Suspension training looks a lot more daunting than it actually is. If performed correctly, it can actually improve your workout.
Part of what makes suspension training so daunting is the TRX system, which stands for ‘total body resistance exercise’. This equipment uses to use gravity as resistance to your body weight.
How does it work?
Suspension training challenges your body in unstable conditions. This forces you to consistently engage your core in order to be able to perform the exercises. In this case, gravity acts as resistance. This method helps you to build strength.
People are often wary about trying suspension training. Why add confusing equipment to normal exercises you can just do at home? Here is why:
Suitable for all levels
Whether you are just beginning to exercise or a veteran, suspension training is equally as beneficial and accessible. By simply changing your body position you can increase or decrease the intensity of the exercise. Making it suitable for anyone’s capabilities.
A fast, full-body workout
By using your body weight, TRX suspension training allows you to perform various exercises, that engage your entire body, in order to stabilise yourself. And because you are using your own body weight and one training tool, you are able to adjust your weight and position to increase the intensity of your workout and decrease the time of your exercise.
Builds a strong core
The TRX suspension trainer requires that you brace and stabilise your body with your abs, obliques and lower back. This makes leveraging your body weight as resistance easier and more effective. This constant engagement of your core strengthens it.
Strong posture
By engaging your core and relying on your arms a lot, suspension training can improve your posture. Controlling your stability and suspension with your arms works on your shoulders. Together with a strong core that supports your back and spine, strong shoulders can improve and strengthen your posture.
Strong joints
The pivoting motions that come with suspension training, along with the suspension itself, can improve the mobility of your joints. It also improves the strength of the muscles around and in your joints, which makes them more durable and increases their range of motion.
Portable
One of the concerns people have about TRX suspension training is that it’s easier to just do a simple workout from home. But what they don’t know is that the TRX suspension trainer is portable. You can hook it onto an elevated beam or door in order to use it.
Versatile
TRX suspension training also enables you to do more than 300 variations of exercises you didn’t even know could be performed in different ways. You can easily change your body’s position to change the exercise without putting yourself at too much risk.
Changeable
When you are using TRX suspension training as a way to improve a sport or specific part of your body, it is easy to change the point of instability on the trainer to focus the exercise on a specific place. When you are a tennis player, your body is moving but the ground isn’t, so the instability is coming from the top. If you are an ice hockey player, the instability is coming from the ground. You can change this point of instability by placing your hands or feet in the bars or straps.
The benefits of TRX suspension training are great! It is accessible to any calibre of trainees, the range of exercises you are able to do with it is very versatile, it is portable and it is changeable. All these things allow for a very personalised and effective workout that builds strength, flexibility and stability.
Applied to exercises
When you take normal exercises and compare them with their suspension training version, you can clearly see the strength benefits:
- Press-ups (inclined): The work your chest, triceps as well as the front of your shoulders, but the instability of holding rings forces your core muscles and your shoulders’ stabilising muscles to be fully engaged to keep your body stable. This means you’ll be able to lift heavier weights.
- Triceps dip: The instability of the rings forces you to focus on your form and slow, good-quality reps. This forces your triceps muscles to work harder and more efficiently. It also engages your abs, lower back and glutes to keep your torso upright and prevent your legs from swinging.
- Abs roll-out: Using rings recruits more muscles to keep you balanced when doing abs roll-out.
Suspension training can be just as, if not more, effective as traditional strength training. By forcing your entire body, especially your abs, to engage during the workout in order to keep you balanced and stable, suspension training helps you to build more strength.
Contact Trifocus Fitness Academy
If you want to discover more about suspension training, we recommend that you do our suspension training course. For more information, please follow this link.
