Ultimate Sandbag Workouts for Better Balance

Growing up as your traditional “fat kid” I had the additional awkwardness of having a body that I just couldn’t control. Trust me, it was great to be tall for my age, but not having physical maturity left me often to feel so uncoordinated and unbalanced.

That’s why many times clients would come to me, but have apprehension of looking stupid in their workouts I could actually be very sympathetic.

I also started to gain a better appreciation for the fact that one of the goals I would hear my clients express to me time and time again was that of “balance”. They wanted to have better balance and I was intrigued by this statement, especially because it happened quite frequently.

So, I would ask them, “why do you think you need more balance?” Interestingly enough, many times the conversation became that they associated “balance” with coordination, confidence, agility, and in many ways, real world strength.

I think this is how many people FEEL while doing circus balance training tricks!

Of course we could have a SUPER intellectual discussion on what balance really is, but because they really weren’t interested in balance for the sake of balance, I want to talk about their ACTUAL interest.

Now, it is worth noting that balance can be thought of as your ability to keep your center of mass over you base of support (bored yet?). Which is interesting because it is such a highly desirable outcome, yet again, in the gym we spend 99% of the time JUST moving up and down. This could be a BIG reason that most people don’t think they are improving their balance.

Yes, we get the other end of the spectrum, people doing all sorts of crazy circus tricks, but that isn’t balance training either!

What people REALLY want is a combination of strength, mobility, and stability. One of the best and easiest forms to see this in is simply gaining proficiency in the lunge. Yes, I know, things like rear foot elevated split squats and the like have gained more popularity, but even though as much as I like them, I tend to like lunging even more!

Why?

Because lunging has direction which increases our body awareness and our need to learn deceleration as much as acceleration. This is where our DVRT Ultimate Sandbag workouts can come into play big time!

It is something I have worked with coaches time and time again on and this past weekend really had a cool experience working with some great coaches on this concept. They had come to see me about how they could use DVRT Ultimate Sandbag workouts as a form of variety, but I think they got way more.

I had asked them if they use lunging in their programs and they bravely admitted to me that in their group settings they just didn’t find it practical. In their defense, they felt that if they couldn’t have people do it well, it wasn’t worth having them do. You can’t argue with that logic!

However, my question and what we always ask in DVRT Ultimate Sandbag workouts is, “how can we GET people to do these things!” After them showing some of our DVRT progressions it was so cool to see their eyes light up! They could actually see a way to get people lunging and more importantly, they could feel how “balance” was such an integral part of good movement.

While we have shown lots of ways of building your lunge and balance with DVRT Ultimate Sandbag workouts, I wanted you to hear a really unique perspective on how to use these methods to improve both quality of movement and better real world balance. So, check out DVRT Master, Cory Cripe, as he shows how to progress and challenge functional fitness with some really cool DVRT progressions!