Can You Build Muscle With a TRX? Suspension Training Debunked

The greatest thing I ever learned about lean muscle building was, “Your muscle doesn’t know where you are or what you’re holding. All it knows is the tension you can place upon through a range of motion.”

So, can you build muscle using only a TRX suspension trainer?

Lockdown exploded this topic. I began to receive a lot of questions on it. So I decided to answer it from my own personal perspective. And from a fitness coaching perspective.

Away we go…

Advantages And Disadvantages of TRX

A TRX is just a tool. Like a dumbbell or a gym machine is a tool. It’s possible to create the same amount of tension and load on your muscles with gravity and a TRX. The difference that leads to the results though, is your mindset and technique.

Don’t have time to read the post in full? Then watch the video below to learn if you can build muscle with a TRX…

The biggest reason people struggle to build lean muscle with a TRX Suspension Trainer. Is because they pick it up and mindlessly move. Jumping around here, there, and everywhere.

That’s fine if you want to work up a little sweat, but it’s useless for building lean muscle. Because your body weight load is shared. So no single muscle takes enough of your body weight load to cause a muscle-building stimulus.

Known as ‘movement-centric’ technique. This technique is a disadvantage if you want to build lean muscle and transform your body.

Isolated Exercise Movement With a TRX Training

To take advantage of a TRX suspension trainer for body transformation. It’s important to NOT move when you’re using it. Sounds backwards right.

Instead, think about the exact muscle you want to target and focus on squeezing that muscle powerfully to cause movement. Locking the rest of your body in stone. Known as ‘muscle-centric’ technique.

Then you can be assured that the muscle you want to develop is taking the majority of your body weight load. Which leads to a muscle growth stimulus…

TRX Transformation

Over the years I studied ferociously from people like Ben Pulaski, who I think is incredible. He’s a bodybuilder turned yogi. To build muscle successfully he talks about how you need to target and isolate muscles with intention.

I studied how he trained as a professional bodybuilder with weights. His technique, his form, everything. I even did a mentorship with him. I would think to myself, “How can I apply those same bodybuilding principles to work with a TRX for a body transformation?”

Building Muscle With a TRX

When you isolate individual muscles, you place the majority of your body weight load onto them. This creates a BIG muscle growth stimulus. Because it breaks down your muscles more efficiently.

I call this ‘Muscle-Centric TRX Suspension Trainer Technique’.

A muscle is much weaker when it’s isolated on its own. That’s how you can use a suspension trainer and just your body weight to build muscle.

The BIG TRX transformation possibilities come from using it to isolate muscle areas and take each muscle through a full range of motion.

When you approach muscle building like this, you realise the tool is secondary and is only there to create tension in the muscle. That tool can be a TRX or even your bodyweight.

If you’d like to dive deep into ‘Muscle-Centric TRX Technique’ and how to do it, checkout this article here – How to ACTUALLY Build Muscle With a TRX (Based on Science)

The Game-Changer

When I’m backpacking on a beach in Mexico or in the middle of a mountain range in Patagonia. I haven’t got weights that I can add to a bar to create a load. I’ve only got my body weight and the TRX.

So I look at how I can position myself to isolate and contract individual muscles powerfully. How to place them under different tensions using multiple angles while holding the TRX.

It makes me slow down and focus on controlled form and technique. I internalise my focus onto the single muscle I am targeting.

Opposite Of My ‘Gym Ego’ Days

I spent a lot of my 20s life living inside a gym. I believed I had to be in one all the time to build muscle and transform my body. It turned into an unhealthy psychological reliance on gyms. I couldn’t go anywhere or be anywhere that wasn’t near a gym.

My only focus was: I want to lift that heavy weight because to look strong. My ego led me. My only rational thought of progression was to add more weight. For that reason, I was always getting injured.

I got distracted by the gym environment too. My focus was always external. Not internal on my body. How it feels and moves, connecting with it to ensure perfect form.

It wasn’t until I was in my own space doing my own TRX thing away from the gym, that my physique and mindset changed. Because my focus didn’t drift. It became solely on me and ‘muscle-centric’ technique.

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TRX Exercises

A TRX works with your body biomechanics when you exercise. You don’t need to conform to it like a gym machine. It will match your body size and natural movement capabilities.

This is where you can get creative with how you target your muscles in a way that suits your mobility. We all have different ranges of motion. Some greater, some shorter.

As an example. You may struggle to fully extend your arm doing a TRX Bicep Curl exercise. Perhaps due to tennis elbow or an overuse elbow injury. So how do you target the the lower part of your biceps? Otherwise known as the lower end of the muscle strength curve…

Creative Exercise

Well, you can stand side-on to the TRX hanging origin and do a one-arm curl keeping your elbow parallel to the floor. This removes the load from your elbow joint and helps to focus it solely on your bicep muscles. Then, you can fully extend your bicep muscle!

You can focus on stretching it, curling right up, and twisting your wrist to hit the bicep peak.

So there are multiple ways to emulate exercise with a TRX that’s safer and more comfortable for your body. It’s about getting creative and thinking, “How can I effectively work this muscle through a full range of motion that feels safe and comfortable?”

TRX Exercise With Mind-Muscle Connection

I believe a little-known benefit to TRX training is being able to do it in your own space and in your own time. You’re not going to have someone ask you, “Can I use that bench?” or “Are you finished with that weight?”

These moments can be distracting and frustrating and pull you out of focus. There are times when I’m training with a TRX, that I actually close my eyes.

I’ll be working through a set and then I’ll close my eyes and go into this almost meditative state. I feel my muscles working. I can visualise and see in my mind how my muscles are lengthening and contracting as I’m using the TRX to exercise.

That’s the mind-muscle connection.

Mental Well-Being Exercise

Placing your mind inside your muscles to work them harder for more effective growth. Holding that one focus for an extended period of time is a form of meditation.

Your mind doesn’t stray to anything else other than your body. Or if it does, you can practice bringing it back to your body. Practising to let go of intrusive thoughts. This is using your body to master your mind.

A double whammy of strengthening your body while calming your mind. It feels awesome. I finish a workout and think, “Well, I don’t know where I’ve been for the last 40 minutes, but I’ve got one hell of a pump and yeah… My mind is clear!“

Arnold Schwarzenegger Embraced This

Arnie would talk about the mind-muscle connection and visualising your muscle’s work and grow. He talked about it as a state of meditation. But what you don’t hear him talk about is that when he was in the gyms, they were dead, they were really quiet.

The only guys that really went into the gyms were proper bodybuilders. It was their era that exploded it and everyone started going into gyms. Everyone started to try and bodybuild so it got much harder to internally focus, to meditate in workouts.

It’s just the same as when you study, in my opinion. If you’re studying you need quietness as you need to focus. The same can be said for building healthy, lean and functional muscle.

You need to focus your mind on how the muscle feels when it contracts and moves.

TRX Workouts & Variation

There’s this awesome thing with TRX workouts, whereby every time you stand to do an exercise. There is a slight variation between the strap length and your stance:

1. The slight intensity variation from moving your feet elicits a different angle of movement on the muscle.
2. Combined with the different strap lengths.

You’ll never quite get it bang on as the last time you did the exercise. So you’ve got an unintentional variation. You’re constantly incorporating a tiny difference of intensity variation on the muscle.

Constantly keeping it challenged without having to think about it. Granted it’s small, but compounded over time, it makes a big difference. That’s why I believe the body shape and functional strength you can achieve with TRX workouts are unique to other conventional fitness methods.

Training Weak Points

I’ve been training with a TRX all over the world as I write this (2019). It could be argued that I’ve managed to maintain my muscle. However, I beleive I’ve added more lean muscle because I can see differences in my physique.

I approach building muscle with a TRX suspension trainer and the Programs I create for it, with a bodybuilding mind frame and strategy.

I ask myself, “Where are my weak points? How can I use a TRX to target just that specific muscle weak point? Like the outer quad. Or how can I target just the bicep peak, the upper end of the strength curve on the bicep?

I love dissecting the body and looking at ways to enhance it with TRX suspension training. I’d advise you to do the same. Get creative and have fun with it.

Can You Build Muscle With a TRX For Beginners?

Yes, you can! I hope my passionate ramble has persuaded you. I’m not a bodybuilder and by no means a stage athlete. But I am a fitness coach who spent a long time in the gym world.

I’ve seen first-hand the need for a more accessible way to build muscle and transform your body from home. For me, and thousands of my clients, that accessibility comes in the form of TRX exercise and effective ‘muscle-centric technique.’

I have a huge passion for being able to exercise and achieve my own fitness goals anywhere. But a bigger passion for helping others like you do the same. So you never need to rely on a gym, ‘diet fads,’ or anyone else’s schedule ever again.

I call it Fitness Freedom.

Your TRX Guru,
Coach Adam
Body Transformation Coach