How to Completely Change Fitness

VERY Different Look of Fitness-DVRT Ultimate Sandbag Training

One of my favorite television shows is the Big Bang Theory. How do you not love the unloveable Sheldon Cooper! Jessica and I have a routine, 7pm on Thursdays we make sure to spend some time together watching one of our favorite shows. We were thrown for a loop when it jumped to Mondays for a bit. Just that little change seemed to throw off our week’s routine. Silly right?

A classic Sheldon Cooper quote! 

My point is that we all hate change. Rarely do we embrace it with excitement, more like apprehension and putting our hands together just hoping it is really a good thing.

That is why I get why a lot of people don’t like to change something that is so routine and familiar like their fitness. Why do something different? I’ll tell you this, if you can tell yourself with honesty that you feel like you are kicking butt, you are getting the results you want, and you feel awesome, don’t change it!!!

To be very honest, I find this rarely the case, so the real question is what should you change to? Yes, you might expect me to recommend DVRT Ultimate Sandbag Training and guess what? You are RIGHT!

Why? This past weekend I got to speak with some incredible industry professionals at the National Strength & Conditioning Association Tactical Conference (whew, that’s a mouthful!). One of my favorite people to connect with is Chris Frankel, education coordinator for TRX. Being a former professor, Chris is all about teaching which you can see right away.

I love exchanging ideas with Chris because we have so many ideas and things we really believe work. Well, Chris, being the former professor, gives me the research that actually supports our ideas a lot more than I knew ever existed.

One in particular that stood out was the idea that gets a lot of people scratching their heads, which is the idea of changing the complexity of an exercise to create a better effect. While most are use to maybe altering reps, weight, or even speed, the ideas of holding and body position, plane of motion, and stability of the implement seem very foreign and yes, a bit odd.

However, Chris was telling me about research by Toronto based professor, David Frost. You can look him up, I recommend it! Dr. Frost focuses a lot of his work on firefighter fitness. How does this help you ?

One of the most interesting ideas coming out of Dr. Frost’s research is how much movement based training impacts performance and injury resiliency. Now, most may not seem surprised, but let’s face it, most every REALLY practice it!

What specifically does movement based training mean? As Dr. Frost puts it, “keeping the standard while challenging the environment.” Starting to sound familiar? The more Chris and I spoke about this topic it made me realize how we are on the verge of seeing a big shift in fitness. Research is starting to validate new ideas like DVRT Ultimate Sandbag Training more and more. That means it will be our job to put it into practice.

Many ways we can “keep the standard and change the environment”

So, what is the “standard” Dr. Frost is speaking about? Let’s look at a deadlift for example. There is a hip hinge, a plank, and active upper body. That pattern we develop during a deadlift we want to see can we accomplish the same thing when we start to move in different directions, or change the loading position.

Many times this is where people fall apart. It even happened this weekend when we helped run a DVRT Ultimate Sandbag Training session at the conference with the US Marine HITT program director, Ryan Massimo.

During our session we first had people learn to move in very stable and simple ways. As they got the movement pattern down we challenged them to do so when they stood in different positions, or held the Ultimate Sandbag in various ways. What happened?

The good movement we once saw fell apart! The standard of good movement wasn’t there any more when we changed the environment. You would be surprised how many “strong” people this happens to when you challenge them in this manner.

Okay, you can make people look weak but are they? Think about what goes on in daily life and sport, I think the question is pretty easy. That is why you might find that with DVRT Ultimate Sandbag Training you won’t hit world records in the gym, but you will in real life!

Find out more about how we use this concept to build real functional fitness HERE

Want to get deeper into DVRT Ultimate Sandbag Training? Check out our upcoming courses HERE