Weight Trainers United

Re: Sandbag training

Posted By: Joe Burks
Date: Saturday, 4 January 2003, at 10:21 p.m.

In Response To: Re: Sandbag training *PIC* (Roger Broeg)

For the dinosaur training fans,

use it as a "finsher" after your regular workouts.
Do a sandbag carry: bearhug, shoulder however you want to do it, carry till it drops, or do distance intervals with it.

loading into the back of a truck, doing the loads for time.

or on a seperate day, shoulder the bag 50 times each shoulder, throw in a squat if you want, or doe them seperately, bear hug lifts.

Sand bag clean and press for those that like the overhead work.

Can even do the work EDT style, doing singles doubles or triples

Joe

I think where sandbag training really shines is in two areas, grip and conditioning or increasing work capacity.

Grip both in the bearhug sense and grabbing the fabric with fingertips digging-in can do alot for your grip. I think training with these should be mandatory for any combat athlete. You also get a very big "toughening" effect on your hands, wrists and fingertips from doing this.

As for conditioning, you can do clean and push presses (very weird, but good), shoulder the bag, and shouldered squats on alternating shoulders or just lift the thing to chest level however you can. I think what works best here is to get a time interval, say 15-20 min and do as many lifts as you can, trying to increase your number each session or at least regularly. I say this because it is very annoying to be continually altering the weight in a sandbag and this is one mode of progression that won't drive you so crazy. When you work up to 50-100 lifts in that time or whatever your number is then you add a bit of sand and go again next time.

Also I have found parachute cargo bags to work better than those black navy duffels, that people normally use.

Bryce

: is very annoying to be continually altering
: the weight in a sandbag and this is one mode
: of progression that won't drive you so
: crazy.

One method that makes this easy is to get sandwhich baggies, put a lb of sand (or 5 lbsb if a big enough baggie) in it, duct tape the baggie.

This will require a little time, but will reduce the risk of busted sandbags and provide an eaiser method to add or subtract weight.