The New Big 3 Ultimate Sandbag Exercises

It is pretty much my BIGGEST challenge nowadays. How do get people to think differently about their fitness and what Ultimate Sandbag exercises really mean. It really comes from understanding why we should even bother to think differently. You might believe that such a concept sounds familiar, it should!

Around 1997 Apple started pushing the concept of “Think Different.” The campaign really revolutionized Apple and most people gave Steve Jobs credit for it. The interesting thing is, it wasn’t a Steve Jobs concept! Rather, a marketing group was to pitch a new concept to Steve Jobs as he first came back to a struggling Apple company.

You see Apple was failing, many in the tech world believed they would die and there was all sorts of talk about the failures of Apple. The marketing company sat around many ideas trying to figure out a new message for Apple. At the time, IBM had a concept of “Think IBM”, and in their marketing meeting the staff thought they had to be “different” than IBM. They had one proposal they were building with pictures of individuals like Einstein, Ghandi, Lennon, and other people that revolutionized the world.

The team started to fall in love with the idea and concept, especially when they put it with Seal’s hit song, Crazy. The key lyrics being, “We’re never going to survive unless we get a little crazy.” The reality that people that change the world see, think, and do things differently.

While people can focus on the “thinking differently” part, it isn’t just about being different, it is about solving issues. All the innovators of the world were trying to solve large social issues. Complex issues that required people to think differently.

Now, I am not going to claim on ANY level that we are combating the complex social issues that many of these amazing individuals did, yet, I like to believe we are trying to do our part to help people live better.

That is why it actually breaks my heart when I see people with such wonderful intentions of positively changing their lives and they go down a road actually counterproductive to their goals.

Why These 3 Ultimate Sandbag Exercises Will Make You Train Differently

In order to really understand what I am talking about, you have to know the problem. In this case I am speaking about how many times I hear people talk about to be strong, to be “functional” you should focus on the “big 3”. Somehow the world of Powerlifting has been able to influence other aspects of strength training and the big three of squat, deadlift, and bench press have become a standard.

Performance doesn’t always mean health, but it doesn’t mean we can’t do these things!

Before I go too far, let me say I have no inherent problem with squats, deadlifts, and bench, I DO have a problem of them being over valued by people with goals of being health, mobile, athletic, and real world strong. The sales pitch to many is that these three lifts do all of these things, but it really doesn’t make any sense.

For one, just watch Powerlifters for awhile and you will see that they suffer from some real physical issues. It is after all a sport, and a hard one at that!

The other easy falsehood is watch how people move in life and sport and you will see that our bodies are meant for SO much more than moving up and down. We move in such dynamic, powerful, and fluid ways that if we want a level of strength and fitness that makes us healthy, mobile, and functional, then we have to focus on those attributes as our larger picture of strength!!

The NEW BIG 3 Ultimate Sandbag Exercises

If you are going to pose a problem, you better offer a solution. That is why I think the REAL Big 3 focus for people are better represented by THESE DVRT Ultimate Sandbag exercises. Let me explain before your head explodes.

Deadlift-Single Leg Front Loaded Good Morning

While many might think I am trying to sell you on Ultimate Sandbag exercises I am just good at, I’ll be honest that these are drills I am constantly striving to become better in performing. I was actually a pretty good deadlifter, even with a bad back.

Building to almost a 550 deadlift in my best, you could see it would be the EASIER thing for me to be a big proponent of the deadlift. Yet, I think the Single Leg Front Loaded Good Morning actually does more for more my body. I remember first developing this drill and finding standing on my right leg with just a 30 pound Power Ultimate Sandbag to be incredibly challenging!

It made me start to question the value of my big deadlift if I had SUCH an imbalance and weakness. Why though? Why this DVRT Ultimate Sandbag Training exercise?

For one, being on a true single leg gives us a better indication of real world strength and stability that just about anything else. Your foot and lower leg have HUGE impact upon the rest of your body and if you have issues at your foundation, it WILL impact the rest of your body!

Then we have the fact to do DVRT Single Leg Front Loaded Good Mornings well, you must be able to produce AND resist forces at a high level. This the VERY basis for our real world movements. Lastly, there is the challenge to use our core strength with our hips and ground to learn to develop efficient and functional movement. So, it isn’t about being harder, but smarter!

Bench Press-Clean & Press

While most of us growing up with the bench press as THE upper body movement. The desire to bring back more well rounded fitness concepts has led us to looking back to move forward. That means looking to what some of the best athletes did some 100 some years ago. When advertising, internet, and other things didn’t make the same influence on fitness.

Ironically, the bench press wasn’t there. The bench press was a more recent invention as strength training equipment companies started to become a thing in the 1920’s and 30’s. Before that, the standard for upper body strength was lifting weight overhead! Part of that was convenience and accessibility, but it also may have been brilliant.

The problems with people shoulders, core, and low backs, was not as prevalent. Funny how part of this change was the focus on people moving to laying on their backs to train for real world strength. Just saying that makes no sense.

THE exercise that was a standard was the Clean and Press. So much so, it was part of the Olympics until 1972. Great, sounds good, but why focus on our DVRT Ultimate Sandbag Training Clean and Press? The most obvious is the movement accuracy and precision that our Clean and Press takes. While people can “out muscle” other forms of the lift, the problem that a lot of people have with our DVRT Clean and Press is making sure their body works in perfect harmony. Strength is required, but so is stability, movement accuracy, and mobility. Pretty cool for something relatively simple!

Squat-MAX Lunge

It is hard to make people think that the squat is NOT the king of all lower body exercises (although I think I make a strong point HERE), but research and just watching every day movement shows us otherwise.

Of course this isn’t to say do not squat, but we should question are we placing TOO much emphasis on the squat, particularly back squat! You could imagine that just wanting to “sell you” Ultimate Sandbags I could talk about squatting with the Ultimate Sandbag. There are great Ultimate Sandbag exercises with squats, so it wouldn’t be hard at all!

Trying to convince you that Ultimate Sandbag exercises like the MAX Lunge is such a better option is not an easy one. Lunging is harder than squatting, getting people to be different by doing the harder thing isn’t ever easy. However, it is the right thing to at least try to share with people WHY this can be so beneficial to your fitness.

When you lunge in of itself, you get more mobility, stability, and real world strength (with directional movement) than you do about with anything else. The MAX lunge teaches us again, how to create AND resist force, but in all three planes of motion. Our DVRT Ultimate Sandbag exercises like the  MAX Lunge builds the SAME qualities we use when we walk, run, or really do our ACTUAL real world activities. It can be corrective, it can be high performance, most importantly, it can be what you NEED it to be!

In all honesty, I don’t want you to really “think different”, I WANT you to strive for better! I hope this at least motivates you to question if you are doing that for you, not for others!

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