Review: Loxley Suspension Trainer

Loxley Sports asked me if I wanted to try out their suspension trainer. I had no idea what a suspension trainer was but I looked on their website and saw it was yellow and as I like yellow I thought I’d give it a go.

A compact box arrived containing the main trainer straps, a door anchor, a strap extender, a door warning sign and a meshed bag.

loxley-inside-the-box

The first thing I noticed was the quality. This is a sturdy, well made piece of kit. Just the feel of it convinces you you’re not holding something cheap and flimsy. I’ve had a floppy pink plastic tube resistance training thing for a while now but that remains coiled up on the floor of the conservatory like a floppy pink thing; a simile for which I am far too ladylike to post on this blog.

It only takes a few seconds to put the suspension trainer together but then I had a dilemma. It can be used indoors by hooking over a door or locking over a beam/joist, etc. or it can be taken outside to be used on a tree (or maybe a football goalpost or something if you have no trees in your area). We don’t have many doors in this house and those that we do aren’t really in a position to enable comfortable training. I also wasn’t sure if any of the doors were strong enough for me to be pulling on but then wondered maybe if because you’re pulling the door towards you, maybe the door frame prevents any risk of the door falling off. But that’s sciency stuff and I don’t know any sciency stuff. Anyway, I decided on the bedroom door as that meant the whole landing would be behind me.

loxley-bedroom-door

As you can see, the straps are long. As you can also see, we have very low ceilings, so there wasn’t going to be any jumping up and down happening while doing the suspension training.

I eventually worked out how to shorten the straps and it was time to do some exercise. Unfortunately, the supplied leaflet, although it gives you five foundation exercises, it doesn’t actually tell you how to do them.

loxley-exercises

I had a look on Loxley Sports’ website and there aren’t any exercises on there, either. This is a massive oversight and I hope in the future they’ll provide some exercises on their website with an accompanying video.

Still, youtube to the rescue! First of all, I found this girl doing some exercises that looked far too hardcore for me (she’s using a different make of suspension trainer but the one from Loxley Sports does the same thing).

Then I found this bloke who at first I thought looked a bit of a twat but actually, he’s okay and explains the exercises well and isn’t a twat at all.

Some of his exercises aren’t suitable for the hooking-the-suspension-trainer-over-the-door method though and are more suited to those exercising outside. So I found this one that shows some door-only exercises.

I then decided the conservatory door would be better because then I a) would be able to have the laptop next to me so I can follow the exercises; b) can have the back door open; and c) I can get my cat to do the exercising for me. After going through a few of the exercises, my arms were aching – the suspension trainer definitely gives you a decent workout. It’d probably give me an even more decent workout if I wasn’t scared of the door falling off and therefore not using all my resistance (which is the whole point of it, duh).

loxley-conservatory-door

 

If you watched the above videos, you’ll see that there are loads of exercises to be done with a suspension trainer. In fact, it made me sad to see I was limited by what I could do inside so I looked in the garden for a suitable tree and hurrah, I found the perfect branch and gave it a bit of a tug to see how strong it was.

branch

It seemed strong enough to hold my weight and I’ll have all the space I need, so now I just need to pluck up the courage to exercise with the risk of being seen by the neighbours. Hmm.

I’m impressed with the Loxley Suspension Trainer. It’s well made, easy to use and you get a decent workout from it. And from what I can see, at £44.95 it retails at a competitive price. Some training videos on the website would be an improvement though or, ideally, ship it with a training DVD.