When I first saw a video of someone doing a pendulum with a TRX, I thought it looked
Amazing but also very challenging. Here is a video from Experiencelifemag.com showing what it looks like:

Right away I wondered how someone who didn’t’ already have a strong core would do it. For some reason I think this way a lot. Maybe I’m going to my engineering roots here; trying to re-engineer exercises. There was the stability ball roll-out progression, the new approach to pullup progressions, and a look at pushups, including progressions that I did in an article with Bret Contreras (I’ll post once the article gets published). Whatever the reason, I like progressions!

But I digress – back to the story line…I didn’t really think further about the TRX pendulum until yesterday when it hit me: Start with a half-pendulum. That is, only swing one leg out at a time. Add a brief isometric hold and we’ve got ourselves a great core exercise but one that is more accessible. It looks like this:

Once you can do this with good form, try the full pendulum shown above, and then try Dewey Nielsen’s (Impact Performance Training) awesome version with irregular isometric holds:

Elsbeth Vaino trains athletes in Ottawa, Canada.

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