Cheap and effective: how to exercise on vacation
For those who, in one way or another, are accustomed to exercising regularly, skipping their favorite activities, at least for a week, becomes a strong and unpleasant test. And it’s good if we are talking about, say, joggers, because you can afford a light jog almost anywhere in the world, especially when it comes to resorts. But for those who like to work out in the gym, it is always much more difficult to find a suitable place for training. So what if you really want to study, but there is simply nowhere? One of the practical and affordable ways to avoid skipping workouts is the popular and highly effective TRX loops. Of course, in terms of the level of load, they cannot be compared with the gym and work with great weights, but they will more than help to keep yourself in shape during the vacation, and even work on the relief of the loop.
This year I went to Montenegro, a country with large mountains, endless serpentine roads, excellent sea, delicious food and an almost complete lack of fitness, at least after passing the territory not only of our resort town, but also of the nearby resorts, I never found at least one more or less normal fitness club. Now there are no barbells, then dumbbells, then a horizontal bench. I calculated that in order to assemble a normal gym, it was necessary to combine seven such “unfinished” gyms.
The loops themselves are two slings that can be adjusted in height, with two handles, one hard, the other soft. Both handles can be used in certain exercises. The only requirement for using trx is a crossbar, tall wood, horizontal bar or hook in the ceiling so that the hinges can be fixed for proper use. Ideally, it is two, two and a half meters high. A feature of working with loops is that you, in fact, do not have a stable position of the body, arms, legs, and while performing this or that exercise, you need to make maximum efforts to maintain the correct range of motion in a particular exercise. Which, in turn, significantly increases the quality of working out the muscles, because you are as concentrated as possible, and your muscles contract as much as possible, plus small stabilizing muscles are included in the work, which significantly increases the quality of the training as a whole. But you need to understand that it is precisely because of instability in many exercises that the risk of injury also increases, therefore, before you start training with loops on your own, be sure to work with a specialist working in the direction of “functional training”
1. Push-ups. An excellent exercise that qualitatively works out the pectoralis major muscles, the muscles of the shoulder girdle, triceps, and also, due to the position of the body, your rectus abdominis muscle and back muscles are additionally involved in the work, which you will inevitably have to strain in order to maintain an even body position. You need to understand that the shorter the loops, the easier it is to perform the exercise. This applies to any movement with loops.
2. Hack squats. This is a variant of squats, when a right angle is formed at the lowest point of the exercise between the lower leg and thigh, it is in this position that the gluteus maximus muscles and the muscles of the back of the thigh are worked out as much as possible.