Hey, Ross Enamait over there at RossTraining.com has published a conditioning E-book for fighters. In his book he talks about doing all of these different lifts with a sandbag. Well, what he recommends is getting a military duffel bag, as well as abunch of 5lb zip lock bags, and then filling the zip lock bags with sand and filling up the duffel bag. Supposedly you can make a very heavy ‘sandbag’ like this. It sounds simple.
So he recommends doing a lot of lifts with this sand bag. Over head press, Dead lift, Back squat, front squat, etc.
I want to know what your thoughts are on this. I have been looking to design an outdoor only workout for myself and I have been considering taking this up. I would super-set this with 100m sprints to build up my bodies ability to handle lactate and to just get a hardcore anaeorbic workout.
Here is what I was thinking :
Jog 100m, sprint 100m(back to start where the sang bag is)
Squats to failure.
Jog 100m, sprint 100m
Overhead press to failure
Jog 100m, sprint 100m
Dead-lift to failure
Jog 100m, sprint 100m
Push-ups with sandbag on back
And then repeat this cycle 4 times. Not sure how long to rest in between.
I would just like to design some high-intense training with the sandbag and running. Any suggestions would be great. I want to change of the pace of things, shock my muscles a bit.
It does seem mental to me too. Maybe I will tone it down a bit, but I just want to design a workout with sprinting and sand bag lifting that involves constant movement.
All of those exercises to failure change the purpose of the circuit itself. Using the sandbag for conditioning purposes is great, but you could definitely bring the reps to a set amount for each exercise and still reap the full benefit in my opinion.
Otherwise, I love seeing someone else using odd objects in their training.
Do you have any of Ross’ books or his DVD? They would give you some very good workouts to follow and different ways to set them up for maximal strength, strength endurance, conditioning, etc.
There are a variety of ways you can use the sandbags for all of the above and with methods like density training, Tabatas, etc.
I agree with Nate Dogg that getting one (or all) of Ross’s books or DVDs would be really good. He has some really great ideas on strength and conditioning with sandbags. His books are inexpensive (like 25 dollars), and he is more than willing to answer any questions you might have.
If you look on his website, go to articles, and there are a couple of sample sandbag workouts on there to get you started.
I’m a small guy, so I was planning on working with a 125lb sandbag for the purpose of this workout.
Great suggestions! I will check out some of his books and DVD’s. I just love this idea. I have friends who are too broke/lazy to come to the gym with me, but they want to get in shape. I bet doing some sandbag work + sprints would whip them into shape in no time.
To Nate Dogg, since I do have access to a gym I doubt I would go with sand bag training to improve strength. But for building muscle endurance and getting a killer anaerobic/aerobic full body workout, I think they look great.
To ebomb : The reason why I wanted to go to failure was to get maximum lactate production. By having constant movement in the circuit, and following the sprints with sand bag lifts to failure, I would be having a greater lactate inducing workout than I could get doing it at my gym. Not to mention that this is a BIG change from my training style lately(Upper body/lower body split).
Thanks for the responses guys. I will definitely check out the DVD.
Similar to what ebomb said if i was doing the circiut I’d have a good warm up jog( in doing so I’d take the other 100m jogs out), add set rep ranges for the squat and deadlift (since your already working your legs) but keep failure sets for OH press and push ups.
Another idea is to get 2 sand bags and perform the 100m sprints between them.
IMO that would really rev up intensity.
Similar to what ebomb said if i was doing the circiut I’d have a good warm up jog( in doing so I’d take the other 100m jogs out), add set rep ranges for the squat and deadlift (since your already working your legs) but keep failure sets for OH press and push ups.
Another idea is to get 2 sand bags and perform the 100m sprints between them.
IMO that would really rev up intensity.
sounds good, but u might want to have a set number of reps, maybe like cut the reps short from 5 reps to failure, because if your going to failure but you can repeat it 4 times, then something jus aint right you know what i mean, and maybe u might want to start off with 5 minute rest between sets and then just shave off 30 seconds very week or something like that, just my 2 cents