by Josh Henkin
How can an old school tool be something completely new and different? Does this tool provide us something unique and valuable, or is it just old and outdated? This is a question I asked myself in the early 2000s about a tool that seems way more familiar than it did back then, the sandbag.
I didn’t get into sandbags because they were some well thought out system of training, quite the contrary. As I worked with several high school sports teams I just didn’t have enough equipment to perform the strength training that I wanted during the limited time I had with these teams. Sandbags served as a reasonable training tool and most importantly for me at the time, it was cheap!
That is how many coaches used sandbags for any type of fitness or strength training for quite a long time. A tool that was designated to be appropriate when nothing “better” was available or that was as cheap as humanly possible was the deciding factor. I am actually grateful for these experiences because it was such times that made me look hard at the sandbag to see if it could be something more!
Could a tool that has been around for a long time and seen as pretty much a last resort be anything other than just that? In order to answer that question I had to ask the question, “if sandbags could be more but weren’t being used that way, was that due to the equipment or the way they were being programmed into workouts?”
Ultimately, I came to the conclusion the answer was both! If we didn’t have the right version of the tool how could we expect it to be more than the luggage bag that most sandbags were at the time? If the tool wasn’t allowing us to optimize the unique benefits, then how in the world could we have a system of training that was extremely beneficial?
That led me to developing prototypes of the Ultimate Sandbag back in 2004 and for the next several years I worked with my clients to form a system. Standardizing what a size of fitness sandbag should be, how the sandbag should be loaded, how long and where external handles should be, were some of the considerations I made at the time that gave me that start. Over those years I would evolve these ideas because there was no model for a fitness sandbag at the time and through that a new system of training started to form in what we call Dynamic Variable Resistance Training (DVRT).
Instead of writing a very long post (maybe I already ruined that) about all the concepts of DVRT and the Ultimate Sandbag, I could provide a “Top 5 DVRT Exercises” list that would allow us to convey many of our training principles through these movements.
#5: Clean And Press
Those that have taken our DVRT certifications know about our Clean and Press test. Unlike some other fitness programs that have used physical standards in their testing, this wasn’t meant to be a “toughness” test. Instead, we thought about qualities of coaching that would be great to assess through a full body exercise that actually looked at several movement patterns and qualities at once.
-Could one create a 4-6 week program to achieve a specific outcome?
-Did one have technical proficiency in hip hinging, pressing, and core stability?
-How were we able to combine elements of power, strength, and stability all at once?
-What was our ability to problem solve greater either mobility, stability, strength, and/or endurance?
-Could we show effectiveness in movement accuracy?
The last point is probably something that raises a lot of eye brows for people. For one, a clean and press can be done with a host of other tools so why use the Ultimate Sandbag? Two, what do I mean by movement accuracy?
When people discuss the fact they like “sandbags” because they are unstable, I always want to follow up and ask, “why is that important?” While many look at me like I have two heads when I ask them this (after all isn’t it obvious because it is like “real life” Josh)! they don’t have a clear reason why instability is important.
Yes, we get to train the core more, yes, we theoretically use more stabilizers, but MOST importantly we get to see how accurately you move! So many times when I have coaches that have experience with other strength training tools and ask them to Clean to Fist, they struggle a lot! They look confused and wonder why they can’t do it? After all, the loads often outwardly are much lighter (I’ll get to that later) and they just look baffled. The reason is they don’t have the movement accuracy to clean the Ultimate Sandbag into the right position. The smallest of movement compensations throws the entire movement off. Interestingly, that is the same reason the press is of great challenge to many lifters as well! However, what can be more valuable to a coach than being as accurate with a movement as possible?
#4: Half Kneeling Arc Press
Being half kneeling isn’t something that is original with our DVRT program. Gotta credit the great team at FMS for that one. We know half kneeling forces us to navigate forces from side to side which requires stability and mobility at the same time. In DVRT though, we use it for a bit more!
You may notice we do like to emphasize going overhead in our pushing exercises. Why? Going overhead is a great measure of upper body strength/mobility along with core stability and using the lower body correctly. If you can’t go overhead without pain, that’s a health issue, not a fitness one!
While most people with shoulder issues would think going overhead to be impossible or contraindicated (it could be in some cases, but most times it is a movement issue), going overhead correctly can be very therapeutic. One of the big reasons that we use half kneeling presses so much in DVRT is that we get to teach how pressing actually comes from the feet, the hips, the core, not the shoulders.
That’s right, what happens below the shoulder is more important than the shoulders themselves, that is a post for another time though. Forcing this need to create stability though in half kneeling gives us the right environment to teach these important concepts, but the Ultimate Sandbag also provides us a very important aspect.
Arc Pressing is one of our main ways to perform one arm pressing. So, if we have some mobility and coordination issues in the upper body, this is a very safe and friendly to teach going overhead. Even more so, the fact we can grab and “rip apart” the Ultimate Sandbag helps us connect our grip to our shoulder stability and instantly teaches us how to engage our lats to help protect the shoulder and connect to the core. The movement of the Arc Press is also a push AND pull in the upper body.
When you put it all together you get a true frontal plane pressing motion and something far more effective to help the shoulders than a landmine press. Most fail to realize that when we press either horizontally or vertically we have a need for greater core stability because the weight becomes heavier through leverage, with the landmine the opposite happens and the landmine gets lighter as it moves upwards. It is understanding some of these important movement concepts that allow us to create better solutions.
Cory Cripe of Fitness Lying Down and Jordan Rudolph of Unity Fitness do a great break down of this great and often overlooked drill.
#3: Shoulder Squat
There are many ways we change how heavy the Ultimate Sandbag feels without actually changing its actual physical load. That is a HUGE aspect of what we teach because the majority of tools, in fact ALL free weight tools (besides the barbell) doesn’t actually change its physical load which leads to people having racks of dumbbells, kettlebells, medicine balls, and so forth, the reality is what we often see as a limitation is a huge potential benefit.
The Ultimate Sandbag can be positioned in so many different ways to stress the body in a myriad of ways to build functional fitness qualities while tools like the barbell are intended to be sagittal plan tools only. A great example is the Shoulder position that we can use for lunges, step-ups, and yes, squats. I want to emphasize squats here because it is both valuable and shows where the Ultimate Sandbag can really challenge the body in ways that is difficult to impossible with other tools.
Yes, our front load, bear hug, off-set, and other positions are important, but Shoulder gives us an easy way to explain how a “light load” can be so challenging. Think of any time we have the position of shoulder we have a moving side plank. Instantly, we can change a drill like a squat that is thought of as only sagittal plane to multi-planar. Meaning we have to produce force to move up and down while ALSO resisting side to side movement.
This is actually a very advanced squat even though the loads don’t get higher than 150 or so pounds. How could that be? Even in high level powerlifters I have worked with, most lack lateral stability/strength. When put under a modest sized Ultimate Sandbag to perform a Shoulder squat we see lateral and/or rotational movement of the pelvis. Basically, they can’t stabilize the pelvis laterally when they move up and down. This has profound impact in building low back resilience, most sporting speed, and so much more.
The second component that makes this drill so challenging takes us right into one of our most popular but misunderstood DVRT drills.
#2 MAX (Multiple Axis) Lunge
Around 2007 I took my wife and physical therapist, Jessica Bento out to the local park so we could shoot some new content for our relatively young business DVRT. During that shoot I wanted her to try a new exercise I had come up with, being rather poor at creating cool names for exercises I called it the “rotational lunge”.
Unlike most lunges where the weight moved with our movement, the rotational lunge had the Ultimate Sandbag moving around our body as we tried to move as well. While lunges are inherently multi-planar like half kneeling, I wanted to amplify the lateral and anti-rotational forces that I always thought made lunging a real powerhouse. What I found was not only an exercise that accomplished that goal, but so much more!
As the weight moves around the body and we create proper tension on the handles (this gives us that connection to our core and much needed stability), we started to see how we had a dynamic lift/chop motion, we had to possess sagittal plane power in accelerating and decelerating, but also resist lateral and rotational forces, we even had a more complex kettlebell swing as while the movement pattern is not ha hip hinge we do move hip flexion to hip extension and a projection of weight. Like many of our DVRT drills, not only is strength, stability, and power needed to perform the exercise, but so is that movement accuracy.
My only regret in the movement was the name. I initially was referring to what the weight did during the exercise as I wanted the body to RESIST rotation. It was a great demonstration of needing thoracic mobility while also creating lumbar stability. That was misunderstood by the name so several years ago one of our DVRT coaches, Josh Raphael, came up with the acronym “MAX” or multiple axis of movement. We use this concept beyond the lunge, but it is a wonderful and powerful illustration of these concepts. When you add in the varying dimensions of the Ultimate Sandbag, you can amplify these qualities rather quickly!
Megan Berner of Fitness Lying Down breaks down the MAX Lunge right!
#1 Plank Lateral Drag
Most of the exercises in our DVRT system began with me working in my garage by myself and in my training facilities with clients. Thinking, “hey if we did THIS what would the result be?” For the plank lateral drag I knew I wanted to have a more thoughtful system of progressing the plank. It was already coming out that while planks were a good baseline of core strength, we ultimately wanted to be able to hold our “plank” while we resisted more forces on the body.
Like many, I had adopted exercises like plank with hand to chest touches for this purpose. However, probably like many, this was such a HUGE jump for most of my clients we couldn’t optimize it. As I learned more about how the body created movement I learned how specific chains of the body were connected that the idea of the plank lateral drag came to me.
Many are much more familiar now that we have diagonal chains the connect our body during locomotion for example. An easy one to see is our lat, thoracolumbar fasciae, and opposing glute connect to create the Posterior Oblique Sling (POS). This is an important chain to help stabilize our spine and project our body during the complex motion of locomotion.
Drills like the plank hand to chest do train the reflexive qualities of these chains. However, what if you don’t have is the reflexive capability and strength? How could we make these connections so people learned how to control their bodies better and such training concepts could be more progressive? That is where our lateral drag came in!
Performed correctly, the pre-tension on the grip helps us bring in the lats and develop some stability before we move, the position of the Ultimate Sandbag allows us to keep the load in that system rather than shoulders, and the FRICTION allows resistance to move and challenge the body in different ways as we drag.
I emphasize the friction because I see people now trying to use a wide array of tools including kettlebells to perform such movements without understanding friction is so key. While yes, you do get some friction with these other tools, they don’t have the dimension that the Ultimate Sandbag provides and we lose a lot of that deliberate action (along with not being able to create the proper pre-tension) that using the right tool provides. Most people sadly see the movement as only a means of moving the weight from point A to point B. They see only another anti-rotational plank, but miss the details that give the movement such power!
A Difficult Top 5
Providing a top 5 list for our DVRT program is so tough because it largely depends on what we are trying to train and develop. Having systems is really unusual as most rely on a handful of select exercises to solve everything. That is why we didn’t just create a “sandbag,” but a training tool that is based on movement and functional concepts and ideas to develop a system of progressions that allow people to learn and be successful faster. When I say that last line people are often surprised to hear me not talk about the sandbag being some ancient or “secret” Eastern European tool, but rather a solution for training goals!
Josh Henkin
Josh is an international presenter and strength coach who has taught in over 13 countries worldwide and consulted with some of the top fitness and performance programs in the world. You can check out his DVRT online fitness educational certifications/courses HERE