TRX Suspension Training

Back2Sports was recently interviewed about TRX (Straits Times, 8 August 2009, 'Traveling Gym'). We basically said that it is a great way to increase the intensity of your exercises but we strongly recommend close supervision during the early stages of training.

Multi-directional Instablity

While it looks relatively easy, it can actually be much harder as you have to deal with the multi-directional instability. With gym machines like leg presses or chest presses, movement is only in a single direction. Side-to-side movement is eliminated by the machine. This is great if you want to focus on a particular muscle.

Critics of gym machines will argue that this does not mimick movements in real life. Exercises should be functional and be carried over to normal everyday life.

Take for example a bench press using free weights compared to a machine bench press. You will find it much harder to press the same amount of weight using the free weights. One reason is that you will expend more effort to hold the free weights steady; stopping the weight from moving side-to-side. This requires the smaller surrounding muscles to work harder. On the machine bench press, this recruitments of the smaller supporting (stabilizing) muscles is eliminated. With this concept in mind, it is much harder using two dumb-bells on each hand than it is using one long bar-bell on both hands.

Incidently, this is the reason why, when recovering from knee surgery like ACL reconstruction, your physiotherapist will only use close-kinetic chain exercises. This is to minimise the amount of side-to-side movement that add stress to your recovering joints.

Close Supervision

During the initial stages of training many things can go wrong. But not in the sense you might think. While the exercises appear easy enough to copy and do, doing them right with the correct set of muscles is a lot harder. Using the wrong set of muscles can lead to you learning the wrong movement patterns or worse, injuring yourself by over-straining other muscles.

If you are tired of your old training routine, the TRX can be a fun and novel way to train. Just remember to learn to do it right.

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