Inertia Wave Review – Effective and Portable Alternative to Battle Ropes
I’ve tested a lot of fitness equipment over the years and I seldom come across something truly new and innovative like the Inertia Wave.
The Inertia Wave is a great tool for building strength and toning muscle in all the areas most people care about – the arms, legs, abs, back, and butt.
Introduction
I came across the Inertia Wave on Instagram and I was immediately intrigued. It looked like something simple to use but difficult to master.
The Inertia Wave is most often compared to battle ropes because the movement looks similar, but don’t let that fool you.
The Inertia Wave is distinctly different than battle ropes and has many advantages that battle ropes don’t.
The Inertia Wave hits all of the points I like:
- High calorie burn
- Minimal time necessary for maximum results
- Efficient total body workout
- Easy to use and store
- Easy to transport for use anywhere
Seven basic movements 1: “Inertia Wave”
The Inertia Wave is perfect for home use and can benefit everyone regardless of age or fitness level.
It’s also a great tool for keeping fit while traveling as long as you have access to a stable surface where the tubes can be anchored.
Ladies, if you’re looking for a low impact way to strengthen and tone your arms, hips, thighs, and butt, this is the tool for you.
Guys, if you’re looking for a way to get your numbers up on the big compound lifts, this is the tool for you.
In this review I’ll provide answers to the questions I had when I started researching the Inertia Wave and also talk about my personal experience with it.
PS – you can get a discount and free shipping on your purchase of the Inertia Wave with the discount code ‘TESTLAB10’ at checkout ?
The Inertia Wave up close and personal
What is the Inertia Wave?
The Inertia Wave is a High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) system that works the entire body through the use of oscillating kinetic energy (O.K.E), which is also called instability training or chaos training depending on who you ask.If you’ve never done any kind of instability (or chaos) training, consider that life is inherently unstable.
Whether it’s lifting children, moving furniture, or doing yard work, we rarely find ourselves in situations that require a perfectly balanced application of strength.
Real life is always slightly off-balance, and the Inertia Wave can help prepare you for handling those unbalanced situations with improved strength and structure.
Seven basic movements 2: “Hero Wave”
If you’re looking for a low impact way to get in shape, the Inertia Wave can help you lose weight, improve your posture, and strengthen your core while shaping and toning all the major muscle groups – arms, legs, abs, back, and butt.
If you’re a seasoned athlete, the Inertia Wave can improve your overall speed, stamina, and strength to help take your workouts to the next level.
It really does offer something for everyone.
How does the Inertia Wave work?
The elastic tubes of the Inertia Wave act like rubbery whips. As you feed energy into the tubes by whipping or waving them, the elasticity in the tubes resists your effort by feeding that kinetic energy right back to you in oscillating waves.
As a result, not only do you have to use your raw muscle strength to keep the waves going, you also have to engage your smaller stabilizer muscles to resist the kinetic energy sent back to you by the elasticity in the tubes.
In other words, your body has to unconsciously make constant small muscular adjustments to keep the tubes moving smoothly.
This has the interesting side effect of increasing your overall strength and stability, making you more resistant to injury since you can better adapt to instability in everyday life.
The Inertia Wave is an ingenious design, mainly because it’s so simple but so effective.
Seven basic movements 3: “Double Over”
In addition to strength and stability, the Inertia Wave will improve your overall coordination by training your brain as well as your body.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve caused the bands to hit each other accidentally while first starting out with the Inertia Wave.
It took me a while to develop the coordination to keep the tubes moving smoothly while resisting the pull of the elastic and adjusting to the kinetic wave energy coming back at me.
No joke, it’s harder than it looks ?
What are the benefits of the Inertia Wave?
Put simply, the Inertia Wave is a total body workout. If you use it consistently, it will strengthen and tone all your major muscle groups.
I can enthusiastically recommend the Inertia Wave to anyone looking for a low impact way to lose weight and tone the arms, legs, thighs, and butt.
But it’s so much more than that.
Easy to start but difficult to master
If you’re already in good shape the Inertia Wave can help increase your lung capacity and will absolutely torch your body as a High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) tool.
The Inertia Wave also strengthens your shoulders, back, and glutes, which helps increase muscle engagement for big compound lifts like deadlifts and squats.
Seven basic movements 4: “Thunder Slap”
If you’re just looking to lose some weight, the Inertia Wave is a great way to burn a lot of calories in a short amount of time.
Over time I’ve worked up to doing a ten round HIIT routine consisting of one minute at full intensity plus thirty seconds of rest, for a total of ten minutes of work and five minutes of rest.
This short routine leaves me smoked liked a Texas brisket but also feeling energized because my entire body is awake.
It also burns lots of calories, as you can see from the results of the heart rate monitor I used to measure the burn:
10 rounds : 1 min work + 30 sec rest = 193 calories burned
To put those 193 calories in perspective, the general rule of thumb is the average person burns 100 calories per mile while running.
So for ten minutes of actual exercise, I burned almost twice as many calories than I would have burned by running a mile.
Not bad for ten minutes of effort!
How do you use the Inertia Wave?
The simplest way to use the Inertia Wave is to anchor it to something stable, step back till you feel resistance in the tubes, and start waving them up and down.
As the wave speed increases, you’ll begin hearing a “whooshing” sound as the tubes whip through the air.
You’ll know you’re doing it right when you hear a consistently repeating “double whoosh” sound.
“Double whoosh”… a highly technical description ?
There are seven basic exercises that have been developed for use with the Inertia Wave:
The seven basic movements and the muscles they work
Since pictures really don’t do the moves justice, I’ve sprinkled GIFs of all the movements throughout this review for reference.
Seven basic movements 5: “Crossfire”
Note that going for one full minute at high intensity with the Inertia Wave is hard.
Don’t be surprised if you find you need to stop after 30 seconds to catch your breath!
I also consider the basic movements to be essential, but only a starting point.
You can get even more benefit out of the Inertia Wave by experimenting with your own ways to use it.
Get creative with your movements for even more benefit
How do you anchor the Inertia Wave?
The Inertia Wave come with two anchor straps, which provide a buffer between your anchor point and the tubes.
The proper way to set up the Inertia Wave using the anchor straps is to keep them flat, wrap them tightly at waist height around two stable objects between 24″-36″ apart, and feed the D-ring through the opening loop of the nylon strap and pull it tight.
Connect the Inertia Wave tubes to the anchor straps and you’re ready to rock!
I have a pair of wall mount bumper plate storage pegs that I use with a shorty axle barbell and some swivel clamps to create my own mount point:
Gotta make use of what I’ve got ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The possibilities for anchoring are endless. You can use the Inertia Wave anywhere you have access to two stable mount points.
Many people find creative ways to mount their Inertia Wave, as shown in the pictures below.
Creative Ways to Anchor the Inertia Wave
To properly use the Inertia Wave, it’s important to keep the following minimum space requirements in mind:
Length:
From the anchor point to your hands, you will need at least 11.5 feet in length.
Width:
For most of the movement methods you will need at least 4 feet in width to your left and to your right.
Height:
For most of the movement methods you will need at least 7 feet in height from the ground.
Inertia Wave vs Battle Ropes, what’s the difference?
The Inertia Wave is most often compared to battle ropes, but I don’t think it’s a fair comparison. Yes, the movements look similar, but the results you get from these two tools are different.With battle ropes, the energy you feed into them is all dissipated into the ropes and anchor point. You engage your big muscles to lift and slam the ropes, but there’s little to no engagement of your deep core stabilizer muscles.
For the most part, working with battle ropes is a pure strength exercise.
By way of comparison, the Inertia Wave feeds energy back to you via the elasticity of the tubes, which requires you to constantly engage your deep stabilizer muscles.
Seven basic movements 6: “Super Typhoon”
Battle ropes are also heavy and require a lot more space to use and to store than the Inertia Wave, especially for people like me who mainly work out at home.
I have a set of battle ropes that I rarely use because the only place I can use them is outside, even though the rest of my gear is inside the house.
They take up a LOT of space to store, which is a problem for me because space is at a premium in the Fitness Test Lab.
To be clear, battle ropes and the Inertia Wave are two great tools to have in your fitness arsenal if you have the space for both.
However, if like me you are short on space and want something that is easy to store and can be used almost anywhere, the Inertia Wave is the clear winner.
Seven basic movements 7: “Oxygen Thief”
Conclusion
In case it isn’t obvious by now, I really like the Inertia Wave.
It’s easy to use, it provides a total body workout, and it takes up very little storage space.
The Inertia Wave is a great tool for building strength and toning muscle in all the areas most people care about – the arms, legs, abs, back, and butt.
It’s also a great way to counteract the detrimental effects of sitting for long periods of time.
By the way, you can get a discount and free shipping on your purchase of the Inertia Wave with the discount code ‘TESTLAB10’ at checkout ?
About the Author Mario
I'm a software product manager with a full-time job, family, and a desire to stay strong, mobile, and fit. I separate fact from fiction to find the most effective and affordable options for home fitness. If you'd like to build your own home gym, start here.
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