TRX Suspension Training
NAVY Seals are legendary for their tiptop physical condition, but have you ever wondered how they stay fighting fit out in the field?
Aaron Baldwin, 43, who retired in December as a master chief in the Seals, used to make barbells out of nothing more than plastic milk jugs, fresh concrete and a sturdy tree branch.
“We’d make one weight and use it until we had to move and start over,” Mr. Baldwin said.
Things changed in 2002, when a Navy Seal turned entrepreneur sent Mr. Baldwin a test model of the TRX system, a suspension gadget made of a pair of straps with handles joined by a metal clasp ring. To set it up, he only had to wrap the straps around a freestanding pole or over a thick branch. Strength training became as simple as placing his feet in stirrups to suspend them off the ground, then performing dozens of exercises like knee tucks or pushups.
After 45 minutes of so-called suspension training, Mr. Baldwin exhausted his body from shoulders to calves using just the 77kg of his weight.
In the last year suspension training has arrived at CBD Health Spa with TRX. They have attracted the attention of personal clients and members as strengthening tools that also improve balance and flexibility. Suspension workouts consist of either hanging the legs or leaning back while gripping the straps and then performing a variety of moves.
The beauty of suspension training, its advocates say, is that you can’t help engaging your core to steady yourself.
Group classes for suspension devotees will begin soon.
“It’s like yoga on ropes because it takes a lot of balance,” said Mark , 32, a public relations executive, who has been doing TRX sessions with his trainer for three months. “The TRX works every part of your body in 30 minutes, especially your core. It’s the quickest way to get a cardio and muscle workout in less than an hour. I sweat as much with a TRX training session as I do in spin class.”
The TRX session — which involves lunges, chest presses and one-legged squats — is so challenging paced that some say it amounts to a cardiovascular workout.
Suspension training is growing partly because some trainers and clients are bored with the ubiquitous balance equipment like stability balls. Interest in suspension straps is also high because a theory called functional training has been making slow but steady inroads in the fitness industry. It advocates strengthening muscles synergistically, rather than in isolation.
“With so much emphasis put on core and functional training, the timing is right” for suspension training, said Kathie Davis, the executive director of IDEA Health and Fitness Association. “It has staying power because it has good education and programming behind it. Usually the trends that come and go are the ones that don’t have good educators putting together interesting programs to go with the equipment.”
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Advocates of suspension training also say that adjusting body position can make movements easier. For example, standing at 90 degrees and holding TRX straps keeps upper-body exercises manageable.
Mr. Baldwin, who spent five years in the service teaching recruits conditioning and combat skills, said, “It’s easy to do a pushup with your hands against a wall, and it’s a lot harder to do one on the ground.” Suspension training, he added, “allows you to do exercises at every angle between the two.”
In a decade of working with Michael Carson, a personal trainer, Jennifer has tried dozens of new things like stability balls and resistance cords. But Ms. Roth, 42, a carpet designer, said she likes the suspension strap best. “There’s always something new and more advanced you can bring to it, whether that is trying a new move or simply making it more difficult by changing your body angle,” said Ms. Roth, a college gymnast and swimmer. She has used TRX twice a week since July and credits it for leaner muscles and increased strength in her obliques.
The two systems on the market differ in design, not least because they are products of starkly different hothouses. Mr. Hetrick was a Navy Seal squadron commander in the late 1990s, when he created the first prototype of TRX out of parachute webbing and a carabiner ring.
“We were deploying throughout Bosnia and Southeast Asia in submarines, ships, warehouses and safe houses, all of these space-constrained environments where it’s hard to do well-rounded training,” he said.
In 2005, four years after he left the service, Mr. Hetrick began marketing his product to the fitness business.
Marke, 53, an advertising executive, was intimidated when she first saw the TRX straps. “I’m not very athletic and I’m not great in various difficult yoga poses, but I feel very comfortable with this,” she said after six visits to my Personal Trainer. “It’s challenging but not too difficult, and I can always modify the straps to make them work for me.”
