Sandbag workouts for unconventional strength & power
What you get from this article & video
¶ How to properly wrangle a sandbag from the ground into a bear hug
¶ Using a lighter sandbag & a heavy one, to build more full-body power
¶ The leg & hip drive to shoulder & reverse toss a lighter or heavier sandbag
¶ Sandbag carries (two variations)
¶ Maintaining good form: Why a rounded back is okay when lifting
¶ The infinite variations of strength-cardio sandbag workouts
¶ Regressions & progressions (ways to make these moves easier and harder)
I’m not sure there’s a more enjoyable and time-efficient method to build full-body strength and VO2 max than a 15-minute sandbag workout. You’ll feel it in every region of your body the next day, and burn more calories than seems possible in a room full of dumbbells and weight plates.
As a personal testimonial, after filming the workout in this video yesterday, I woke up feeling it (in a good way) in my shoulders, hips, lower back (in a pleasant, “oh, you worked out” kind of way) and even arms and fingers, from all the grappling and gripping. And I probably burned 400 calories, judging from how much I was sweating. Good clean fun!
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If you don’t have a sandbag, they’re not expensive to buy and fill. Alternatively, your gym may have weighted balls (aka medicine balls, as we used to call them) that allow you to do a form of these sandbag workouts.
The physiology behind sandbag workouts
All four sandbag moves train your muscles against a load that shifts as you lift it, so your legs, trunk and grip have to keep adjusting to control it. The shoulder lift and the toss add speed, and speed is what we lose first. Muscle power, meaning how fast you can produce force, declines earlier and faster with age than strength does.¹ Much of that loss comes from shrinking fast muscle fibers, the ones that fire for quick, forceful movements. In a Dutch study, those fibers were 29% smaller in 26 men averaging 71 years old than in 25 men averaging 23. After six months of strength training, the older men’s fast fibers grew by about 24%.² It was a small study, and all the participants were men.
The work also trains your nervous system, which has to keep your legs, trunk and arms coordinated to control a load that won’t hold still. Strength training may help thinking itself. A 2018 review of 39 randomized trials in adults over 50 found that exercise improved cognitive function, whether or not participants already had memory or thinking problems.³ The authors recommended both aerobic and strength training of at least moderate intensity. The benefit was small, and the review covered exercise in general, not sandbag work.
Sandbag workouts that build functional strength & power
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