Welcome to Goalie Training Pro TV, episode 38. We’re talking TRX training for goalies. One of you even asked, “Hey is the TRX good for goalies?” Yes, is the simple answer.
Check out this episode on YouTube at https://youtu.be/RempJBKKlq4
I like it because you can use it for strength and for stability (those two kind of go hand in hand). You can even use it for mobility. It’s pretty simple. It’s somewhat portable as long as you have a place to anchor it. So it’s good.
Is it something super special or a secret sauce?
Nope. It’s just another tool like dumbbells, or kettlebells, or a medicine ball, or a stability ball. It’s just another tool that we can use. But let me kind of walk you through it.
One of the things I like about it from a strength perspective is that it kind of requires some stability as you’re doing your exercises. For example, if I’m doing a pushup on the floor, I don’t have to stabilize my arms because they’re fixed to the floor, so I just have to do the push-up motion.
When I do a push-up with the TRX, well now your arms can move wherever. Actually, when you do it, you’ll notice and you’ll feel like, “Okay my right arm …” I’m right handed, “My right arm feels pretty smooth. My left kind of shakes around a little bit.”
That’s one of the things I like about it is, you have to stabilize. A lot of times it’s just your stability that will limit the amount of load you can use.
Then really simply, too, if you’re not great at pushups, you’re like, “Oh God the last thing I want is push-ups. I’m terrible at them.” Well if I just come forward a little bit, at more of an angle, well now those are really, really easy. Then as I get stronger I can move back, back, back ’till I’m right down at the floor. That’s a nice way to do it.
I can also add in some nice progressions. So I can make my push-ups a little heavier. I can do a push-up with one hand and a reach out with the other, so that challenges the stability in my torso a little bit more. Also, you can do a push-up and stabilize where you have one hand holding the TRX and you pop right up and stabilize yourself up there.
So it’s really nice and easy to progress. You have to have that stability to make it work, plus just kind of like regular push-ups too, although a little more so, my torso has to stabilize. I can’t be sagging. Whereas when you see people do push-ups from the floor, sometimes they’re kind of doing the worm. If I’m doing a push-up with the TRX, it’s pretty obvious if I’m doing the worm.
So I have to keep my torso nice and stable.
If we’re talking about leg exercises, one that is pretty common that we use is just a rear foot elevated split squat. Or almost like a reverse lunge with one foot in the TRX handle. It’s just nice ’cause it kind of just floats there behind me.
One of the issues with that one is, especially when people are using a little bit heavier loads, it’s hard to hold the dumbbells and then feed your toe in through there. It can be a little bit awkward when you’re using heavier loads.
Another one that we use with the goalies, is just a nice squat lateral. So again, we can hold dumbbells and your leg just floats out to the side.
I also like using it for mobility. You can do sort of a nice assisted splits. You put your front leg in the handle then stretch out. I can hold on and control how much stretch is in there just by using my arms. I can go frontwards and side splits.
And then another thing is rowing.
So again, these are big compound exercises, but you can do just a nice bi-lateral row. You can do a single arm row, staying nice and square. You can do a row and rotation, so you get a little bit of rotary stabilization.
There are tons of exercises that you can do for strength.
For mobility, we’ll work on … I mentioned the splits. I can work on my T-spine mobility. I’m rotating up with one hand, I’m reaching with the other hand. I’m keeping my hips nice and neutral.
You can even do your kneeling lat stretch with the TRX. Get a nice stretch through your shoulders.
There’s a million things that you can do, so resist the temptation to email me and be like, “I like to do this. I like to do this one.” ‘Cause yeah, there’s tons of things that you can do. I’m just kind of giving you an idea of some the things we use.
So, it’s a tool for the toolbox. It has it’s benefits. I think the big benefit is that it requires stability with your strength, so I really like that. ‘Cause I love exercises that are sort of self-limiting.
For example, leg press. You can leg press a lot of weight with crappy, terrible form. With this, if you don’t have the stability, you’re just not gonna be able to get the rep. So I like it for that reason.
Is it magic? Is it the best thing? No. It’s just another ingredient.
It’s like trying to argue that one ingredient in spaghetti sauce is the best ingredient. Well no, it’s just there’s lot of ingredients and when you put them together in the right way, it makes something really, really delicious.
It’s not the be all and end all.
If I had money, if I had no equipment and limited space, I would spend my money first on a set of nice resistance bands with handles that I could interchange because then I can generate some power, and do different planes of motion, and increase resistances. So that’s where I would spend my money first.
Second thing I might buy would maybe be dumbbells. But then maybe a TRX would fit in there; or a medicine ball, and then a TRX; or a TRX, then a medicine ball. So it’s sort of somewhere in that plane.
I also want to let you know that there’s two different kinds of TRX. So there is one kind that hang parallel, so there’s two anchor points for them. The benefit of these is if you adjust them to be higher in the air, then you can do full pull-ups and things like that. That gives you that benefit. Or you can come up and do a dip or something like that.
The other version, that’s sort of the more common version, has one anchor point. So it has one common anchor point and two straps that come off of that.
You couldn’t do a pull up with these ’cause you’d be sandwiched in the middle. But one of the nice things about that style is I can go on any angle and I’m fine. With the others, I can’t go over to the side ’cause now I’ve got one arm that’s really long and one arm that’s short. You have to kind of be somewhat straight. So you have to kind of stay centred in the middle.
Again, unless I really want to be doing pull-ups or use them a little bit as rings, I would probably buy the original style version with one anchor point.
So yeah… If you really like the idea of TRX, you don’t have space to have dumbbells, then yeah, I think it’s a good tool.
That’s all.
This is Maria from Goalie Training Pro TV. Thanks for the suggestion. Thanks for the idea. That’s a perfect way to help me deliver exactly what you guys want to learn about, and I will catch you next time. See ya!
