3 Of The Best Total Body Functional Training Workouts

When things get hectic it can be difficult to focus enough to really create good functional training workouts. That is why I have once a week been providing you with great workouts you can use today in your training! Our functional training workouts are a bit different in DVRT. We truly think about how the body creates movement and all the variables we can use to create great challenges, but also give you great purpose to your training. So, when I give you 3 of my favorite DVRT Ultimate Sandbag functional training workouts, I’ll share with you what makes them so great!

The Hulk Workout

Right as we were gaining steam in DVRT the Marvel Cinematic Universe was gaining momentum at the same time. Since I grew up with many of the classic Hulk, Wonder Woman, and Spider Man television shows of the 70’s and 80’s (yea, I’m old), I thought having some fun themes to represent concepts would make understanding DVRT better.

Strength Coach, Troy Anderson, helped me a great deal especially in the early days of DVRT (before you got deployed to Afghanistan and thankfully he recently came back home safe!) and we really wanted to emphasize aspects of strength training that most people overlooked. One area of focus was to truly appreciate how DVRT functional training workouts could be strength as much as conditioning and corrective exercise.

The “Hulk” workout was named that because we wanted to emphasize our larger Ultimate Sandbags which sadly people never implement. I say sadly because they best represent the instability that many people think of when it comes to “sandbag training”. The larger dimension allows us greater load, but also more instability. When we combine that with changing our stance and how we move the weight in all three planes of motion, we build a much higher level of reactive functional training. What was the workout?

Hulk Workout: done as a circuit….

-Sprinter Thrusters x 6-8

-MAX High Pull Lunges x 30 seconds

-Sprinter Thrusters the other side x 6-8

-Grip Rows: 8-12

-Shouldering: 5-8 per side

Tactical Athlete Workout 

Over the years I have had the great honor of working with the U.S. Marines, Army, SWAT, Fire Departments, and Border Patrol. Not just sell Ultimate Sandbags to them, but actually directly work in training them and helping them achieve their goals. Our success is part of the reason that the National Strength & Conditioning Association has had me present at their national Tactical Athlete conference twice. I share this because a lot of people say they do “tactical training”, but most have actually no experience with problem solving and creating solutions for these brave men and women.

While most think that tactical training is all about how much you beat people up, that is actually the OPPOSITE reason that we have been asked to bring our DVRT functional training to these programs. The number one concern was building injury resilience. That meant finding out how to combine stability, strength, and conditioning all at once. This is a lofty goal, but this workout was a good representation of how we could achieve these performance and health goals in our DVRT functional training workouts.

The Tactical Athlete Workout

Series A: Circuit, with as little rest as possible until you complete the ladder then rest for 60 seconds

Shoulder Sprinter Squat Right

Pull-ups

Shoulder Sprinter Squat Left

Beast Drags

5/4/3/2/1: 2-3 rounds

Series B: Circuit with 30 Seconds of Rest, 30 seconds of Work

MAX Lunge Clean to Front Load Lateral Lunge Right

Front Loaded Good Mornings

MAX Lunge Clean to Front Loaded Lateral Lunge Left

Hammer Chops

What you will notice is that this workout is from 2013 and we coach and have some better programming ideas. For example, in the Beast Drag you will want to make sure to align the USB more under our body, closer to our belly button with a palm up grip. Instead of 30 seconds of work and 15 seconds of rest, we aim for 1:1 to keep the intensity. Since we had to write the book on sandbag training, it means every year we make sure to cue and program these ideas better.

Dirty 30 Workout

Probably what surprises people the most is that with just a few thoughtful exercises, we can train the whole body in much more challenging ways than most have ever experienced. That comes from the fact we move and load the body in ways that most people just never do in their functional training workouts. A great example of this is DVRT Master, Cory Cripe’s “dirty 30 workout”.

The premise is rather simple from a programming perspective because these are pretty advanced DVRT functional training workout drills. They do follow our concepts of movement patterns, but you will see how sophisticated our strength can be if we think about movement correctly. These are done for 30 seconds on, 30 seconds off and going through as a circuit. If there are two sides, do one side for 30 seconds first, then the other side.

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Our hope is that you see how much you can accomplish with our DVRT functional training workouts. Let’s face it, there is a lot of stress out there right now and having smart, effective, and fun workouts that require minimal amount of space, equipment, and time. That way functional training workouts can be accessible to anyone and everyone deserves the opportunity to be health and strong!