Ciao from Sicily! It’s amazing here, great food, super hot and the beach where we’re staying probably has the best water quality I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen a lot of beaches in my time!

It’s that time of year again where everyone has put in all the effort (hopefully!) and got the beach body they wanted from all that hard work in the gym and for some, munching on things they’d never normally consider! So if you want to maintain that shape, you may want to consider doing some maintenance training while you’re away.

Anyway, the point of this blog post is to talk about the TRX training you can do on holiday. Whenever I go away on a trip, if there’s no promise of a gym, I’ll take the TRX for some body weight training as it enables you to perform a plethora of exercises you wouldn’t normally be able to do and all you need is either a branch, railing or door to attach it to.

The trouble with body weight training without any equipment is that you’ll end up over training the muscles associated with pushing… Push-ups, squats, lunges, hand stand push-ups etc. there’s no pulling except if you get under the dinner table and start doing body weight rows under it, which results in snapping the table in half and then having to tell the owner how you managed to ruin their expensive beloved table (from experience, this is not a good move!). So you can end up coming back with worse posture than when you went away and your back will be weaker than the rest.

TRX to the rescue: as you’re probably aware, the TRX is a pulley system and although they are an over priced bunch of nylon straps, they’re very useful to get a full balanced workout while you’re away in the sun having fun. From standing rows to Jack knifes, they can really make a difference.
Here you can see me giving tips to a good friend of mine Adam, on how to use the TRX to increase his power to get up quicker on his surfboard…

I still have to say though, apart from incorporating them into several key exercises within a gym environment, using a TRX for every exercise within a fully equipped gym for a training session is not the way to go. People that do this have generally bought into a fad and don’t understand how to maximise results when equipment is available!

Here’s a good circuit to get you going:

Single leg squats using the TRX as an anchor
Standing rows
Push ups with reptilian crawl
TRX Jack knifes
TRX Face pulls

Go right through for a rep range and tempo that gives you the right stimulus for your needs and repeat 5 times with a minutes rest between sets

Have a great time wherever you go this summer!

Rupert Hambly