One of the elements of THE SWELL FIT Bag (patent pending) I get asked most about is its potential to support instability training. It always drives curiosity as its one of the lesser-known forms of strength training and is often misunderstood.
My motivation to explore it came from the urban habitat I found myself in during the pandemic. So much of our training took place on concrete surfaces, or on hard floors in our gyms and homes, that it led me to wonder if this could be optimal for human physical development.
Going back just 3, or 4, generations, we would have spent much more time on natural surfaces. Working on the land, travelling through forests and open spaces, and spending our leisure time on the beaches and dunes of our coastline.
The solid surfaces of our city provide uniform and safe ground to walk and commute on, but do not really challenge the broad range of supporting muscles that natural surfaces test.
So, when I set myself the task of creating the ultimate fitness and training tool, finding a way to support our core and its many supporting muscles felt integral to my mission. Fitness is not just about the body beautiful; it’s about enabling us to be strong and to live a beautiful and adventurous life.
I learnt this the hard way. At 23, I found myself on a long path to physical recovery after a motorbike accident. When you spend months listening to your body and willing it to heal, and years being grateful when it does, you realise the true benefit of our muscles is to hold our skeleton strong through all the exploration we can experience. Staying strong at our core literally keeps us grounded and propels us on our path.
Finding a way not just to test the superficial muscle groups, but to really support the core, and its preservation and maintenance, felt fundamental to my invention.
But, to achieve this, I also wanted to keep people safe in the process of training. I have fallen off and failed with so many of the common instability training tools, and when you are trying to protect historic injuries and maintain rehabilitation and physiotherapy regimes, I knew I wanted to create something safe and controllable. Something that could support even early injury or operation rehabilitative care. I consulted physiotherapists and personal trainers at every step of the way to understand how I could democratise training for everyone, wherever they started on their path.
As is so often the case, the answer to things that best support the development of the human form came from nature. The elements held the answer through water and air. When I combined them together in the SWELL FIT BAG, it not only provided safe and progressive instability training, but made it soft and comfortable to hold, which I knew was important from my own post-injury rehabilitation.
But it was water that really held the magic. Water has a way or moving, a sound that just settles my soul. When contained, even in early SWELL FIT BAG prototypes, it felt so much more natural and intuitive to train with. I later understood from my physiotherapy advisors, that this was probably driven by the enhanced challenge to the mind-muscle connection when used in training. The water’s flow around and in the SWELL FIT BAG encourages your mind and body to work together in training.
The nature of water, when held in THE SWELL FIT BAG, creates a mind body connection that helps your body strengthen in dynamic ways. I soon realised that if I lost my centre during a move, the water would flow and become a trigger to correct and re-centre. Water was literally finding my weaknesses and helping me to improve my motor and movement skills, as well as strength.
Instability is reputed to enhance the efficiency of muscle training by 50% and I soon began to feel this in my own training. Weights that I had previously found easy, became more challenging when used in moves with my SWELL FIT BAG. Moves that I could do tens of sets using ordinary weights, found me reaching failure faster.
This is the power of instability training. It doesn’t just reach the gross muscle sets; it reaches deep inside to the supporting and interconnecting muscles. Importantly, it felt fun, and I also felt I was making fast progress. Being able to add small increments of water every day or week, helped me understand and see how my strength was improving.
Since moving my focus to instability training, as I have tested and developed my SWELL FIT BAG, I’ve felt stronger and all the hard work I have put into my injury rehabilitation feels more protected.
I hope you enjoy discovering the power of instability training for your own swellness (fitness and wellness) regime. We’d love to hear about the moves and progress you create, and our swellbeings@swellfitness.co.uk are always here for you with any questions you might have.
When I realised the SWELL FIT BAG would also take me back to the wild, and reconnect me with fitness as nature intended, I knew that I had finally finished my invention. I hope, thanks to the amazing power of water in the SWELL FIT BAG unleashing the benefits of instability training, you will feel it too.
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