How Do You Make DVRT Work For You

Cory Cripe, DVRT Master (Creator of DVRT Movement Strength & Dynamic Strength)

Teaching is why I wanted to become a fitness professional. Now being able to do more with DVRT is something that seriously drives me! I always enjoy going to a Perform Better summit and assisting Josh with his hands-on, and I love instructing DVRT workshops & certifications. However, there seems to be a common theme with these events: attendees will proclaim how amazing DVRT is based on their experience with it and see the benefits of incorporating it into their programming, but they’re not actually certain how to make DVRT work for them!

And this is one of the reasons I love DVRT – it makes you think! It’s not one of those “flash in the pan” gimmicks where if I do this squat with this piece of equipment, it’ll be cool and my clients will think I’m awesome (for a little while, at least)!

For this very reason I felt compelled to create the Dynamic Strength Training program. To break down how easy it actually is to implement the DVRT system into your training whether you’re a fitness pro or enthusiast. Getting a better understanding of how to seamlessly progress or regress a movement will make any training session more effective and efficient!

You might look at what’s being posted on social media and think that DVRT is filled with all these different exercises using the Ultimate Sandbag (and other functional training tools) and you’d be not wrong for that. But it’s so much more than exercises – it’s a system that provides solutions!

What do I mean by solutions? How does that pertain to the fitness world?

Do you have troubles performing lunges? Have you ever tried to coach someone that physically cannot do a lunge? Or have you seen some doing lunges that has absolutely NO business lunging?

I remember back in the day making the mistake of having a lunge station and if someone couldn’t perform lunges with weights, I would have them simply move to bodyweight lunges thinking this would cure everything. WRONG! Moving to a bodyweight exercise did not help their lunge performance and what I couldn’t verbally correct with my stellar coaching I would just have to turn a blind eye and pray that grinding away will somehow make it better!

This is an example of how many layers we can break down an exercise!

This is where we at Fitness Lying Down are able to problem solve the lunge in our group training sessions through the “magic” of DVRT. Even though we have a “lunge” station, you might see three variations of lunges. How so you might ask?

We offer three different levels per exercise in our group training sessions. Level 1 is for our beginners, or someone that might have difficulties doing the exercise – we want to make sure our clients have a sense of success at FLD. And if they can’t lunge, they realize it and know it’s not what needs to be done and probably feel frustrated somewhat a failure because they can’t do what we’re asking. So, we provide them the opportunity to still receive the lunge experience and all it’s benefits without actually lunging – WHAT?!?!?

You probably will see our Level 1 peeps in a lunging station performing arc presses in a half kneeling position. Looking at this you might not believe they’re working the lunge at all. However, we understand movement and not just exercises so when we have them in the half kneeling position – this is the bottom of their lunge and most likely the part that needs more strength focus.

The part of DVRT that I love the most is the system that helps us give the RIGHT exercise to people. No one exercise fits everyone, but everyone should find the right level of movement for themselves!

Learning to stabilize in this unstable environment while moving the Ultimate Sandbag side-to-side in the arc press is exactly a great way to build that lunge strength by teaching them to use both their feet and connect the lower and upper body through the core. Exactly what a solid lunge requires!

Level 2 is where you will see a basic lunge exercise – holding the USB in the front loaded position for those “oh so good core feelings” and total body connections. Level 3 is where we can have a little more fun in the programming and include a variety of the more advanced DVRT lunges: fist loaded, shoulder loaded, or one of the many MAX lunge variations – so many possibilities! 

For our advanced clients maybe we don’t step back, but step forward and completely change the nature of the movement – and then all the combinations we can use with a forward lunge. And just to think, back in the day all I knew was either reverse lunges with weight or reverse lunges without weight!

It really gets me excited and brings such joy to my heart when I am coaching a group session at FLD and see the movement stations (what I like to call playgrounds) and seeing three different levels of exercises to satisfy the movement’s needs.

How amazing it is to have a station dedicated for push ups, but coaching lateral plank drags and bird dog drags using the Ultimate Sandbag, as well. What’s that? It’s a USB power clean station, but it’s also this person’s first session with us? Well, I’m going to have you learn the hip hinge first and rock out some deadlifts using the Ultimate Sandbag. 

Oh – your hip hinge is deserves more than a deadlift, but still not ready for the demands of the power clean? Behind door number two we have a stunning good morning exercise to make all your hip hinge dreams come true for today’s session. Low back is giving you some problems and you’re worried deadlifts are going to make it worse? Let me calm your fears and have you lie on your back because today you’ll be doing one of our many hip bridge variations. You’re welcome!

DVRT gives us the freedom not to just be exercise-driven trainers, but problem-solving coaches. And the more I continue to practice it, the better I get at it and being able to proactively solve problems even before they come up. I feel it’s my duty as a DVRT Master instructor not to only instruct and educate people about DVRT, but even more importantly get everyone excited for the life changing experiences that come from being able to successfully implement DVRT into your training programs.

Save 30% on Cory’s new Dynamic Strength program where he breaks down these levels of movements so you can run the most effective workouts around! Use coupon code “dynamic” HERE

You can see three different levels of overhead pressing. Not only three levels, but you see the gentleman closest to the camera starts to fatigue and lose his feet and core and leans back. This tells us we’ve reached the point where more is not better, he can get the weight overhead, but HOW he does so is being lost!