Heavy Bench Press vs. Turkish Get Ups: Which is better for boosting athletic performance?
This is a PSA mostly to the gentleman in the room. It’s going to be an uncomfortable truth… please don’t look away… but, bros, bench press isn’t everything.
How much you can bench is not an exceptional measurement of ones fitness. Contrarily, in my professional opinion, it’s actually one of the least valuable movements available to most athletes.
Is it easy to do? Yes. Earlier today I found my 1 rep max with barely having had to warm up. You literally get to lay down to do bench press.
I’m not saying that makes it easy per se, but it is one of the easier movements to perform at any age and fitness level. Think about it, the only limiting factor would be a shoulder injury that prevented horizontal pressing, which for the most part when it comes to shoulder injuries, horizontal pressing is more often than not an acceptable range of motion.
Why is the Turkish Get Up (TGU) a superior movement to measure fitness and athleticism then? Several reasons, one of which ironically does involve lying down.
TGU > BENCH PRESS: HERE’S WHY
TGU’s teach you how to get up and down from the ground. While not necessarily a huge concern for young athletes, this is an extremely valuable life skill. The mobility and coordination to do a TGU assists all other movements (spoiler alert, even the bench press) because it requires effort from every system in your body.
TGU’s bulletproof your shoulders and core. If you have tried them before, you already know that the demand on your shoulder to keep that weight safely overhead without your elbow squishing and the weight crashing down and concussing you, is significant. This stability is essential in most other movements in the weight-room and in sports, particularly the ones that require overhead movements like hitting, throwing, setting, serving, swinging, or handstand walking.
TGU’s train your Central Nervous System (CNS) to a greater degree. The more motor pathways involved in a movement, the more neurons that are required to fire. Have you ever read Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers? If not, I highly recommend. It talks about the physiological changes that occur in the human body with repetition and practice, one of which is the myelination of our nerves. Blink note: the more myelinated our nerves, the stronger our proficiency at a skill. The more stress a movement has on our CNS, the faster the nerves become myelinated.
Don’t get me wrong, I like Bench Press. It’s a great lift and serves a purpose in everyone’s training, especially if you are a competitive Power Lifter. For the vast majority of the population though, we shouldn’t be asking “Bro, how much you bench?” we should be asking the much less sexy question of, “Bro, how much do you TGU?”.
