TRX Full Body Workout with JJ Virgin | Fitness Expert
JJ Virgin demonstrates a TRX full-body routine using just a door anchor. She covers lower-body moves like mobility squats and skater jumps for hip mobility and bone strength, then upper-body supersets pairing chest press with rows. She recommends 6-30 reps per set and flexible workout lengths from 5-20 minutes.
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Welcome to my home gym. Today I'm going to take you through a TRX segmental workout. I'm going to show you each of the exercises and give you a handout so that you can then do them yourself. Here's why I love TRX. Number one, because it can turn anywhere in your home or where you're on vacation into a gym. All you need is a door and a hook, or you can do what I did and put it into the wall. And number 2, because you can use this to do a variety of different types of training, mobility training, power training, strength training. You can do it all with the TRX because it can adjust as you adjust. So you can make it harder or easier, go faster or go slower, depending on what your fitness goals are. So I'm gonna start out with a couple different leg exercises where I'm really working glutes, hips, and thighs., but I'm also working power. And then I'm gonna show you a great superset for upper body pushing and pulling to give you a full, well-rounded workout. I like using the TRX for a squat because you can really get deeper into your squat and work on range of motion and mobility. When I was starting out in the fitness world, it was always make sure that you never go below the hips to knees in a squat. Well, the reality is in life we need to do that. So I use this TRX to be able to do a deeper squat and to really work through range of motion. When you're doing this, you want to really think of sitting back, right? It's not moving forward, it's sitting back as if you're sitting into a chair. So a lot of this has to do with your hip mobility. So as you're doing this, you're going to work on coming down as low as you can and come back up and use the TRX as a little assist. So we're coming down low and coming back up, coming down low and coming back up. So you've walked into this already warm But then this is another part of your warm-up, and one of the things I want you to really focus on is what's going on with your heels. Like, I should be really grounding into my heels. I should be able to lift my toes up, and I'm mentally lifting my toes up. I'm sitting back. I'm really working on my hip mobility. Now my hands are here, and I'm using this kind of for security. So ideally, as you're doing this, you're trying to use this and not doing this, not pulling yourself back up again. So I see this squat as a mobility squat. One of the fun things you can do— not really fun, but you can come down and then just do kind of a burner squat where you hold it down here in a deep squat and then come back up. But again, I use— I'm using these as a warm-up and then for mobility as well. So step 1, mobility squat. The next thing that we're going to do is a reverse lunge with a lift. So this again is also hip mobility, glutes and hamstrings. You're stepping back and then you're coming up with a lift. And again, this is a hip hinger. When you're doing this, I'm not staying upright. It's a different move. I'm coming back a little bit with a hip hinge. And a knee lift. Back a little bit with a hip hinge and a knee lift. So this one, I'm really focusing— where you should feel this is when you're doing your left leg, should feel your right glute really working into it. And again, what am I doing here? I'm trying not to use these any more than I need to, but they are there for my stability and balance. The goal is to use them as little as possible as you do this. So reverse lunge. Now I'm doing the other one. And this works great for me because I have a broken, old broken left foot. And this would be very hard to do normally because it's— my balance can be off on this, which I don't want to avoid. I want to work into it. And this is one of the ways that I can do that. So again, as I'm doing this, I'm sitting into that left hip and then I'm reaching my right knee up. So it's different than maybe a traditional lunge where you're staying upright. This one I've got a little bit of a forward lean and I'm really trying to work into my left glute. So this is a front squat. And we are going to be working mobility, but what you're focusing on here is to add some speed into it. So this is an explosive front squat. So you're going to lean back a little bit and you're going to sit back and then burst up. So sit back, burst up, sit back, burst up. This is another one that you can have in your repertoire for when you want to do maybe some high-intensity interval training. This can be part of your High-intensity interval training can be part of a warmup. But remember too, we're also working mobility. I'm sitting back towards my heels, burst up, back towards my heels, burst up, and I'm really pushing through my hips. That's where I'm driving through. Adding impact can be amazing for improving your bone quality. However, you want to make sure that you don't fall along the way. Because osteoporotic fractures happen to 50% of women 50 or older. So this is what we're doing so that doesn't happen to us. So I'm adding in jumping, but I'm adding jumping in with the TRX Assist so that you end up safe. And what I'm doing is something called a skater jump. So you want to feel just like you're skating. We're going side to side. So I've got A little bit of impact. And you can do as much impact as you're comfortable with. Again, this is a little bit of a jump. We're adding in power. We're adding impact onto the bones. This can also count as an exercise snack or part of high-intensity interval training. The lower you go, harder it's going to get on your Quads and glutes. So one of the things that you need to do in your resistance training is take a break after you do a set. Remember, a set is a series of repetitions. The challenge is that can make your exercise session long. If you're short on time, one of the things I like to do is something called a superset. A superset is where you do one set of an exercise and then you immediately follow it with an opposing muscle group set. In this case, we're going to do the chest press, upper body pushing that uses the chest, the front of the shoulders and the triceps. And then we're going to follow it with a row, which is upper body pulling, which gets the lats, the biceps and the rear shoulders. So opposing muscle groups. Now again, one of the cool things with the TRX is you can make this harder or easier, and you've got to put some stability in place too. So your core is pulling in on all of this. Work between 6 and 30 repetitions, whatever you want to do. But what you want to start to focus on as you're getting good at this is that you never really get good at this. By the time you get to the last couple reps, you start to slow down, you start to feel like you're losing your form. And you feel like maybe you only have 1 or 2 that you could eek out, but your form wouldn't be really good. That's reps in reserve. So you want to always get to that point after you've done a set or 2 to warm up. So again, this is a chest press. Important note here too is that I operated almost like I was doing a push-up plank in that I kept my belly button to my spine. I was tight in my core so that I was not moving a lot in my core. I was keeping the work in my upper body. So again, the row is going to work the lats, the back of the shoulders, the biceps. It's an upper body pulling exercise. So I'm going to lean back and I'm going to pull my hands towards the sides of my chest. And as I'm doing this, I'm also squeezing my shoulder blades together. And just like with the upper body pushing, I'm squeezing my glutes. I've got my core tight. So I'm really keeping the work in my upper body. And you can make this harder by moving out further. So you can lighten the load or make it heavier And again, for building muscle, you work between 6 and 30 reps. It's a long rep range. The goal is really to get to a point where as you get to the last couple that you feel like you're starting to lose your form and slowing down, and it maybe could get 1 or 2 out, and that's it. To wrap this up and give you your instructions to take home. First of all, we did a mobility squat. You can use this as a warm-up. Remember, get in here, warm up a little bit, and then start this movement. But do that full body mobility squat. You can do a couple sets of those, and you can challenge yourself by holding at the low point at the end of the set. Then we moved into a reverse lunge with a knee lift, really focusing on the stability legs, glutes. That's where you want to focus on that. And then we moved into an explosive front squat where we worked through a full range of motion, but really felt that power. And then we added in some jumping with a skater jump side to side using the TRX to help maintain a little bit of balance. With all of these, use the TRX as little as possible. It's there to support you, but don't lean on it. Then we moved into the focus on the upper body, still using that core. The core has to work all the time. And we did supersetting of opposing muscles. So we did upper body pushing, and then you flip around and do upper body pulling. So while one muscle group is resting, the other one is working. How you can put this all together, and again, I've got a handout for you on this, is you could do this, you can see, in like 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes, 20 minutes. But basically do somewhere between 2 and 4 sets of each of these. And 2 and 4 sets of the superset and then tie a bow on it. You just did a full body workout and you got a little bit of cardio in there too. A little bit of high intensity interval training. Again, I've got a power sheet for you on how to do this TRX training. So be sure to grab that. Look in the show notes and jump on over to my Facebook group. So I have the JJ Virgin Lifestyle Community where I have my coaches, I have my clone. Who I think is more me than me at this point, can answer all your questions. And we've got some great camaraderie too. Remember, you don't want to go it alone. So jump on over there and join me in the Facebook group. This channel is all about how to optimize your body composition for better metabolic health, better mental health, and to live healthier longer. So be sure that you subscribe and like this so you never miss a video. I'll see you in the next one.
