Foot support exercise

good effect. Through a firmly attached anchor and the equipment’s adjustable straps, we can give anybody of any fitness level a workout as challenging as they desire. The percentage of bodyweight they are moving can be easily adjusted to meet the goals and ability of the specific client. Suspension fitness principally makes free weights and resistance machines no longer pivotal in producing a challenging resistance workout as we can use what we always have – ourselves and gravity.

The benefits of suspension fitness

Why would a client decide they want to train like this?

Core stability

Core stability is widely used by trainers as a term referring to the control of the trunk and its girdles during exercise and everyday life. Many trainers will see suspension fitness as an excellent method in which to challenge these muscles of alignment and control. Clients often want to specifically target the abdominal muscles during their workouts, and suspension fitness offers a multitude of ways to do this. Many of the exercises chosen in this manual will require the connection between the upper and lower body to be sometimes strong, sometimes enduring, but always controlled.

Muscular strength and endurance

Integration and isolation

Specific regions can be targeted in an ‘isolated’ fashion if a client so wishes, but the body can also be challenged as just one unit, working from top to bottom, all in one go. The opportunity to challenge the connection from foot to hand, improving strength, endurance and range of motion, is argued by many as a highly effective way to benefit both sporting performance and everyday tasks. This type of training has been adopted by some trainers who favour what they call a ‘functional training’ approach. Many exercises in this text do require the feet to be positioned on the floor whilst working the trunk and arms in this integrated fashion. Exercises performed from standing may provide a more ‘functional’ carryover to the client’s everyday needs. This text also includes many variations of familiar floor based exercises such as press-ups and planks using the suspension fitness equipment to either change the emphasis of an exercise or simply progress/modify it. Adding to suspension fitness’ benefits is the option of challenging clients in all three planes of motion at the same time. This is attractive to many trainers who feel the need to work their clients in what has been referred to as ‘3D’, again with the thought that this is more suited to the demands of both everyday life and the sporting arena.

Flexibility

Integration and isolation As with muscular strength and endurance, flexibility exercises can challenge the body as a unit or in parts. Maintaining sufficient range of motion throughout the body can decrease the risk of ‘movement compensations’ occurring. A ‘movement compensation’ can occur if an area of the body has to increase its range of motion to make up for a ‘tight’ muscle somewhere else. These compensations to restriction are very common as one or more regions become inflexible. For example, observe how somebody with ‘tight’ hamstrings tries to touch their toes – either the upper or the lower back will need to flex much more to compensate, allowing the hands to reach for the floor. Once these patterns emerge they often remain. The inflexible regions stay inflexible and the flexible may become even looser. Suspension fitness equipment can assist by increasing the range of motion in one specific region, or allow for a lengthening to take place through a number of connected parts. We must just consider which part of the ‘chain’ needs to be lengthened to ensure that we target the correct part rather than just lengthening the already lengthened element of the body further. Both integrated and isolated approaches are included in this text.