Ever since former Navy SEAL Randy Hetrick created his vision out of a jiu-jitsu belt and parachute webbing, suspension trainers like the TRX have become commonplace in gyms and homes worldwide. It’s convenience—an entire gym in a bag—arguably created the fitness phenomenon of taking your workout anywhere you go, thereby eliminating any excuses for not training.
The biggest knock against suspension training is that it will not get any stronger after a certain point because you only use body weight, leverage, and gravity. But if you use suspension training as part of your accessory routine, you can strengthen your weakness and add volume to body parts that need work.
Here are four suspension trainer exercises you should consider adding to your routine if your goal is to keep getting stronger.
Benefits of Suspension Trainer Exercises
There are some exercise equipment tools you must go to college to know how to use them. Suspension training is not one of those tools. The beauty of suspension training is that everyone can benefit from it, from beginner to advanced. Here are some benefits.
Accessible To All Fitness Levels: The beauty of suspension training is that bodyweight exercises like push-ups and rows are progressed or regressed by where you place your feet. The closer your feet are to the anchor point, the more you lift your body weight; the further away from the anchor point, the less of your body weight.
Versatile and Easily Transferable: Like many other exercise tools, suspension training is versatile, and your imagination only limits you regarding the number of exercises you can do or come up with. But with suspension trainers, you can train with your hands and feet in the straps and strengthen your body from various angles. Plus, being portable, you can set it up at home or take it outside and wrap it around a tree.
Rock Solid Core Strength: Exercise tools like barbells and exercise machines lock you into a specific range of motion, which is one reason you can lift more weight with them because you have stability. Not so with suspension training. Suspension training is inherently unstable, and each rep differs from the next. That’s why most exercises performed with a suspension trainer require you to brace and stabilize your core to leverage your body weight as resistance better.
Builds Real World Strength, and Power: With the number of exercises you can perform on a suspension trainer, many have a direct carryover with your activities of daily living—for instance, twisting, pulling (power row), and pushing ( the suspension trainer push-up). Plus, it can help you with your sport. The Journal of Education and Training Studies got 20 volunteer basketball players and separated them into control and experimental groups.The control group followed their training for six weeks, keeping track of their measurements. Then they introduced suspension training twice a week to the other group for six weeks. After six weeks, these elite-level basketball players improved their jump height, strength, and agility compared to the control group.
Great Accessory Tool: You will not build absolute strength with suspension training because adding load to some exercises is complex and may mess it up. But you can still improve your relative strength just by adjusting your intensity with the position of your feet. Performing suspension training as an accessory tool will improve core and upper back strength and strengthen imbalances if they exist.
Here are four suspension training exercises that will improve your core strength and movement to help to take your overall strength to a new level.
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Standing Hip Drop
Pallof presses variations are fantastic exercises to train your lateral core, but the standing hip drop is an excellent alternative if you want to up your core game. Standing hip drop trains your body’s entire lateral side but focuses on the external obliques, aka the love handles.
Muscles trained: Adductors, glutes, obliques, upper back, and deltoids.
How to do it.
Interlock the trainer’s handles, and stand with your left side to the anchor point.
Then, hold the handles with both hands above your head.
Your torso should lean slightly to the right in a staggered stance.
Drop your hips to the right till you feel a stretch in your lats, and pull yourself back to the starting position. Reset and repeat.
Sets and reps: 1 to 2 sets of eight to 15 reps on each side.
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Hamstring Curl
Some lifters mindlessly do their hamstring curls without a care, but you cannot do this with the suspension trainer variation. The suspension trainer hamstring curl is a bodyweight exercise made more difficult by the inherent instability. It strengthens the hamstring to stabilize and flex the knee, making it an excellent exercise for road runners because it mimics the uneven terrain runners encounter during outdoor running.
Muscles Trained: Glutes, hamstrings, and calves.
How to do it:
Place each heel in the suspension handle and lie on your back with extended legs.
Then, perform a hip extension by pushing your heels down into the straps to prevent your hips from sagging.
Perform a hamstring curl, bringing your heels toward your glutes until you feel a contraction in your hammies.
Return to the starting position and reset and repeat.
Set and reps: Two to three sets of 10 to 15 reps.
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Moving Forearm Plank
Front planks are great, but the secret sauce for planks is adding movement or instability. The suspension trainer moving forearm plank will give you both; It’s a core exercise with the lot because it will strengthen the anterior core and, with each forward reach of the forearm, will train anti-rotational strength too. Each reach will strengthen the serratus anterior, an essential muscle for shoulder mobility.
Muscles trained: Rectus abs, obliques, and lower back.
How to do it:
Place the straps around mid-length and get underneath the anchor point.
Put each forearm into the straps.
Engage your glutes and get into your elbow front plank position,
Reach forward with the right forearm, then the left forearm, and keep alternating sides. Then collapse.
Sets and reps: Two to three sets of eight to 12 reps per side.
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Power Pull
The suspension trainer power pull is an exercise unique to the suspension trainer, and it requires unilateral back strength, rotational strength, and control. Power back exercises take much work to come by, so grab hold of this with both one hand. This unique exercise takes the upper back and lats through a wider range of motion to help improve your shoulder mobility.
Muscles Trained: Forearms, biceps, deltoids, upper back, lats, and obliques.
How to do it:
Adjust the strap to mid-length and loop the handles through each other to form one handle.
Grip the handle with your right hand, have it by your torso, and extend the left arm towards the anchor point.
Lower back slowly as the right arm extends, and let your eyes follow the non-working hands as you rotate.
Pull powerfully, driving your right hand toward your right hip as your reach the left hand toward the anchor point. That is one rep.
Sets and reps: 2 to 4 sets of 10 to 15 reps on both sides early in your accessory routine.
