TRX Suspension Trainer Course Experience

This past Sunday I attended an all-day TRX Suspension Trainer Course hosted by Quest Fitness in Guilford, Connecticut. Anytime Fitness has three TRX trainers in its small group exercise room, and I wanted to be proficient with this piece of equipment before attempting to use it on my clients. The course was great. There is always more to explore in this world of fitness, and I love learning about it all! For those who are not familiar with the TRX, I thought I would provide a bit of background information about it.

What is TRX suspension training?

The TRX is a piece of functional training equipment made of two nylon straps with handles that typically hang from one anchor point that is set roughly nine feet off the ground. Randy Hendrick, a former Navy Seal and founder of TRX, developed this trainer as a way to maintain his level of fitness with limited training space and minimal equipment while on duty abroad. The TRX trainer allows you to manipulate your own body weight to perform dozens and dozens of lower body, upper body, abdominal, core, and flexibility exercises. The beauty of the TRX lies in the fact that it can be attached to a door, a tree, a pole, and in a gym setting. This means you can workout anytime and anywhere!

How does suspension training exercise work?

When the body hangs from an anchor point, the body will automatically seek to move in the direction of gravity. For example, if you’re hanging from a pull up bar with two hands, your body naturally wants to move towards the ground. The TRX utilizes gravity to manipulate your body weight during various exercises, truly forcing you to engage your core and use all recruitment muscles possible throughout your workout. Your core is engaged during every TRX exercise due to the instability of the trainer. It adds an amazing challenge to your workouts.

Who can use the TRX trainer?

The TRX trainer is truly adaptable to all fitness levels. Honestly, I think there is no better tool out there to help seriously deconditioned athletes learn to squat, lunge, and engage their muscles. The TRX can help provide stability for these really basic exercises. In turn, based on manipulation of body angles and the positioning of the straps, the TRX can be used for the most elite athletes. It is extremely popular in NBA (see Kevin Durant below), NFL (see Drew Brees below), MLB, and NHL circles, and is certainly seen in many high-level college strength and conditioning programs. It is a single piece of equipment useful for all ages and fitness levels both male and female.

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How do I plan to incorporate TRX into my training?

A TRX is my only birthday gift request from my boyfriend, so hopefully in a few weeks I will have one on my doorstep! I have an insanely weak core. I do not like to do core work, and I never have. I’m hoping to use the TRX to improve my own core strength, as well as my body weight strength and conditioning. The TRX would be awesome for super sets as well, since it is extremely easy to transition between exercises. I’ll have to share my workouts with the TRX on the blog when I begin to incorporate it! I also really want to use this with my parents. I think it will be a great tool to help them get in better shape, and improve their strength and mobility.

I thought I would share some highlights from my training course! Here is a picture of Quest Fitness. It was seriously like a TRX playground. The facility had a ton of other equipment as well. You can see some battle ropes in the picture below, but there were kettlebells, Rip trainers, sandbags, dumbbells, and plyo boxes. All that good stuff!

We spent most of the morning on the TRX learning about set up, anchoring, and those dozens and dozens of exercises I mentioned earlier. Our instructor broke up the morning with learning sections on the lower body, upper body, core, and flexibility exercises. The best part was reviewing all the progressions. I was really able to see how incredibly versatile this tool is for all fitness levels.

Our instructor was fantastic! He has been a master trainer for three years now, and travels the area to lead TRX courses. He shared his own personal experience about his first encounter with TRX. After a particular period of burn out with his workouts, he opted to train solely with the TRX for ten weeks. He gave up all his heavy resistance training. He said that after ten weeks he was stronger than ever, and every single one of his lifts went up! While I am sure this would not be the case for everyone, it was still a unique story to hear.

Taking video during the training was actually encouraged since some of the exercises our instructor showed us were not in the training manual. Here is a video of my instructor showing how to progress a very basic TRX squat to a jump squat.
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I took another video of my instructor demonstrating a great core progression sequence. I know the lighting is a bit off with these videos, but hopefully you can still get a good visual of what he is demonstrating!

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The afternoon was then spent on programming. That part was very fun, since as you all know, I love to program. My group was given the task of creating a workout program for a 40-year old woman named Lois Lane who worked out three times per week and played lots of tennis. We had to come up with seven exercises that might be useful for her. My group came up with a push/pull/rotational exercise circuit. Then, we had to present it to the rest of the groups and demonstrate all the moves and cuing. Two people in our group did not like speaking in public, so I explained the first half of our workout and another trainer in our group explained the second half. I loved this part of the day! It made the afternoon fly by.

I am pumped to play around with the TRX more, and continue to expand my knowledge. This will be a great tool for me both personally and professionally going forward! It was a loooong day, but I am happy to say I am now a qualified TRX Level 1 Trainer.

Be Flexible

I’ve touched on the topic of being flexible with your workout schedule a few times on the blog before, but I thought it was worth writing about once again. If you have looked at the home page of my blog, you’ll see that I have a section called “This Week’s Workouts.” I love to plan my workouts for the week on Sunday, and this section of the blog reflects a plan for what I hope to do in the coming week. I would say that I follow that plan to a tee maybe once every four weeks. Very rarely do I do exactly what I have written out, and that is perfectly okay. 

For example, here is “This Week’s Workouts” from this past week:

This is what I actually did this past week:

M: Rest Day
T: CrossFit
W: Rest Day
Th: CrossFit + Hour-long Yoga class
F: 30 minutes elliptical intervals, Tabata Planks
Sa: Strength and Conditioning Workout
Su: Rest Day (TRX Certification!)

As you can see, I only worked out four days this past week. Typically, I will outline five to six days of working out, and will only manage four to five days depending on my schedule or how I felt. On Monday, for instance, I was supposed to go to CrossFit, but I had a headache so I opted to not go. On Wednesday I was traveling for work, and I could have forced myself to wake up early to fit in a workout but I hate working out in the morning and opted to sleep in. I never ever beat myself up over missing a workout, simply because I never worry that I won’t work out the next day. 

It’s important to note that the four days I did work out were awesome, quality workouts. Quality over quantity always wins out in the end. I am left sore after almost every single CrossFit WOD. My glutes right now, for example, are super sore from lots and lots of pistols! Six days a week of the intense workouts that I do, I believe, would be overtraining for me. Again, I hope this is proof to you that there is no reason to overexercise, workout more than one hour in a day, or get down on yourself for skipping a planned workout. Go into a week knowing that your schedule will change and things will pop up! That is okay. Just get back to it the next day.

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Time to review the workouts I did do this week!

Tuesday: This class featured the longest WOD I have ever done at CrossFit. Twenty-five minutes! Not to mention that we did snatch grip deadlifts to start off class. Blech. The snatch grip and I do not get along.

I only used 75 pounds for the deadlifts, which I would consider a lighter weight for normal deadlifts. The snatch grip makes everything harder. For the WOD, I used a 14 pound med ball and completed five total rounds plus ten push ups, fifteen box jumps, ten wall ball sit ups, and four wall balls. During this WOD, I kept thinking, “How the hell did I make it through 13.3???”. Yes, I still hate wall balls with all my heart.

Thursday: This class killed my upper body. It started off with 40 strict pull ups for the strength portion, and a WOD that had an incredible amount of pushing movements. By the end of the first eight-minute AMRAP, my arms felt like jelly. I was consistent between the two AMRAPs though, and finished exactly three rounds plus four reps in each.

I also stayed after class to try yoga at Bell City CrossFit. My box recently started offering yoga a few times a week to supplement CrossFit, which I think is a fantastic idea. I was really happy to see that some of the guys at my box have really been enjoying adding yoga to their workout routine. For me personally, it was not as intense as my 90-minute power yoga classes in a 95-degree heated room that I take at West Hartford Yoga, but it was still a quality class. The instructor, Carol, was great! I may not be the strongest or the most aerobically fit at CrossFit, but I think I could vie for the most flexible title! It was pretty fun to do something other than CrossFit with all the typical people I WOD with too.

Friday: After teaching my boot camp class at Anytime Fitness, I hopped on the elliptical for a quick and sweaty thirty-minute interval session. After a five-minute warm up, I spent twenty minutes going all out on the elliptical for 30 seconds and then slowing my pace for a minute. I repeated that cycle for twenty minutes, and finished with a five-minute cool down. I closed off the whole workout with Tabata Planks (20 seconds in plank, 10 seconds rest, repeat 8 times.)

Saturday: Since I had only done cardio on Friday, I opted for a full-body strength and conditioning workout on Saturday. I used a workout from myomytv.com as my template. I love Marianne’s workouts! I’ve included a write up of the workout I did below, since I did tweak some of the moves and reps in the strength portion due to my insanely sore glutes.

Strength: Complete three rounds of the following exercises. Rest when necessary.

     1) Goblet Squat – 25 lb KB, 10 reps
     2) Deadlift –  75 lbs, 10 reps
     3) Push Ups – 10 reps
     4) Pull Ups – 5 reps –> TRX Inverted Row – 10 reps

*I did my first round with neutral grip pull ups and chin ups, but had to transition to inverted rows on the TRX by the second round.

Conditioning: Time to pick up the pace! Set your Gymboss Interval Timer for 18 cycles of 15 seconds rest and 45 seconds effort. Complete three rounds of the following six exercises:

1) Two-Handed KB Swing – 35 lb KB
2) Burpee
3) Vertical Pull Burpee – 25 lb KB
4) Dynamic Squat 
5) Push Press (R) – 25 lb KB
6) Push Press (L) – 25 lb KB

Holy. Crap. That’s all I have to say about this workout. Nothing like an 18 minute workout to completely humble you and kick your butt. 

Boot Camp at Anytime Fitness

Yesterday, I led my first boot camp class at Anytime Fitness. It was so much fun! Classes are limited to eight people maximum because the small group exercise room is designed solely for small group training. I was happy to see that five spots had been filled. It was the perfect amount for this boot camp!

The purpose of this class was to be a free introductory class. These free classes are a great offering, because it gives people a chance to sample what they may want to sign up for going forward. I designed the class to be based around circuit training. For an all levels class, I find circuits that are time-based to be the best option. This allows people to move at their own pace. Rep-based workouts may make some members of the class feel a little self-conscious, particularly if they fall far behind the leader. Until I get a better grasp on the skill level of the members at the gym, circuits are the safe bet.

I started off class with a five to ten minute warm up. We began with twenty seconds each of jogging in place, high knees, butt kicks, jumping jacks, air squats, and reverse lunges. We repeated this cycle twice for a total of four minutes. Then, I had the group spread out along the side wall of the exercise room and do some forward and backwards running, side shuffles, karaokes, Frankensteins, and low lunges across the length of the room. We circled back up again to do some arm circles, arm swings, and shoulder rolls. Then the circuits began!

I created three circuits with five exercises in each with the intention of repeating each circuit two times. With 45 seconds of work and 15 seconds to transition/rest, each circuit repeated twice would total ten minutes. All of the circuits together would be 30 minutes.

Circuit #1:
1) Squats (with dumbbells)
2) In and Out Jumps (on a step)
3) Walking Lunges (with dumbbells)
4) Toe Taps (on a step)
5) Glute Bridges (with dumbbells)

Circuit #2:
1) Push Ups
2) Burpees
3) Tricep Dips (on a step)
4) Mountain Climbers
5) Shoulder Press (with dumbbells)

Circuit #3:
1) Squat Jumps
2) Bent Over Row (with dumbbells)
3) Jumping Lunges
4) Inchworm with Push Up
5) Shuttle Runs

Circuit 1 is heavy on lower body work, Circuit 2 concentrates more on upper body work, and Circuit 3 was a nice mixed bag! My intention with this boot camp was to use a lot of basic strength and boot camp cardio moves to give people an introduction to what they might see in the future. The only equipment I used were dumbbells and a step. A lot of these moves are body weight exercises. Eventually, I will incorporate the TRX, stability balls, medicine balls, or kettlebells into my boot camps.

For day one, I thought this would be a good start, and it turned out to be the right decision. My five participants were a bit older and limited in range of motion, so I had to significantly modify a lot of the moves and spend a good deal of time teaching. Nevertheless, they all put in a ton of effort and they all said they really enjoyed themselves and got a kick-butt workout! We closed the workout with five minutes of abs, and five minutes of stretching to reach one hour. 

Sometimes during the workout my boot campers would get down on themselves for not being able to do a certain movement, or because the class was super hard at certain points. I kept telling them to keep moving no matter what. It does not matter if you slow to a march to take a breather. If you’re keeping that heart rate up, and don’t give up, that is what’s most important. Reason to be fit: progress not perfection!

I really did have an awesome time. Teaching feels very natural to me, and I can’t wait to do it again!