Swiss Ball Get-Ups With Barbell, Dumbells & Kettlebells

You may have heard of an exercise knows as the Turkish Get-Up. It's a simple exercise. Basically, you start from lying on the floor and holding a dumbell up at arms length. Now, keeping that dumbell at arms length, you get up to a standing position.

This is a great exercise for developing real-world strength. If you can get up holding that dumbell up, you develop great core strength.

This exercise is very similar in concept but instead of starting lying on the floor, you instead start lying on a Swiss Ball.

I've found this version of the exercise to more strongly target the abs while not being quite as difficult to master in terms of technique. It's a tough one but an excellent one for developing that real-world strength I mentioned above.

So first, get a Swiss ball and a fairly light dumbell - you don't need much for this one. Lie back on the ball and hold the one dumbell at arms-length directly up. Your feet should be fairly wide apart, knees very bent (you'll see why in a second).

Now crunch forward, keeping the dumbell at arms-length.

Now you see why your knees were bent! Because you need them bent to move to the bottom squat position to begin standing up. Bring your other arm forward for counterbalance and keep that dumbell directly overhead at arms-length.

Now stand all the way up!

Now you're going to start sitting back down on the ball. If the ball moved at all, use your free hand to feel for where it is and help roll it back into position.

Once you're seated, get yourself back into the bottom of the crunch position.

That's it! You've done one rep. And you've kept that arm straight the whole time! Once your shoulder gets tired on that side (or your core on that side is fatigued), switch the dumbell to the other hand and go again. I'll include more pics below.

There are two other variations of this exercise you can do. One is with your arm bent in the top dumbell curl position, making it into a curl squat get-up. The other is to use a kettlebell instead of a dumbell.

I'll demonstrate both of those in another video and with more pics below.

Note, when I'm using the kettlebell, instead of letting the bell part hang down, I'm actually balancing the bell part up - it's not necessary to do this, you can let it hang down...I just wanted the challenge!