2 Best Ultimate Sandbag Training Exercises You Miss!

Nothing gets me more excited than to share how fast DVRT Ultimate Sandbag Training can change how people move, perform, and feel! It has been a crazy past several weeks taking DVRT to Japan, Taiwan, Germany, and exotic places like Orlando and Providence fo the renowned Perform Better summits! While the opportunity to teach is cool in of itself, hearing how DVRT Ultimate Sandbag Training is helping so many fitness professionals and therapists with their clients is the best part! 

Even our biggest fans are continually surprised the difference in hearing us speak versus watching a video or even reading a blog post. Listen, I love doing both, but in this day and age of too much information, the little things often get lost. Ironically, the “little things” are the BIG difference in getting results or not! 

Understanding what we are REALLY trying to teach in DVRT Ultimate Sandbag Training as far as how to use your body is far more important than the exercise or even the Ultimate Sandbag itself. Just having the tool isn’t enough. As we often explain to people, the Ultimate Sandbag is the hardware, the DVRT system is the software. If you don’t understand the software, the hardware doesn’t seem to matter than much. 

A few great examples of seeing people’s light bulbs go off is when we covered a few key concepts in some of our more popular but misunderstood DVRT Ultimate Sandbag Training exercises. 

The Press Out

This simple looking DVRT Ultimate Sandbag Training drill is still one of my favorites, but sadly one of those people really don’t “get”. I don’t blame people, I try to do the same thing with other programs. Trying to get a real understanding of what someone is saying or doing from a 30-60 second video is TOUGH! That’s why even though the written word seems to have decreasing value, I still believe it is very important to convey why drills like our DVRT Ultimate Sandbag Training Press Outs are such a vital movement!

Our Press Out can come in so many forms and progressions! 

You generally see us perform these drills from half kneeling positions. It doesn’t mean you can’t do them from others such as simple standing (great for those where getting down to the ground isn’t reasonable for the individual. The benefit of being half kneeling is that it makes the person somewhat unstable. In doing so, we can more easily teach them HOW to create stability by creating more tension into the feet. The simple action of using BOTH feet activates our hamstrings, glutes, and overall core. 

That is developing strength and stability from the ground up, but we need to accomplish the same thing from the upper body down. This is where understanding the why’s and how’s of DVRT Ultimate Sandbag Training make a HUGE difference. So, first off, why use the Ultimate Sandbag versus anything else. Does it really matter? The simple answer is a resounding YES, but let me explain why. 

One of the keys to developing the proper tension in the upper body is deliberately using the hands to “pull apart” the Ultimate Sandbag. The pliability of the Ultimate Sandbag allows this action and causes our lats and core to become more engaged. Trying to do the same with a rigid object like a kettlebell or weight plate doesn’t allow the same tension so we don’t accomplish the same engagement. 

You see this same idea become more and more important as we layer progression of the Press Out with either changing the motion of the Ultimate Sandbag or the direction we hold it. The ability to “pull apart” the Ultimate Sandbag is one of the biggest keys in having success in the exercise!

This continues to be essential when we change direction in an example like going into an overhead chop. Our Ultimate Sandbag Training Press Outs are all the same as doing a plank. Since the purpose of the plank is to teach the core how to brace, you see how effectively the Press Out accomplishes this goal while tying in the important lats and glutes. 

As the Ultimate Sandbag travels from Press Out to overhead chop we amplify the need of the core to resist extension of the trunk and challenge our ability to keep tension in the feet as well as the lats. Most people get so focused on lifting the weight up, they forget it is actually about pushing their body down! This simple change in focus during DVRT Ultimate Sandbag Training drills is the difference between getting great core strength and shoulder mobility versus feeling discomfort in the shoulders!

The Hip Bridge

Something I really wanted to emphasize at this past weekend’s summit is that words matter! In talking with former Stanford Strength Coach and all around title contender for smartest person I know, Brandon Marcello, we talked about how communication is such a vital aspect of successful coaching. That our words matter in helping people understand the why’s as well as the how’s. 

A great example is the hip bridge. You might think it is semantics from calling it a glute bridge but it actually matters. Changing our words alters how we coach and the intent of the exercise. When we say a glute bridge we are implying all the work is done by the glutes (go figure) and how do we get the glutes to work? We tell people to “lift their hips up” and “squeeze their glutes”. These are two pointless and some ways damaging cues we can offer. 

This is a big reason in DVRT Ultimate Sandbag Training we spend so much time educating people on understanding how the body creates movement. At no point in life do your glutes just randomly squeeze. Imagine walking around and all of a sudden your glutes squeezing, that would be really weird right?! Trust me, I have used the cue, but I also learned it really didn’t help. 

Our glutes become active as a byproduct of what our feet do! Physical therapist calls this “chain reaction” and he is right! The science shows a chain of events occurs when our foot strikes the ground, going up our body and impacting our glutes. So, it isn’t about squeezing your glutes, it is about understanding how to use your feet and getting them to push into the ground! 

Teaching people to push down into their feet removes almost all, if not all, discomfort people feel in their low backs while also activating the muscles we want to train (glutes, hamstrings, lower leg, and core). Of course, like the Press Out, that is half of what we are teaching people in DVRT Ultimate Sandbag Training. 

Just like the Press Out we also have to connect the core and lats to the movement. This is how our body is designed to function so simply, if you don’t do this, you aren’t actually using functional training. That is why we create similar tension in the upper body by pulling the handles apart on the Ultimate Sandbag. 

Simple right? We want DVRT Ultimate Sandbag Training cuing to be easy enough where my mom and dad could understand what I wanted them to do with their bodies. This is our foundation for the hip bridge, but knowing that the glutes are to not only extend the hips, but stabilize our pelvis means that I can have many layers of progression. 

The most obvious should be adding in a marching motion. This is a great drill to teach strength of the pelvis and glutes, but also be a screen for more complex patterns like lunging and loaded carries. If we can’t stabilize the pelvis in the more stable environment of the ground, progressing to more complex DVRT Ultimate Sandbag Training exercises is going to be tough. 

Changing the direction of the Ultimate Sandbag, like the Press Out, provides us another very valuable option to challenge the connection to the chains of our body as well as training our bodies as they are designed for movement. 

Combining these elements allows us to build successful progressions in DVRT Ultimate Sandbag Training, but also gives us the knowledge of how to create great challenge without ever changing the physical weight! Giving you the ability to accomplish so much with very little is one of the things we are proudest most about DVRT Ultimate Sandbag Training. 

My hope in spending time emphasizing these important points with you is that you get such better results from the time and effort you spend using DVRT Ultimate Sandbag Training. I have seen too many people rapidly change from just learning these concepts I feel like they are TOO good not to keep discussing!

Love the knowledge of the body? Check out our DVRT educational programs HERE and if you want to see how we put it all together, check out our DVRT workout programs HERE and great DVRT accessories like our Ultimate Core Strap HERE for 25% off with coupon code “summersale”.