One-Tool Workout: Sandbag

Get functionally jacked with these two quick and dirty military-style sandbag routines.

- Joe Wueben

IF YOU’VE GOT AN OLD DUFFEL BAG STASHED IN YOUR closet and a sandbox in your backyard, you’re unknowingly sitting on a fitness goldmine. Throw a bunch of sand in the bag, zip it up, and you’ve created one of the greatest strength and conditioning tools known to man: a sandbag.

“The sandbag isn’t just another free weight,” says Matthew Palfrey, a sandbag-training specialist in Sydney, Australia, and owner of Sandbag Fitness (sandbag fitnessstore.com). “Because of the constantly moving center of mass, you’ll have to fight hard to control the bag when using it. This develops great grip strength and stability. And when performing exercises overhead, you’ll need plenty of core strength to maintain your technique. It’s this simplicity that attracts many people to the sandbag, because you can get a lot of bang for your buck.”

Ego alert: You won’t be able to use as much weight with a sandbag on a given exercise as you’d use for its barbell, dumbbell, or machine counterpart. The dimensions of the sandbag, its unbalanced and shifting load, and its less ergonomic (or completely absent) handles will collectively make 50 pounds feel like a hundred, if not more.

“People are often put off by sandbag training because on Day 1 they find themselves working with this dynamic free weight that doesn’t cooperate,” Palfrey says. “It’s demoralizing to suddenly drop 50% of what you can normally lift for an exercise. But stick with it. Training with a sandbag will pay dividends.”

No sandbox at home? No problem. A bag of sand at a home-improvement store is insanely cheap. (Think: $4 for a 50-pound bag.) And you can buy a sandbag specifically designed for training for as little as $50 online.