What's a sandbag?

***I am in no way connected to or sponsored by any of the products or people listed in this post... I just love sharing a good great awesome thing when I find it.***

After my post last week with the picture of my sandbag, I got several questions about it. 

First of all, I love it.... L.O.V.E. it!!!!

I first got inspired to get a sandbag because of the fitness goddess known as Zuzana.  If you don't know who she is yet, educate yourself here.  She has an amazing community of people, known as Bodyrockers, and her daily workouts are AMAZING!!  High intensity cardio intervals mixed with full-body strength moves.  Please, please check out her website called BodyRock.tv.

Anyway, she uses a sandbag - literally a bag filled with sand -  to do a lot of her workouts.  I did some research into other workouts I could do and came across so many different variations, I had to get one.  The bag that Zuzana uses is The Ultimate Sandbag but it's a little pricey at $99 so I found a cheap one on Amazon for half the price.  Although the one I bought has been surviving 3 - 4x/week useage for the last two months, if/when the one I have breaks, I will spend the money to get The Ultimate Sandbag.

(source)

 Notice all the different handle placements?  

That's what makes the sandbag such a good tool for me... it's so versatile and strength training is totally different with shifting weight.

Most sandbags are sold by weight (0-40 lbs., 20-70 lbs., 50-100 lbs., etc.) and come with heavy duty filler bags that you fill with sand (you have to buy the sand... any home improvement store will sell it for cheap). 

So what can you do with a sandbag?  Besides work your core like no other weight-lifting routine, almost any strength move you can do with a dumbbell/barbell or kettlbell... and some that you can't:

• deadlifts
• squats
• rows
• throws
• presses
• swings
• cleans
• drags
• windmills
• get up's
• etc, etc, etc

 Just Google or YouTube some sandbag exercises or workouts and I think you'll be pretty impressed.  Gotta go get my sandbag training on in a few... you should too!