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Minimal Fitness Equipment, Maximal Workouts

ultimate sandbag fitness equipment

It was probably one of the greatest accidents that would reshape how we thought about creating training programs. As we saw how maximizing functional training tools caused us to not need a lot of other “stuff”, we started seeing that having great workouts and needing tons of equipment was flat out not necessary. This would even happen when I would have the opportunity to train in gyms packed full of equipment and often just found myself in the corner training with the same equipment I had at home.

sandbag exercises

If minimalist equipment workouts are good enough for fire departments, I think we can make do too;)

Don’t get me wrong, this wasn’t to prove some point or because I am against using other equipment. However, I did come to the realization that in order to justify using another piece of equipment it had to offer me something that I wasn’t getting from the tools I was already using, or it had to help do the same thing in a unique way.

I share this with you not because I want you to necessarily become a “fitness minimalist” but because it looks like home and outdoor training is going to be the reality for many once again. Whether you are able to go to the gym and workout or have to make wherever you can your gym, it shouldn’t hold you back from achieving your fitness goals. In order to help you see how possible that is, I wanted to give you great workouts that our DVRT coaches have been sharing that teach this very idea.

Coach Robin Paget shows a great total body workout done right at her home. What makes workouts like these so great is still the balance to them and how they represent great functional fitness qualities. Even though we don’t have a lot of equipment or space it doesn’t mean we have to get redundant or stuck doing the same exercises or movement patterns.

 

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A post shared by Martín Adame, CSCS (@martinadame1)

Coach Martin Adame gives an awesome workout just with 2 pieces of equipment. A heavy kettlebell and our Burly Ultimate Sandbag. Like Greg, Martin gives great balance to his training in having a hip hinge, an upper body push, a lunge, and an upper body pull. Instead of creating excessive fatigue doing hundreds of any one pattern (this creates pattern overload and predisposes people to injury), balance in movement patterns allows us to train all functional training qualities (strength, stability, mobility, power, and endurance) at once and this also trains more muscles and in more varied ways. Meaning that sometimes they are great force, sometimes they are creating stability. The outcome is a super effective workout that is minimalist in its equipment, but maximal in what you can achieve!

 

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A post shared by Cory M. Cripe (@corymcripe)

DVRT Master, Cory Cripe and Megan Berner show some advanced functional training workouts. For one, combining multiple exercises that have us moving in different directions and working from different positions is an amazing way to build total body strength. When we think about all 3 planes of motion (sagittal: up and down, frontal: side to side, and transverse: rotation) you can see how they are all represented here and rotation is the most challenging to often teach to perform correctly, especially in drills like Around the Worlds we having accuracy and reflexive strength is the primary goals. This means not only more muscles have to work, but do so in perfect synergy.

My hope in sharing workouts like these is that you see no matter what our challenges may be, if it is spacing out in the gym and just having a few pieces, working out at home, or outside, getting really fit, healthy, and moving well is something we can all achieve!

For this week you can get our Mother’s Day special combo of our Force and Core Ultimate Sandbags for 30% off AND get 2 FREE workout programs. Just use code “mother” HERE

 

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A post shared by Cari Satre (@coachcariii)