Week 1

by Matthew Palfrey November 30, 2014 0 Comments

You'll find the details for this weeks lessons below. Please use the comments field at the end of the post to include your performance for the workouts or share any feedback, advice or comments you might have.

Lesson 1

Perform 100 Ground-to-Overhead sandbag lifts as quickly as possible. As the name suggests, this workout requires that you lift the sandbag from the ground and then over your head (so that your arms and legs are locked out). You need to do that 100 times to complete the workout. The sandbag can touch the ground briefly between lifts but if you need to drop the sandbag to rest then there is a 20 Squat penalty (bodyweight only). 

There is no weight requirement but I'd suggest you aim for something in the region of 25% of your bodyweight.

Pro-Tip: the trick to getting through these types of giant set workouts is to tackle it with a plan. While it's admirable to try to get through the workout without resting your performance will undoubtedly begin to suffer later on in the session. Sometimes taking the penalty and using it as a rest period is a far more effective use of your energy. My advice would be to break the 100 repetition total down to sets of 20-25, moving quickly and efficiently through them. 

Lesson 2

10 Sandbag Overhead Walking Lunges (5 each leg)
10 Sandbag Floor Presses

As many rounds as possible in 15 minutes.

Pro-tip: paired exercises like this can be a great way to maximise the efficiency of your workouts but only if you are mindful of the intensity. The benefit of the pairing here, lower body/upper body, is that you should be able to minimise muscular fatigue to a certain degree. Your cardiovascular system will be working hard throughout the session though. My advice is to approach this session with a 1 round per minute goal in mind. A stopwatch that beeps on the minute is useful here.

Lesson 3

Sandbag Bear Hug Squats
Sandbag Push Presses
Sandbag Cleans

Complete 10 repetitions of each exercise, then 9, then 8 etc. until you finish by completing a round of 1 repetition for each exercise. 

Pro-tip: ladder sets like this can be a real mental challenge, especially if the intensity is high from the first round. The key to getting through them (apart from working hard) is to work towards the 7th round, when following a 10 round target. By that point you'll have completed 34 repetitions of each exercise with only 21 left to go. Knowing this is good as it is common for people to get 2 or 3 rounds into the session and feel a huge sense of dread at the fact that they have 7 or 8 left to go. 

See you next week!

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Also in Sandbag Fitness Mastery Course