Week 4

by Matthew Palfrey December 21, 2014 0 Comments

Welcome to week 4 of the Sandbag Fitness Mastery Course. A big congratulations to everyone who is still with us at this half way point in the course.

A few people have asked why this course wasn’t scheduled to finish before Christmas, or at least to have taken a week off over Christmas. My answer is pretty simple - anyone who trains regularly understands that life gets in the way. When you really think about it there is always something that can get in the way. Yes, you might not be able to train as normal over this period and your performance may not be as good as it regularly is but that’s ok. In my experience of coaching people over the past 20 or so years one of the key factors in a persons ability to succeed over the long term is their resilience to “bumps in the road”. Those bumps might be work, family, energy levels, mental state or any number of other factors.

The only way to get over bumps is to go over them or go round them. The one way to fail is to stop dead because there are bumps in the road.

So, the lessons continue this week and I hope you’ll find some time to get through them. But if not, then I hope to see you back stronger than ever next week and raring to go! If you are celebrating Christmas then I hope you have a fantastic time with friends, family and loved ones.

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

100 Sandbag Back Squats

100 Sandbag Squat and Press (hold a sandbag and chest height, squat and press it overhead in one movement)

100 Sandbag High Pulls

You must complete each exercise before you are able to move onto the next. Use a running clock and aim to complete the full session of 300 repetitions as quickly as you can.

There is no weight requirement but I'd suggest you aim for something in the region of 25-35% of your bodyweight.

Pro-Tip: this is a serious conditioning workout that could turn into a very long session indeed if you don’t approach it with a good plan. Either way you should prepare yourself for what will probably be the longest session on the course so far. The absolute worst case scenario is hitting complete muscular fatigue too early on in a set. To combat this force yourself to take some rest periods. My advice is to break down each exercise into 5 sets of 20 repetitions, or something similar. Take a 10-20 second rest between each set and then blast through the session as quickly as you can. 

Lesson 2

3 Sandbag Deadlifts

6 Sandbag Shoulder Squats each side (squat with your sandbag over one shoulder and repeat on the opposite side)

9 Sandbag Cleans

12 Burpees with a Push Up 

Aim to complete as many rounds as you can in 20 minutes.

There is no weight requirement but I'd suggest you aim for something in the region of 40-50% of your bodyweight.

Pro-Tip: there is no escaping the fact that this is a big chunk of work to get through with very little resting time on any of the exercises. Where you decide to take your rest (if you take any at all) is going to be dependent on your own strengths and weaknesses. Personally, as a slightly bigger guy, Burpees destroy me so I like to take a rest straight after those as I can power through the other exercises without too many issues. 

Lesson 3

Sandbag Round-the-World on each side (swing a light sandbag or filler bag around your head while stabilising your torso and lower body)

Sandbag Floor Press

Sandbag Walking Lunges with each leg (holding the sandbag at chest height)

Complete 10 repetitions of each exercise, then 9, then 8 etc. Work all the way down to a round of 1 repetition for each exercise before proceeding to work your way back up to finish on a round of 10 repetitions for each exercise. Aim to complete the workout as quickly as you can. 

There is no weight requirement but I'd suggest you aim for something in the region of 30% of your bodyweight.

Pro-Tip: like the ladder set in Week 1, this is an even bigger mental challenge. The higher repetition rounds (those above 5 or so) are the tough ones so you should see the others as rest rounds. 

See you next week!

---

---

---

Also in Sandbag Fitness Mastery Course