How To Do TRX Rows
Shane Toman, certified personal trainer and CoachUp coach teaches you how to do the TRX row.
If you’re not familiar with it, the TRX can seem like a bizarre contraption that has, by now, made it into most gyms across the country. It can be used for a variety of body weight exercises, but because of the way it is designed, you can do anything from pushups with your feet hanging to deltoid flys to one of it’s hallmarks: TRX Rows. They are such fundamental exercise because they improve both your overall upper body and core strength while also isolating certain specific muscles in your back and shoulders. Here is how you do TRX Rows:
- Adjust your TRX so that when you’re lying on the ground you can reach the handles with your arms at full extension, if not a little bit farther. TRX Rows, like any other exercise, is pointless unless you go through a complete range of motion, and you do this by getting full extension in your arms.
- Start with your body completely flat on the ground and your arms reaching straight up, holding on to the handles. Also begin with the backs of your hands and your knuckles facing you. To help keep your body straight throughout the exercise, you should think about squeezing both your core and your glutes.
- Keeping your body straight, your core strong, and your feet on the ground, pull your body upwards until your hands reach your armpits. As your row upwards, be sure to keep your elbows close to your body and rotate your hands so that your thumbs end up facing you rather than your knuckles. By doing this, you will activate your rotator cuffs, thereby enhancing the effects of the exercise by reaching the small parts of your shoulders as well as the big muscles.
TRX Rows are a very simple exercise, but with that simplicity comes a wide array of benefits to your back, shoulders, and core. One substitute, if you don’t have access to a TRX, would be to repeat this exercise but hang from a barbell instead of the TRX handles. The deficiency of doing the exercise this way, though, is that you are unable to rotate your hands, thereby removing any rotator cuff strengthening from the exercise. When doing TRX Rows, you should try to get 15 reps each set. With the plethora of exercises that you can do on a TRX, you may want to try some of them out. To learn some of the best exercises to maximize your training, while also keeping yourself safe, it may help to contact a private coach, such as Coach Shane, to guide you through the process.
