Recently read an article about recovery and over-training. It mentioned that over training is generally just under-recovery. One of the ways recommended to improve recovery is to have your recovery day be 100 Turkish get-ups. What are your thoughts on this philosophy? I really like the idea, because rest days are pretty boring for me, and I could always use some extra mobility work.
It’s bullshit. Rest is rest. Go for a walk, stretch, eat and sleep.
[quote] Tony Gentilcore wrote:
It’s amazing how elite-level athletes will perform deload weeks, periodize their training to match their competitive season, rarely ever train to failure, and otherwise place a premium on the quality of their training rather than the quantity.
Yet Bob from accounting considers a day where he heads to the track to perform “a few” 400m runs an off day. [/quote]
[quote]nighthawkz wrote:
It’s bullshit. Rest is rest. Go for a walk, stretch, eat and sleep.
[quote] Tony Gentilcore wrote:
It’s amazing how elite-level athletes will perform deload weeks, periodize their training to match their competitive season, rarely ever train to failure, and otherwise place a premium on the quality of their training rather than the quantity.
Yet Bob from accounting considers a day where he heads to the track to perform “a few” 400m runs an off day. [/quote][/quote]
This. Turkish get-ups are taxing as hell from memory, even with a light 16 kg bell. If you have to do something on your rest day go for a walk. Or a swim, if that floats your boat.
I will third what the other guys say.
And I’m a huge fan of get ups. They are one of my favorite exercises. I also use them pretty regularly on recovery and off days. But I’ll do between 1 and 5 per side, and not with a taxing weight. That’s far different than 100 reps. I think of them as strength-yoga. 5 to 10 minutes gives a good recharge and helps me loosen up. But an hour or more of yoga would be your workout. And if you aren’t in the practice of doing lots of yoga (or get ups, or whatever) then you are not even in the realm of workout anymore, you’ll find your body is trashed the next day.
I would personally only view 100 get ups as recovery if you were regularly doing 500+ get ups a day.
[quote]heard10 wrote:
It mentioned that over training is generally just under-recovery.[/quote]
That’s a macho line of popular bullshit that sounds super-hardcore but doesn’t really address anything useful. Overtraining could be under-recovery. It could also be inefficient program design and/or terrible nutrition and/or other outside factors (even simple mental stress). “Under-recovery” is a vague term that’s just a side effect of a more direct cause.
If it’s the Men’s Health article from last week, it was 1x50 per side (for 100 total reps) with 15-25 pounds, alternating arms each rep. That’s still a major workout for the core, hips, and shoulder stabilizers. If you didn’t work up to it and just jumped into 1x50 on day one, you’d absolutely be wrecked from it and future training that week would be impaired.
If you did build up to it by starting with, say, 1x5-10 per side, then we’re talking about something more reasonable. Though that brings up the question of why we’d want to add volume simply for the sake of added volume.
I’ve often said that TGUs remind me of a kind of weighted yoga. So in that sense, I can understand what the coach was trying to get at. But if that was the goal, I’d still rather implement them as lighter low-rep work at the start of a session instead of a high-rep kinda-sorta cardio/kinda-sorta yoga hybrid.
With all due respect, you need to get a life. If your existence outside the gym is “boring” simply because you’re not working out, you’re literally missing the point of being alive.
Then have the self-discipline to do full-fledged mobility work, not mobility work disguised as a dumbbell exercise. A basic full-body mobility routine that gives a little extra attention to whatever your individual problem areas are shouldn’t take much longer than the TGUs would have. You could even pare it down to only address your problem areas and get it done faster.
Mike Robertson and Joel Jamison have written pretty extensively about the benefits of low intensity “cardiac output” aerobic training for recovery, particularly for people who exhibit signs of constantly being in a sympathetic state (resting heart rate over 60 bpm, lots of muscle tone, extension-based postural distortions, shallow breathing, etc). An easy way to do this training is to get your heart rate up to 120-140 BPM for 20-60 minutes a few times per week. I imagine that the workout of light turkish getups you describe above might fit the bill for that sort of training.
Personally I perefer some incline treadmill walking, weighted sled work, or circuits of very light resistance work performed with short-ish rest intervals, but whatever floats your boat. Personally my recovery has improved since adding these kinds of “active recovery” days, despite it technically increasing the amount of work I’m doing each week. Something to consider.
A guy that recommends 100 TGU’s doesn’t qualify as a coach. He’s a quack.
Most i’ve ever done is 60, 30 on each side with a 55 lb. bell. It’s not a recovery exercise.
It takes a lot out of you.
Your shoulders will be fatigued.
You’ll have elbow and knee burns even if you wear sweats. I actually got a staph infection.
Do 15 on each side switching hands. That’s a good recovery workout. Throw 200 swings in and call it a day.