TO BUILD MORE FIT, DURABLE MARINES

By Andrew Vontz Photos courtesy of TRX

The Demands of Todays Operational Environment

COMBAT FIT: TRX TRAINING

The TRX Suspension Trainer is a training tool born of necessity in the field thats ideally suited to cultivating fitness for Marines anywhere they find themselves. A set of nylon straps with handles and foot cradles that weighs less than two pounds, the TRX can be used to execute hundreds of different movements that engage the whole body. The TRX can quickly be setup anywhere you find a beam, bar, door, tree limb, tactical vehicle, turrets, hesco barrier or overhead point to use the simple carabiner-based anchoring system. Its easy to take with you and use to achieve peak operational readiness wherever duty takes you. TRX CEO Randy Hetrick made the precursor to what would later evolve into the TRX Suspension Trainer while operating as a Navy SEAL when he and his teammates needed a way to stay fit on missions while tucked away in remote regions of the world. Today the TRX Suspension Trainer has been transformed into a professional-grade training apparatus with a robust range of workouts, education, and training programs including the TRX FORCE Suspension Trainer and training program, a 12-week, progressive program designed to help tactical athletes like Marines achieve and maintain peak physical readiness. The TRX is designed both as a garrison and Expeditionary solution, and the Marine Corps and other service branches already utilize the TRX system in the field and use it in base fitness centers. The TRX is a low-cost, low-weight item that is individual portable and can be taken and used anywhere in the world where Marines operate, making it a truly Expeditionary solution. The challenges Marines face can come from any direction at any moment. Marines must be able to react instantaneously to I.E.D.s, ambushes, and incoming fire while humping from 80 to 120 pounds of gear on their chests and backs. In order to avoid injury or worse, they must be able

The TRX extension exercise (above) and the TRX crunch (below) can be easily done while deployed.

to react in any direction, tooby moving laterally, forwards, backwards, up, down, or rotationally, at any given moment. Even on base, Marines must have bodies that are mobile, agile, strong, and powerful in every direction to execute day-to-day

taskslike strapping on those massive loads and participating in working parties to move gear on and off of trucks and in and out of storage. All it takes is one wrong step out of a vehicle while under load to blow out a

knee or ankle. Suddenly the hundreds of thousands of dollars that goes into training a Marine means nothing when an avoidable injury renders the Marine physically incapable of performing their job. Do the training modalities Marines use in physical training best prepare them for the demands they face on duty and help decrease the probability of injuries occurring before they happen? Or is there a better way? For decades, linear movements like push-ups, pull-ups, and sit-ups coupled with steady state cardiovascular modalities such as ruck humping and long distance running have been used to prepare Marines for duty. The norm in tactical athlete training has long been to expose the trainee to severe, highly taxing physiological demands that create a higher risk of injury without built-in respite to allow the body to recover and re-emerge stronger for higher levels of training. This type of training can yield Marines who seem strong, fit, mobile, and agile. But this type of training consists of primarily forwards and backwards or up and down movements. Life, and duty, take place in a 360-degree operational environment where Marines must be prepared to move safely and effectively in any direction at any moment, instantly. Thats why TRX Training focuses on building 360-degree strong tactical athletes. The unique nature of TRX Suspension Training bodyweight exercises enable Marines to get out of the back and forth, up and down groove of basic bodyweight training and running and gives them a tool they can easily transport and setup anywhere to perform movements that tax the body the way it has to move in real life. The military is trying to work with different PT programs to evolve preparation of Marines to meet in-theater needs, says TRXs director of Military Education, Dr. Joe Martin, D.C. During the past four years, Dr. Martin, a former Navy SEAL, has spent time with wounded warriors at facilities throughout the United States and abroad and has taught more than 100 TRX Suspension Training orientations and training classes to service members. But the typical training the military has used for the past 30 or 40 years has resulted in the biomechanical breakdown of soldiers in the modern combat environment. No matter how many pull-ups or pushups a Marine can perform, it will matter little when enemy fires starts to whistle overhead from out of nowhere and he has to kneel in a lunge behind a rock with a
The Status Quo

This Marine is performing the TRX Burpee exercise. 80-pound ruck on his back and rotate to address enemy fire or the time comes when he has to move his body and ruck up and over a low wall--a highly complex, multiplanar movement. If he hasnt trained to prepare his body to be 360-degree strong, this very basic movement could result in a back, neck, shoulder, or pelvic injury at the worst possible moment. The TRX Suspension Trainer is ideally tasked to developing the functional fitness todays Marines need down range. The TRX Force Kit and TRX military education programs have been designed expressly for this purpose. Every movement on the TRX challenges the body in all three planes of movement.
Training on the TRX Suspension

Even traditional moves like the push-up take on a new dimension when performed on the TRX. With the feet elevated off the ground in the TRXs foot cradles the TRX push-up forces the body to stabilize itself and counteract rotational forces the body always battles when moving in the real world in order to stay balanced. Simply performing a push-up with your feet in the TRXs foot cradles instead of resting on the deck transforms this staple move into a whole-body movement that requires 360-degree coordination, strength and balance. In todays fight, the loads we carry require a level of fitness that cant be achieved by concentrating exclusively on endurance, or strength training. I have used this system in the Iraq, and in the rear. It provides a quick and effective workout, says one USMC LtCol. The TRX is a real asset to anyone who is concerned with building and maintaining physical readinessparticularly when deployed to austere environments with limited access to more traditional training facilities. Another advantage of TRX Suspension Training is that it allows Marines to train in a way that closely mimics the way they move when theyre performing their duty. If you can get as close to mimicking the way Marines must use their bodies down range as possible, their bodies and minds will already have internalized how to perform these movements leading to less of a chance of injury, says Dr. Martin. When things get sticky, the tactical athlete isnt going to have to think about the engagement of other muscles. Their bodies will be very reactive and the body will subconsciously remember how to perform the movement. This means that the tactical athlete has a higher probability of getting out of sticky situations without injuries. While many training tools can be used to mimic the demands of duty, the TRX is an exceptionally powerful, economical, and sensible training tool for todays tactical athlete. It can be used in predeployment in training on base. Since it weighs 1.7-pounds and stows in its own compact stuff sack, the TRX is easy to transport to any in-theater environment down range. Because the TRX can be anchored virtually anywhere, its simple to transport and use in-theater as well. Equally adept at cultivating mobility, strength, power, mobility, and aerobic and anaerobic endurance, its the Swiss Army Knife of training tools and it can help make tactical athletes as prepared as possible for todays challenging operational environments.

The TRX Plank position is being demonstrated by this Marine.

Never Forget Form

Maximizing results using the TRX requires PT instructors and users to be mentally focused on moving cleanly, correctly and with the best possible form. This means taking time to master movements before increasing intensity or moving to more challenging progressions of a movement. The point of all of your hard training is to develop and ingrain the motor patterns that you must have to succeed while performing your job as a Marine. As with any other training tool, it is critical to take time to learn how to move correctly on the TRX so that your training time is spent enhancing your ability to move correctly. Training with poor form increases the probability of injury, both in training and in operational environments. Do it right, do it light. Do it wrong, do it long--and pay the price for

rushing and preparing poorly. Learning how to move correctly is the first step towards developing supreme tactical fitness. For more information about the TRX, please visit www.trxtraining.com/ Editors note: Andrew Vontz writes about people, places, and things at the limits of human experience. Operating under this broad aegis as a freelance journalist and content producer since he completed his MFA in creative writing at CalArts in 1999, he has published hundreds of features, profiles, interviews, gear reviews, adventure travel pieces, humor essays and training stories in major national publications in addition to producing video, audio, and text content for the web. n