There is a strange point you reach in a weight-loss journey when the goal is still very much weight loss, but the way you think about progress begins to change. I’m still trying to get smaller. I still have weight I want to lose, and I still have a number in my head that I’d like to see on the scale. That part hasn’t magically disappeared just because I’ve lost a significant amount of weight already.
What has changed is that I’m starting to care much more about what happens to my body beyond the number.
I don’t just want to weigh less. I want more definition. I want to build muscle. I want my arms and legs to look stronger, and I want to feel stronger in my everyday life. I want to put on clothes and notice a different shape. I want to look at my body and see evidence that I didn’t simply lose weight, but that I also built something along the way.
That is what has led me to TRX.
If you have no idea what a TRX is, you’re not alone. I knew what it looked like long before I really understood what it was. A TRX Suspension Trainer is essentially a set of adjustable straps with handles that are anchored to a secure point, allowing you to use your own body weight as resistance. The angle of your body changes the difficulty of the exercise, so instead of needing a room full of equipment, you can adjust the challenge by changing your position.
That’s a big part of why I wanted one. I don’t need another complicated system that requires a dedicated workout room or a dozen pieces of equipment. I wanted something I could use at home, something that could challenge me now and still give me room to progress as I get stronger. The exact TRX I’m using is [linked here (affiliate link)1], and if you’ve been curious about trying suspension training yourself, you can absolutely follow along with me.
I’m approaching this as a bit of an experiment because I know how to lose weight. I’ve been doing that for a while. What I’m less interested in doing is continuing to treat weight loss as the only measurable outcome of taking care of myself. I want to find out what happens when I give my body a reason to become stronger while I’m still working toward becoming smaller.
What I actually mean when I say I want to “tone”
“Toning” is one of those fitness words that gets used constantly even though, technically, you can’t tone a muscle. There isn’t a special physiological state called toned that your muscles enter after a certain number of repetitions. When most of us say we want to tone, what we’re really describing is a body with more visible muscle definition. That generally means having enough muscle to create shape while also having less body fat covering that muscle.
That distinction matters because it changes the conversation around exercise. You cannot spot-reduce fat from your arms by doing hundreds of triceps extensions, and doing more abdominal exercises won’t specifically remove the fat from your stomach. Fat loss happens systemically, not according to the body part we happened to exercise that day. But you can build muscle in specific areas while working toward reducing overall body fat, and over time, that combination can meaningfully change how your body looks.
This is why I’m becoming much more interested in body composition.
Your weight tells you how much your body weighs. It doesn’t tell you exactly what that weight is made of. Two people can weigh the same amount and have very different proportions of fat and lean mass, and even the same person can weigh the same amount at two different points in their life while looking noticeably different.
For someone who is losing weight, resistance training is particularly useful because it gives the body a reason to preserve muscle while you’re in an energy deficit. Adequate protein, resistance training, recovery, and an appropriate calorie deficit all play a role here. The goal isn’t simply to make the scale move downward as quickly as possible. If your goal is to change the way your body looks, you want to pay attention to what you’re losing and what you’re maintaining along the way.
That doesn’t mean the scale has stopped mattering to me. It hasn’t. I still want to lose weight, and I’m not going to pretend otherwise. I just don’t want the scale to be responsible for telling me whether everything I’m doing is working.
Why I’m starting with TRX
The biggest appeal of TRX for me is that it makes strength training feel accessible enough to actually become part of my life. I can do it at home without driving to a gym, and I can adjust the difficulty of many of the movements simply by changing my body position. That means I don’t necessarily need to keep buying heavier equipment every time an exercise becomes easier.
It also gives me a surprising amount of variety for one relatively simple piece of equipment. I can train my chest, shoulders, triceps, back, biceps, legs, glutes and core without needing a machine for every muscle group. Because the straps are suspended, many of the movements also require you to stabilize your body as you work, which adds another layer of challenge.
But honestly, the most important reason I chose it has nothing to do with whether TRX is the absolute best form of exercise on the planet. I don’t think there is one perfect workout. There is the workout you can perform consistently, the one that fits your life well enough that you don’t constantly have to negotiate with yourself about whether you’re going to do it.
For me, that matters.
I’m much more interested in doing three strength workouts every week for the next six months than doing an ambitious six-day program for two weeks and then abandoning it because real life got in the way.
So I’m starting small and structured. Monday will be Push, Wednesday will be Legs, and Friday will be Pull. I’ve also created a playlist for each day so that if you have a TRX of your own, you can follow along with me instead of trying to figure out every movement yourself.
Monday: Push
My first workout is focused on pushing movements, which means we’ll primarily be working the chest, shoulders and triceps. I’ll be doing TRX Chest Press, TRX Triceps Extension, TRX Y-Fly, TRX Chest Fly and TRX Stand Up Shoulder Press.
The Chest Press is probably one of the easiest movements to understand because it resembles a push-up, but the suspension of the straps adds an additional stability challenge. The Triceps Extension shifts more of the work toward the back of the upper arm, while the Y-Fly and Chest Fly introduce different movement patterns for the shoulders and chest. I’ll finish with a standing Shoulder Press for a complete push day.
Monday Push Playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLS5VVkwpmSgM&si=TtX29BV2GtiDapj1
Wednesday: Legs
Wednesday is where I’m expecting to be reminded that having legs and training legs are two very different things.
I’ll be doing TRX Squats, TRX Reverse Lunges, TRX Hamstring Curls, TRX Assisted Single-Leg Squats and TRX Glute Bridges. One of the things I like about using the straps for lower-body movements is that they can provide assistance when I need it, particularly with something like an assisted single-leg squat. I don’t have to already possess the strength and balance required to perform a perfect single-leg squat without assistance. The equipment can help me work toward it.
That is a useful reminder when you’re beginning something new. You don’t have to wait until you’re strong enough to start strength training. The training is how you become stronger.
Wednesday Legs Playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMsxLUPhSYr4&si=EPIfvHVfL3PcZlmy
Friday: Pull
Friday is focused on pulling movements, with an emphasis on the back, biceps and the muscles that help support healthy shoulder movement. I’ll be doing TRX Row, TRX High Row, TRX Face Pull, TRX Biceps Curl and TRX Reverse Fly.
The TRX Row is a great example of how adjustable the system can be. By changing the angle of your body, you can make the movement easier or more challenging without changing the equipment. As I get stronger, I can gradually increase the difficulty instead of needing to completely redesign the workout.
That concept is really the foundation of what I want to do here: give my body a challenge, recover from it, and then slowly ask it to do a little more.
Friday Pull Playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMMxQaPuruUk&si=KLXbmaHtzfz2ClDU
I’m not trying to make myself miserable
I think this is the biggest difference between how I view exercise now and how I viewed it earlier in my weight-loss journey.
For a long time, exercise was very easy to make transactional. I needed to lose weight, so I needed to burn calories. I ate more than I planned, so I needed to exercise more. The scale didn’t move, so clearly I needed to work harder. Exercise became something I could use to compensate for food or punish myself for not progressing quickly enough.
I don’t want that relationship with movement anymore.
I’m not starting this routine because I need to burn as many calories as possible. I’m starting because I want to give my body a reason to become stronger and because resistance training has benefits that go far beyond what the calorie counter on a watch tells me.
The goal isn’t to be destroyed after every workout. The goal is to create a stimulus that my body can adapt to and then gradually increase the challenge. That is where progressive overload comes in. Over time, I can increase repetitions, change my body angle, improve my control, use a more difficult variation, or eventually add additional resistance. The workout doesn’t need to become harder every single day. It simply needs to evolve as I do.
And I think that is a much healthier way for me to approach exercise.
I still want the smaller body
There is a part of the wellness conversation that sometimes makes me want to scream because we seem to think that wanting to change your body must mean you don’t accept it.
I don’t believe that.
I can appreciate what my body has done for me and still want it to look different. I can be proud of how far I’ve come and still have somewhere I want to go. I can be grateful for my body today and still want to lose weight, build muscle, change my shape and feel more comfortable in my clothes.
Those things aren’t mutually exclusive.
What has changed is the way I want to get there.
I don’t want the only strategy I have left to be eating less and watching the number on the scale. I want to understand what resistance training can do for my body. I want to preserve and build muscle. I want to become stronger. I want to see whether six months of consistent strength training changes the way my body looks, even if the scale doesn’t move as quickly as it once did.
And I want to learn how to measure progress beyond weight without pretending that weight doesn’t matter to me.
That’s the balance I’m interested in now.
I’m still losing weight. I’m still trying to get smaller. But I’m also building something at the same time.
For the first time in this journey, I’m not only asking, “How much more can I lose?”
I’m asking, “What can I build with what I have left?”
I think that’s going to be a much more interesting question.
Nyk
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I love the TRX! It can be deceiving, though 😅I’ve been super sore after using it!
🫶 yes! It’s so weird realizing the scale isn’t the most important part of the goal anymore…honestly I don’t know what my goal weight actually is…I want to decrease my bf and get my stomach to look less flabby (loose skin aside—I mean the fat I can pinch) and I don’t know whet wait or bf% or even size that will be but I know what it will look like 🤷♀️…all of the goal metrics I have at this point are just directional…an at least for me I’m now in new territory from an adult sized body shape perspective that I’ve never been…I was never skinny or more fit than I am now so it’s all theoretical…🤷♀️ like we will know we are there…when we are there!🙌🫶