How To Get REALLY Strong with DVRT Ultimate Sandbag Workouts
2021-03-26
It is funny in a way that in 2021 we have a pretty poor understanding of what strength means. After all, we know that a gymnast, a weightlifter, a hockey player, and so on can all be very strong, but their strength isn’t demonstrated in the same way. So, when we have debates about this or that exercise, program, or even implement making you “strong” I often need to know what people mean by such an assertion.
For example, if you are looking to use DVRT Ultimate Sandbag workouts exclusively to become an elite powerlifter, that probably won’t happen. That doesn’t mean that DVRT can help a powerlifter but that is a very specific sport with a specific skill set, and so forth. Just like if you power lift exclusively, it won’t make you an elite gymnast. I make this point because I still hear the whispers of people saying that DVRT can’t make you really strong. It is “nice” for stability and conditioning but not to get you seriously strong.
I’ve been in this industry long enough to be able to translate the thought process and it isn’t very nuanced. Basically this claim centers around the idea that if you compare an Ultimate Sandbag to a barbell in say a deadlift, there is no way a barbell that can go 600 pounds plus can be challenged by a 150 pound Burly Ultimate Sandbag. To that extent, I would say that is true, to a degree.
You see, the fault in the premise is that we are chasing strength in exercises and not movements. Huh? What’s the difference? Well, a deadlift is a hip hinge for example, but a hip hinge exercise doesn’t have to a deadlift or the way you typically think of a deadlift! That is why we have to focus on the movement patterns and not just the exercises.
We discussed this quite a bit in DVRT Master, Cory Cripe’s post the other day when we he discussed hip hinge progressions like those below.
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We can’t use a barbell really that way and so we can make someone really strong and train in more sophisticated ways of a movement pattern if we don’t get stuck on individual exercises, but think about how we are designed to function as humans as well as all the attributes higher level movements make us have to train. Coach Evan Supinach shows how we take these concepts to a higher level of power training which increases our need for combined strength and stability in these DVRT power cleans.
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A big part of my desire to open people’s eyes to what it means to be strong is that it is more than a weight you can move. If that was the case we would all go to machine based training because we can all lift the most load when we are most stable. That is exactly the case with a lot of the exercises that we often deem necessary to being strong, but don’t have much evidence to support that. For example, people say you have to squat heavy and a lot to build a strong body, but research shows that rear foot elevated split squats can be just as beneficial if not more so!
The above study shows the force and amount of muscles active on a rear foot elevated split squat are just as good as a back squat and often even better! When we add our combinations of ways we can use the Ultimate Sandbag to load our body as DVRT Japan Master, Taizo Omura shows, we can build so much strength, but also better movement. You would be surprised how challenging these movements are and how strong they can make you!
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So, we have the ability to load the body differently than a barbell (which a barbell is often used in the most stable positions like the back) and we can change how we move when we lift the weight (most barbell lifts are just up and down). This means we should be really questioning what being strong means, because if you can only be “strong” when you are perfectly balanced and stable, then are you REALLY strong?
In DVRT we have one more unique way to build strength that almost no other tools has, the instability of the implement itself! Most people intuitively get sandbags are unstable, but outside of the weight shifting they don’t know why. There is more to the instability of the Ultimate Sandbag than just a moving weight (which IS tough!), we have the dimension of the Ultimate Sandbag (bigger Ultimate Sandbags not only move more but are more difficult to the whole body to hold), and we have the fact that ALL the weight is away from where we grip which is unlike ANY other tool (kettlebells still have weight in their handles). A moving weight, an awkwardly sized weight, and a leveraged weight makes those weights MUCH heavier than most people think of when it comes to barbells or even dumbbells. If you think you are strong, see if you can keep up with DVRT UK master, Greg Perlaki on these Burly heavy Ultimate Sandbag lifts.
We only want people to train smarter and think deeper about what they are doing in their training. A lot of people don’t know what to do or why they are suppose to do it, hopefully this solves a lot of those questions for people on why DVRT is such a versatile system for corrective exercise, mobility, fitness, and yes, getting you seriously strong!
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