2020-04-2
When you own a gym, you pretty much live there. That is what I did at least when I opened my gym in the early 2000’s and ran it for the following ten years. I would probably STILL be doing so if DVRT hadn’t taken off to the point where teaching became so much more of a passion of mine. Trust me, I’ve had my share of days where you go into the gym and it is dark, you leave the gym it is dark. So, the idea of a home gym really didn’t pop into my head until I realized I needed a break from my gym!
My original home gym
It was then that I found time to refresh my mind on training, think about creating better solutions, and was my Superman “fortress of solitude”. In other words my home gym became my breeding ground to re-evaluate so much of what I was doing because I wouldn’t bring my whole gym with me. I would have to think about what was MOST beneficial for me and how to maximize my training with less. It became evident what tools, concepts, and methods were actually most productive.
Renown Strength Coach, Robert Dos Remedios, has long been a proponent of home gym training that is super smart training too! It isn’t how many tools you use, but how well you use them!
The lessons of my home gym became even MORE important in 2009 when I was commissioned by the US Army Special Forces to create a program to help soldiers through the “selection” process. The caveat was it had to be able to be done anywhere and it was limited to our Ultimate Sandbags, suspension training, and bodyweight training.
Having the opportunity to help so many amazing organizations has definitely been a highlight of my DVRT career!
Those home gym workouts had served me well and helped me create a smarter system of training. My actual gym started to reflect more of my home gym because I realized how much stuff that I had that was taking up space, expensive and not giving me a good return on my investment, and where I was actually spending my time with clients. After all, it isn’t about how many tools you have but how well you use them!
Fast forward to today, Jessica and I do ALL our workouts in our home gym. We don’t have the giant squat racks, barbells, bumpers, etc. Our home gym is very efficient and we see more and more people doing the same, especially right now where most are forced to a home gym!
Our home gym is focused a lot more on these types of tools now!
Seeing more great strength coaches fall to a similar idea has been really inspiring. NSCA strength coach of the year, best selling author, and international presenter, Robert Dos Remedios has always been a BIG DVRT supporter and guess what? He mostly work out in his home gym!
Coach Dos as we affectionally call him, started to also fall in love with our water bags that we originally created for the US Army Special Forces. The goal is actually not to get the weight moving a lot, but to move so efficiently that the weight doesn’t move a lot at all!
When Coach Dos and top baseball strength coach, Mike Yudin, got together for a home gym workout they used our Power Ultimate Water Bag and if you think that was too easy you have another thing coming!
If you think that something as simple as our Ultimate Water Bags can’t produce serious results, strength coaches like Vince McConnell has been using them with top level athletes for over a decade like you see below (that was an old time Ultimate Sandbag model!).
However, it isn’t about just blowing you up, we still want to train smart! Most people don’t use our Ultimate Water bags intelligently like the coaches above. So we always want to show you smarter ways to train like these 5 great drills to optimize our Ultimate Water bags!
Our DVRT Masters, Cam Ward (Australia), Greg Perlaki (UK), and Cory Cripe (Wisconsin?!) got together this past year and shot some great ideas on how to use our water bags for really dynamic training (make sure to scroll through)!
Cory shows how one of the great aspects of the water bags is that you don’t need an anchor or pretty much anything, but just a small space to train! Love his daughter’s coaching too!
Below is a great home gym workout you can do with our DVRT water or sandbags. We wanted to do a post on the water bags because we realize people are in A LOT of different situations and may not be comfortable going to the store to get some sand or may just not be able to! That is why we wanted to give you practical solutions and show you that you can feel comfortable and safe while still doing things that are positive for you mentally and physically.
You can still get our FREE DVRT workouts HERE and you can save 30% off our Ultimate Sandbags/water bags or pretty much ANYTHING at DVRT with code “save30” HERE. Stay strong and safe!
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