I did 70 Turkish sit-ups every day for a week — here’s what happened to my abs
No, not Turkish get-ups (thankfully) — the Turkish sit-up is where it’s at when you want to torch your midsection muscles. This loaded sit-up move has a little bit of everything for me: weight, unilateral movement and a bigger challenge on the core muscles than your standard sit-up. That’s why I decided to tackle it every day for one week.
If you’re unfamiliar with Turkish sit-ups, it involves performing a sit-up with one arm extended overhead throughout the whole movement, while holding a weight in one hand.
You can use a dumbbell or one of the best kettlebells; I’d opt for a weight your weakest arm can keep stable and control overhead. I used a 10kg weight to begin with, but more on that later.
Here’s what happened when I did 70 reps daily for one week, and how my core felt afterward.
How to do Turkish sit-ups
Turkish sit-ups are the first stage of the movement pattern for Turkish get-ups, so if you want to learn how to do Turkish get-ups properly, knowing this move will help build enough core strength and shoulder stability to improve your technique from the ground up, quite literally.
- Start on your back with your knees bent and feet hip-width apart on your mat
- Place your left hand down on the mat, then grip your weight with your right hand and extend your arm with the bell directly above your shoulder
- Engage your core, press through your heels, then sit up, drawing your chest toward your thighs
- Pause in the upright position, then, with control, slowly lower your back onto the mat
- Keep the weight stacked overhead at all times and hug your arm toward your ear
- Complete reps on one side, then switch arms.
You can also hold a weight in each hand to make the move harder or extend your legs in front of you.
Here’s how I found this seven-day challenge.
I went too heavy for the number of reps
It’s easy to go too heavy, and I fell victim to this mistake. I started with a 10kg weight, divided my reps into 7 sets of 10 and dropped to 8kg pretty quickly for the remainder of the challenge — after day one.
We all naturally have a weaker and more dominant side; my right arm is dominant, and my left side is weaker due to a past shoulder injury. Go with a weight that allows you to keep “proper” form on both sides — no matter the reps.
If you always train unilaterally (single-sided, exchanging between left and right), this may be less of a problem or barely noticeable at first. But if you’re programming high reps, you may fatigue quicker on one side, as I do on my left.
Unilateral strength training is a great way to strengthen up any muscular imbalances and help coordinate both sides of the body, creating more balance. That’s why sit-up variations like these are so popular. Plus, it’s way harder to stabilize a weight using one hand.
It sent my upper body into a meltdown
Shelving a weight overhead (especially a weight that’s harder to grip, like a kettlebell), challenges and improves shoulder and core stability and engages more of your upper body than regular sit-ups, including your arms, upper back and shoulders.
Your core muscles work incredibly hard to help you pull your torso upward into an upright position and control the eccentric (in this case, lowering your body to the floor) phase of the movement. You’re practicing acceleration on the way up and controlling deceleration on the way down.
Add load to an already unstable position overhead, and your core muscles have even more to do. And boy, I felt this one in my abs and shoulders for days.
I struggled to prevent the weight from swaying at times
Toward the end reps, my shoulders began fatiguing and my form took a hit. How do you know? There are signs.
You may struggle to keep the weight punched out overhead and a bend in the elbow might creep in or become more pronounced. Second, your arm might travel, which means it drives forward, backward, or outward as you move.
You’re looking to keep your biceps and ear in close contact throughout. Another clear signal that you’re lifting too heavy is if you can’t fully sit up or control your weight as you lower to the floor — you’re looking for a full range of movement.
My right side was fine, but my left arm began traveling outward during the sitting-up phase, so I took a little extra rest between reps to regroup and dive straight back in. No biggie. We all need extra rest at times.
Verdict
After 70 reps per day, I totaled a whopping 490 reps of the Turkish sit-up during this challenge.
Firstly, a fitness challenge is just that — a one-off experiment to learn what, if anything, would happen to my body during and after. And not much happened, as it turned out. Hardly surprising.
As a trainer, I highly recommend taking rest days to avoid overtraining the same muscle groups every day. In fact, here’s the number of rest days you really need in your exercise routine. Overtraining can lead to injury, and your muscles need time to rest and repair if you want them to grow, get stronger and withstand fatigue.
I regularly train at my local CrossFit, so I’m used to putting my muscles through the wringer. Weightlifting demands a strong core to lift safely, no matter your ability. That said, my core and shoulder muscles were in bits post-challenge, so I took that into consideration with my training regime.
My technique has definitely improved and I’m more efficient at the initial driving phase of the Turkish sit-up with some practice under my belt. But it’s worth noting that after just one week, I saw no physical change. In other words? Six-pack, pending (obviously!)
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