Keeping your workouts original while achieving results will prevent burnout and maximize results. To add variety to your workout, you can use Strong Man training, dumbbells, functional training (i.e., med ball, bands), plate work or kettlebells. All of these workouts are highly motivating and produce results. This article will discuss and demonstrate how one single piece of equipment can encompass all of these training modes. Sandbags allow you to perform dumbbell, kettlebell or traditional lifts with the benefit of unilateral training, inside or out, while making your lifting program sport specific.

Variety Adds New Element

When designing your program and choosing specific lifts, applying variations of lifts is often an overlooked variable that can make a positive difference in training. In 1981, Yessis stated that, “One way to alternate the program is to do a different exercise to develop the same muscle.” Machines are often an option, but they can be expensive and can take up huge amounts of functional space. Free weights allow for a greater variety of exercises, especially dumbbells. However, dumbbells cannot be thrown if you are trying to do explosive exercises. Strongman equipment takes up a lot of room in the gym and is hard to find.

According to Siff, “The impact of changing and/or varying exercises can be immense. These changes become particularly evident if one is exposed to a sufficiently enriched environment providing novel, complex and cognitively challenging stimulation, a finding in which stresses the importance of not limiting one’s training to simple, largely unchallenging repetitive patterns of training with exactly the same weight or machines. This is one of the main reasons why I emphasize the importance of planned variations utilizing numerous different means, methods and exercises, which draw on integrative whole-body disciplines.”

Sandbags provide this “sufficiently enriched environment” to train in by taking an old exercise and adding a new element of stability and unilateral movement, which will tax the musculoskeletal and nervous system at higher levels.

Sand bag training creates a multitude of program design options that incorporate Strong Man, kettlebell, dumbbell and plate work training with traditional lifts as well as plyometrics. This allows for neuromuscular adaptation because a new training stimulus is implemented (18, 32). Use of a single bag in each hand allows for unilateral training, which maximizes neural drive (21, 24).

Bag design and use has grown and improved immensely in recent years. Some coaches utilize very rustic bags such as army surplus bags filled with sand or firearm shot with varying amounts of weight. Some of the first produced bags made commercially were different variations of these types of bags that incorporated different shapes, liner types, zippers, etc. We have made and used different types of bags to varying degrees of success. In using various styles of bags, the most effective, diverse and “user friendly” bags are those that have numerous handles, come in various weights and can be filled easily.

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