Last night I was doing TGU's (without the down) and I maxed out at 70 pounds for my right arm and 65 pounds for my left arm. When I tried 70 on my left arm I couldn't get my body up to my elbow. In other words, I failed the first movment of the exercise. In general this is the toughest part of the exercise for me. Do you experience the same thing when you do this exercise? How should I focus on doing this first movement? Should I being doing a modified sit-up? Should I lean the weight and use it to roll me up? Thank you in advance for any responses.
I don't like TGUs with a dumbbell, but when I have done them with a db, I usually kind of sat up a little bit, slid my ass towards my head a little bit and went on to my side (the opposite side of the hand you're holding with) and got up from there. Nuge, if you can, do it with a sandbag, or I bet even a heavy bag would work OK. It is infinitely better. I found the limiting factor with the DB to be the fact that my arm tires out from holding the weight up. The sandbag really hits the core much more.
Roll to your elbow... it really shouldn't be like a sit-up. I think you are supposed to keep the weight completely straight up so I don't think you are supposed to lean the weight to help you get up.
I mostly do them with a sandbag too, and not often heavy. One technique problem I noticed I had was when going left-side, I somehow still tended to kick my right leg to get the momentum off the ground. This, of course, is wrong.
Lay on your back, press the dumbell up over your chest. Lean forward and up as if you were going to sit up, the entire time keeping the DB completely over the center of your body, this is the tricky part and what makes the movement so fucking glorious. Put your opposite hand on the floor as you come up and use it for leverage and to get your lower half under your upper while keeping the DB centered and above you. Now stand up. Now get back down doing the exact opposite as above. Thats a turkish getup, how you get it done is up to you and is fine as long as you get there. KB specialist guys have different sets of specific techniques for doing it, etc etc. It's just a "getup" if you do it another way, like with sandbags and whatnot, which are also awesome and are more core-centric. The DB/KB turkish getup is better for overall stability.
I don't see how it can be since the third movement involves making your shoulders perpendicular to the floor.
So if its different how would I go about doing a TGU with a sandbag as opposed to a dumbell sorry if my questions seem dumb.
Yeah with a sandbag you just do a getup with it shouldered. You could grab it and press it up and get up if you have a monsterous grip, which would be badass, but good luck putting ~100lbs of sand (or more) up with one hand and getting up with it... You could do it with smaller sandbags I guess, ~50lbs or so, which would still be hard as hell and murder on the grip... Now that I'm thinking about it, this is something that might be worth trying...
I always felt the sandbag required much more stabilization and core involvement. The sandbag you have to really do a sit up with initially to get yourself off the floor which makes it harder.
In a TGU do you stil hold the dumbell above your head and outstretched when you go down to the floor from standing position? or is it only out in front of you/ above your head on the up portion?
As you press the weight up don't take a break at extension, keep moving up. If you stop at extension, then you stop the momentum. Doing the downward portion of the movement would cure this problem.
