Today I would like to talk about one of my favourite ways to exercise; especially when it comes to home and outdoor workouts: suspension training.

What is suspension training?

Suspension training, also called sling training, is a form of resistance training where you work with your own bodyweight as a resistance while doing exercises on hanging slings. Let’s have a look at the benefits this type of training can offer you:

Full body training with just one tool

Suspension training is extremely versatile, and there are exercises you can do for every muscle group. That means that you can get in a full body session at the gym very efficiently using just one piece of equipment if your usual equipment is taken or if you don’t have much time, but you can also use suspension training to get in an effective workout at home or outdoors.

Core training

Because most exercises involve hanging or pushing at an angle, suspension training requires a lot of core stabilisation. You are already working your core with most of the exercises you do, and on top of that, there are a few awesome exercises that you can do specifically for core and abs.

Outdoor- and home-use

I’ve mentioned this before, but a sling trainer is easy to transport and can be a great tool for home and outdoor workouts. For home use, just make sure to get one that can be hooked over a door. For outdoor use, just find something stable to hook the suspension trainer to and get going!

Stability training

When you are exercising with your hands or feet in the slings, you have to stabilise yourself to stay in the correct position more than if you were working on the ground, which means that the smaller stabiliser muscles that are often neglected have to work extra hard.

Easy progression and regression

When you weight train, you take more weight to make the exercise harder, or less weight to make it easier. With body weight exercises, progression or regression is not always that easy. If you think of making pull-ups easier without using the assisted pull-up machine or resistance bands, things get a bit more complicated. Sling training allows you to adapt the difficulty of exercises simply by changing your foot position in relation to the anchor point. The closer you stand to the anchor point, the easier the exercise, and the further away you stand from it, the more difficult it gets.

Would you be interested in a full body workout using suspension training?