The Many Benefits Of Sandbag Training

As a youth, I spent a lot of time in Africa. One thing I used to admire was the kind of physique builders and construction workers had. They never had a lot of muscle mass but they were extremely ripped. Their physiques were very defined and proportional. Their work was hard as they did not have any access to sophisticated machines like diggers and caterpillars. This was manual labor at its toughest and they put their bodies through hell day in and day out virtually every day of the year.

One such way of training to replicate this has been popular with alternative personal trainers and competitive athletes for many years. It's known as 'sandbag training'. Sandbag training is so foreign and unusual that you'll be firing up muscle groups you never knew you had and so you might find it a little tough.

1. Bigger & stronger forearms - Sandbags are a little unwieldy. The sand is always shifting around and there isn't really a proper place for you to grab a hold of. This makes them difficult to work with but also hellish on your forearms. You are constantly adjusting your grip to prevent the sandbag from sliding out of your hands and different parts of your forearms keep getting fired up. There is no better way to exercise your forearms than this dynamic exercise. An exercise like the sandbag swing will really prove tough for your forearms.

2. Bigger Shoulders & traps - Sandbag tosses, whereby you lift it above your head and throw it as far away as you can, as quickly as you can are not only great cardiovascular conditioning exercises, but excellent shoulder wreckers. Once again, all the credit is given to the constantly shifting sand which means you havent got any stability. this forces you to constantly adjust your grasp and your positioning which fires up multiple muscle groups at once.

3. Core - Constantly having to adjust and balance yourself makes for a strong core in the long run. The stability you gain from sandbag training is unmatched by regular traditional exercise.

4. Cheap - Regular construction sandbags are cheap but they are generally sold in bulk and you can only get them at certain weights (10kg, 20kg, 25kg, 50kg, 100kg). You can buy sandbags which are specially made for fitness work. They have multiple handles and are adjustable as you can add and remove the sand as you wish. While they are costlier to purchase initially, they work out cheaper in the long run since you don't need to keep purchasing different sized sandbags. Also, a single bag is better for storage.

5. Flexible - The commercial fitness sandbags come with multiple grips and handles which allow you to perform a gamut of different exercises. In fact, if you are creative enough, a large sandbag is all you need to get seriously ripped. Unfortunately, the shape and size of the sandbag can prevent you from doing more intricate, targeted isolation exercises but for general mass development, there are few ways to do it better.

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