Ultimate Sandbag Exercises for Smarter Muscle

It has been a few weeks since I last discussed our DVRT “Big 6” exercises (you can read about why we chose these six DVRT movements HERE) . I wanted to give you a chance to work on some of the DVRT Big 6 movements and see if you were able to identify where you may have been lacking and how powerful these drills can be. If you are scratching your head to remember which six movements I am referring to they are…

1. Shouldering
2. Lateral Drag
3. Shoveling
4. Sprinter Stance Shoulder Squat
5. Half Kneeling Arc Press
6. MAX Lunge

The point of having the Big 6 list was to give you a standard to work towards and measure you progress in our DVRT system. However, if you never gave it a shot I hope today’s post will really inspire you to re-examine how important these six drills can be for your training goals. 

Funny enough, these six can also serve as an awesome workout program. What many people may have not realized is that we covered almost all the 7 foundational movement patterns with these six movements in different ways.

Shoulder: Hip Hinge/Anti-Rotation/Anti-Lateral Flexion

Lateral Drag: Horizontal Push/Anti-Rotation

Shoveling: Rotation/Hip Hinge

Sprinter Stance Shoulder Squat: Squat/Anti-Lateral Flexion

Half Kneeling Arc Press: Lunge/Push/Pull/Anti-Lateral Flexion

MAX Lunge: Lunge/Anti-Rotation

We could make a case for gait patterns in several of these, but let’s not overly complicate these for now. My goal in pointing this out is that if we have taken time to build proficiency in these movements we can have great success in building workouts from them. How we organize these workouts should by trying to minimize redundancy in the movement patterns. Here are some examples…..

Workout 1: 

Shouldering

Lateral Drag

MAX Lunge

Bent Row

***Wait bent row?! I wanted to give a more direct pulling movement to just balance out our training to a higher level. 

Workout 2:

Shoveling

Half Kneeling Arc Press

Sprinter Stance Shoulder Squat

Pull-ups

You could easily repeat these in four days a week, changing the order, reps, and load. For example….

Workout 1:
A1. Shouldering 3 x 8-10 per side

A2 Lateral Drag 3 x 3-5

A3. MAX Lunge 3 x 10-12

A4. Bent Row 3 x 6-8

Workout 2:
A1. Shoveling x 30 seconds rest for 30 seconds

A2. Half Kneeling Arc Press x 30 seconds rest for 30 seconds (alternate sides per set)

A3. Sprinter Stance Shoulder x 30 second rest for 30 seconds then switch sides

A4. Chair Pull-ups (see below) x 30 seconds rest for 30 seconds

Workout 3:

A1. MAX Lunge 4 x 6-8 (heavier and 2 second pause at bottom)

A2. Bent Row 4 x 10-12

A3. Shouldering 4 x 4-6 (heavier load)

A4. Lateral Drag x 5-7 

Workout 4:

A1. Sprinter Stance Shoulder Squat 4 x 6-8 per side

A2. Pull-ups 4 x 3-5

A3. Shoveling 4 x 8-10

A4. Half Kneeling Arc Press 4 x 4-6 (heavier load)

The goal is to show you how we can train to be strong, fit, mobile, and feeling our best just by focusing on smarter exercises. Don’t think we are ONLY about these 6, but what a great start to exploring real world strength training.

Don’t miss our DVRT Online Education Sale where you get 30% off ANY of our great DVRT Certifications and Courses AND you get 100 FREE workouts with code “pb30” HERE. If you want to grab our awesome Core, Kick Starter, Power, and Force Ultimate Sandbags you can for 20% off with code “save20” HERE