Dumbbells Rusty? Meet TRX

When I first heard the phrase “atomic push-up” at the Sugar Bowl Academy Performance Training Center, I thought,

“No big deal.”

I was standing with a group of students during their first physical test day of the year.  They were likely thinking the same thing I was thinking,

“I can do a push-up, no matter what adjective bomb you drop in front of those two words.”

Then Douglas Brooks and Candice Brooks, world-renowned fitness trainers and Directors of Athlete Conditioning at SBA, slid their feet into the handles of the yellow and black apparatus’ hanging from the squat racks.  They moved into a plank-like push-up position, with their feet suspended in the air.  They dropped down, pushed up, and curled their knees into their chest.  Back to plank.

In a single, fluid movement of balance and strength, the atomic push-up wasn’t just a fancy way of saying push-up; it was a test only a handful of the kids would pass.

Arms trembling at three—whole bodies were dropping at ten.  Sweat covered the floor as athletes shook the dead out their muscular arms.  TRX had posted up shop; physical testing no longer meant beating the clock on the box jump.

The TRX Effect

I love TRX, and I’m sure it has a lot to do with ruining every white t-shirt I owned while working out in the Burke Mountain Academy gym back in the early 2000s, where everything you touched to get buff was rust.  Out here, it’s a problem of dust, but the fact remains the same: the world of fitness is evolving.

Natural elements will not stop the blood-pumping, heart-thumping revolution.

The TRX suspension trainer offers a challenging, full-body workout, sans rusty old dumbbells.   TRX builds strength, endurance, balance, and core.  As long as there’s an anchor—a door, a rack, a pole, even a tree—there’s a workout.

TRX sculpts the body whole, like Michelangelo.

This suspension trainer is a light and flexible world-traveler, too.  TRX flies where you fly, packing down to the size of a shoe.  (Currently, Treble Cone Race Academy, with the help of atomic push-up pros, Douglas and Candice Brooks, is TRX-ing down under and producing results in the Southern Hemisphere).

TRX is so hardcore it even has a military unit, designed by the Navy SEALS.

This lean, mean, fighting machine is all about versatility: stretch muscles you never knew existed with the TRX; drain lactic acid out of your legs after a long day on the hill; or just challenge teammates to an atomic push-up battle in the hotel lobby.

Forging It Into Your Routine

Five months after the hard-to-swallow atomic push-up introduction, the SBA Performance Training Center at noon was a single atom of power and energy: a metal frame installed by the Mountain Forge, anchoring a limb numbing TRX train track.  Ten kids pumped out atomic push-ups at once.

If you’re wondering how you can get locally suspended TRX style, the Performance Training Center by Julia Mancuso, located at the Pioneer Center in Truckee, offers introductory and advanced TRX classes.  These classes come highly recommended by the guys over at High Fives—Roy Tuscany, Steve Wallace, and Adam Baillargeon.

Or check out www.trxtraining.com to buy your own, watch videos, and read the latest updates from TRX athletes and trainers.