Strappy Torture

I have an attitude toward exercise that I suspect is common among many former athletes. Bike racing was so hard that having endured it for several years, some part of my brain still thinks I’m 20 years old and as tough as nails. To me, working out properly involves free weights in the winter and five hours a day on the bike the rest of the year. Hills, intervals, sprints: pain, pain and more pain.

Back then I made up for my lack of brains with fitness and muscle, instead of fat, as I do today. But I still look at exercise gimmicks with great skepticism. No device is ever going to make working out easy, because it’s the pain that gives the benefit. An effective work out device just makes the pain arrive faster, not help you avoid it altogether.

So when my wife informed me that she’d purchased a training device from her personal trainer, I rolled my eyes in spite of how much benefit she’s been getting from her lunchtime exercise. The lack of brains was kicking in again.

She told me about the device she calls Strappy Torture and I listened remotely in that state of mind I instinctively slip into whenever anyone starts talking about exercise equipment, thinking that the latest Thigh Master has arrived on the scene and that we now owned one. But something she said snapped me out of that mood. I could’ve sworn I’d heard the words “Navy SEAL.”

Like most guys I would buy just about anything a Navy SEAL wanted to sell me, especially if it related directly to being a SEAL and having that degree of toughness and competence. But even if a SEAL had a recipe for peanut butter cookies, I’d assume that was probably the best peanut butter cookie in the world, just because a SEAL was promoting it. Anyone who survives BUDS is a contender for toughest human ever, as far as I’m concerned. Even at the peak of my mental and physical toughness, I never would’ve made it through BUDS.

And sure enough, the TRX Trainer was invented by a Navy SEAL, is used by the teams to stay fit when deployed, and due more to the inventiveness of the exercises created to be done with it than with the device itself, the TRX is aptly called Strappy Torture. It brings the pain right away! This is not a Suzanne Sommers special.




It’s a simple device, amazingly overpriced for the materials and manufacturing involved, but not for the benefit it delivers. We used to say that bike racing was harder than running because a runner who wants to will eventually get tired enough that he just falls over. But on a bike, when you get to that point of collapse, you can coast for a bit to recover, and then go a little more. When you’re doing pull ups, you reach a point where you can’t do another and have to stop because you can’t suddenly weigh 50% less and then get the remaining use out of your muscles. But with the TRX, changes to resistance are easily changed just by adjusting the angle of movement. So you can torture every last ounce of strength out of yourself. It’s great!

After making plain that I no longer resemble the fit 20-year old mentioned above (which took about 30 seconds with Strappy Torture), I left the device hanging from the guest room door. When my 3-year old daughter got home from pre-school, she saw the TRX and was very curious to check it out. She hung from the handles for a moment, twisted around, having a ball, until she slipped on the rug and smacked her head against the door frame. Strappy Torture shows no mercy, even to toddlers!

But this morning while getting ready for school, she said, “Daddy, can I do Strappy Torture?” That’s my girl. A bump on the head only leaves her wanting more. She may be a bike racer yet.

Or a Navy SEAL.