet, be careful of that vegetable oil.

http://heartdisease.about.com/od/reducingcardiacrisk/fl/Does-the-Ornish-Diet-Really-Work.htm?utm_source=cn_nl&utm_medium=email&utm_term=Living%20Healthy%20Daily%20Newsletter&utm_campaign=livinghealthy&utm_content=20150309

The Lying Back Extension - the Miracle Cure?

Morning All - its a lovely morning here in the UK

And even better for me - today I got out of bed and barely noticed the back pain troubling me this last week. I have been noticing a distinct improvement for the whole 9 days  since I foolishly went too heavy in the deadlift (see previous post last week)

I have done various things - iced at the beginning (although no access to ice immediately after so I used an ice spray - not convinced its anywhere near as good but better than nothing) and anti inflammatory gel rubbed in. I also moved about as much as possible as its far more painful after sitting. And I stretched thoroughly including immediately after the accident (and used a foam roller). The curved back stretch seems to help considerably.

Above all though I have made regular use of the lying back extension.



 I do the main version - superman pose and the legs raised at the same time - 30 reps with a distinct 1 / 2 second pause at the top where I feel the stretch. Straight away the pain relief was fairly obvious. At the beginning the first few reps sparked a little pain and so I would restrict my movement until it hit. After about 6 or 7 reps the back would seem to be fully 'oiled' and I would then go for the full stretch. After 30 reps it was for a little while as if I hadn't any issue.

See my earlier posting today on the video of how to do the lying back extension.

I would pack in as many sets as possible throughout the day and also quickly reintroduced my leg stretching regime as my knee issue requires and also because I believe they're all connected with each other (the problems that is).

So here we are - Day 9. It is still there but a shadow of what it was last week. For an injury to go in such a short time (more or less) is astonishing and I am quite convinced it is the lying back extension that I have to give thanks for. I have been there before - same injury when my son was becoming bigger and heavier but still couldn't walk and I was (badly as it turned out) getting him in and out of the car seat. It worked very well then too and I have often recommended to others with back pain. Now I've had to return in full force to use it again.

I have a resolve to incorporate this into my body weight training regime going forward. The one issue is progression, which as many of you will know by now is the key to strength training (but not in the way I did with the deadlift!!). I guess I can start adding more reps and even wrist and leg strap weights but this again is limited. Beyond that it is probably ultimately replaced by the bridge, but there the problem is that for some years the bridge is about arm strength before the back gets really hit (when you start bending it within the exercise and eventually doing the opening and closing bridges - way beyond me I'm afraid)

But in the meantime I am thankful of how well one exercise is working and how ' normal' I feel again now. Still no dead-lifting for at least another month though!

Happy training!

Tutorial - Lying Back Extension

How Low Should I Go In The Dip?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qymA3Ymkq7s&feature=em-subs_digest

How to Cure a Bad Back

Well its a few days on and the back is still sore. My own stupid fault and I'm still annoyed at my text book errors. Too much weight increase too quickly and too many reps to boot.

So I've been busy researching bad backs but no new revelations. My own theory of doing the lying back extension as many times as possible seems to be as good as anything.



I do 30 at a time and pause on the end of the upward movement. Certainly after here is real relief and for a short while I am fooled into thinking its gone. I had a similar injury when my eldest son was a baby and I was getting him in and out of the car seat. It worked then and is still the best way I know of dealing with a lower back injury.

I'm also stretching by arching back and then bending forward. Finally I'm using the anti-inflam gel at night.

The pain comes back once I've been sitting down for a while and when in bed.


So I shall keep experimenting to see how to get the repair work working In the meantime I'll lay off the weights!

Happy training!