Smart Training – The rise of fitness has been progressively growing. There have been many advances in terms of new techniques and materials. Countless devices have invent to practice and develop physical activity, and new and varied disciplines have emerged. This is due to the constant search for new stimuli and challenges that make us go further, exceed our goals, and have fun with what we like most. Sports and physical activity. In addition to that, there is also a motivation to improve our performance, improve our physical condition and feel better about ourselves.

In this sense, we owe one of the advances that have most revolutionized the world of fitness to the Navy SEALs of the US Army, who were able to use a parachute belt to build the first TRX in history and, from there, design and create a new method called suspension training that millions of people around the world use today.

How can something so simple be so successful?

-Training systems in suspension or TRX offer a wide variety of movements and routines, almost inexhaustible, depending on our imagination and goals.
-It is a  globalized type of training and can be combined with other elements, such as elastic bands, dumbbells, and bars.
It is elementary to transport and use; we only need an external bar that serves as an anchor or a door to hold our material and about 2 square meters.
-The intensity adjustment can be progressive, and thanks to slight variations. Moreover, you can increase and decrease the difficulty of the training.

This type of routine is found within the so-called functional training and meets all the requirements for it:

1. It offers exercises designed to develop the body in all its facets. The exercises should focus on training movements and not muscles in isolation. It is useless to accumulate chained exercises to work only the pectorals, biceps, or quadriceps, one after the other, without a specific objective that should improve our physical abilities around movement.

2. Works the core in an integrated way due to the need to involve the entire central area of ​​the body in the movements. Thanks to the activation of the spinal erectors. The abdominal girdle, the lumbar region, and the gluteus, the participation of the core is very high during training with this type of system.

3. Implies and requires proprioceptive work. The proprioceptive system regulates the direction and range of movement of our limbs, trunk, and head to the environment in which we move and comprises a series of organs and receptors. In addition, proprioception is closely related to balance, coordination, and the responsiveness of the central nervous system and has a significant influence on your sports performance. Therefore, we can say that proprioception is the best source of information for reasonable neuromuscular control and better functional joint stability.

4. Multiarticular work in various planes of space.

5. Requires coordination. The skill of movement is essential in any sporting gesture and habitual activity. We do not limit ourselves to lifting a weight, but we raise our body weight with exercises that require balance, joint work of the upper and lower body, coordination, etc. The advantage of this type of routine compared to classic training lies in the use of complex movements that require the active involvement of the entire CNS (central nervous system) to carry them out.

What benefits am I going to get by Smart training like this?

1. It favors the increase ingeneral strength thanks to the significant influence generated around the core. Which directly affects the rest of the body’s muscles.
2. It improves our postureand helps to avoid excessive tensions in the lumbar region and the spinal erectors.
3. Helps to transmit more force to the lower and upper extremities more efficiently, something essential to increase your performance and physical capacity. This is due to the involvement of the core in most movements and exercises.
4. The significant eccentric component of this type of training ensures a greater degree of adaptations achieved by people who exercise in this way through suspension training systems.
5. It improves our agility and, therefore, our tools do it to better react to unexpected situations.
6. Deeper metabolic activation. Putting several muscle groups into operation ensures a more significant expenditure of calories per minute than other monoarticular or analytical exercises.
7. Greater neuromuscular efficiency. Thanks to the improvement of coordination and agility and the stimulation of the body-mind connection. You will be able to perform sports gestures more efficiently and with less energy expenditure.

How do we control the load and intensity of the exercises?

Manipulating the body in space requires a high control that involves the neural factor that, together with the nervous system’s involvement and stimulation, makes our training win in terms of quality and results. We need to know that force production focuses on the muscle cross-section. The corresponding joint angle of attack, limb length, and neural factors.

To modify the intensity, we must take into account a series of factors that together determine the final load of the exercise, but this implies extensive knowledge and control on the part of physical activity and sports professionals, and today the vast majority of coaches /as draw on their experience to control load through the concept of mechanical advantage.

What is a mechanical advantage, and how can I modify it?

The mechanical advantage results from dividing the force arm. For example, our peninsula, and the resistance arm, the object to be moved.
Therefore, change the body’s position by varying the center of mass and moving it away from the support point. Furthermore, this will increase the force applied on the axis of rotation. Our bodies built on levers. We can think of all troops on muscles as twisting forces on particular muscles and joint angles through those levels.
However, the muscles are strongest near the anatomical position. This position corresponds to the human figure in a bipedal place. The arms stretched along the body, with the palms of the hands shown facing forward. This position is where more contractile fibers overlap. Thus, if we lengthen or shorten the muscles and put the same load on them.  We need to use more muscle force without external limitations.

When we refer to suspension Smart training, the modifications determine by the following two aspects:

1. The body’s position concerning space (inclination): The body’s function largely determines the resistance offered by our body weight. The more parallel and away from the body’s grips, the greater the difficulty and opposition.
2. Number of supports and grips: If we subtract supports and clasps in the hands and feet. We increase the intensity of the exercise.

Moreover, the problem with this type of intensity control method is that it does not offer us objective data. However, thanks to the initiation of technology, this is no longer a problem. Today there are devices with which we can measure precisely the amount of “kg” that we are moving in each exercise. Even if they are exercises with our weight and with TRX, such as theKinvent’s Link system, which we have been able to test to create this content. As if that were not enough, this type of system also offers other exciting data:

  • Evaluation of maximum force,where a force graph tells us where the peak of our leading staff is

This assessment tests maximal strength. The maximum corresponds to 100% of the most vital abilities. It is related to a brief and robust physical effort and helpful as a work reference. The most relevant parameter measured is the peak force.

  • Execution speed evaluation. The speed of executing an exercise is a factor that is gaining more and more weight when it comes to encoding an exercise routine and when measuring our maximum capabilities, being the ideal and most effective value when determining our full strength (something that has traditionally and erroneously carry out through the 1RM test).