Week 6

by Matthew Palfrey January 04, 2015 0 Comments

Welcome to the final week of the Sandbag Fitness Mastery Course! You are just 3 workouts away from being able to say that you completed the course, and that's a pretty rare thing indeed. You'll notice 1 main thing about this week - it's exactly the same as week 1, and for good reason. I'm a firm believer in setting short term goals as part of a longer term plan. If you want to achieve the broad goal of being fit and strong long term then you need to make small improvements consistently. You might not improve every single session (in fact it's unlikely you will) but multiple small wins generally equal one big win. So the aim for this week is simple: do the workouts quicker, with more weight, or complete more rounds then you did in week 1. 

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. 

What Next?

In the coming week I'll be sending you a very special invite to another limited access course that will be starting in the next few weeks. It'll cover an aspect of health and fitness that I rarely discuss on Sandbag Fitness - Optimal Nutrition for Health, Performance and Body Composition. Not only will you learn exactly what I eat and drink on a daily basis but I'll provide you with step-by-step instructions on what you can do too. You'll also get early access to material from my upcoming book. Make sure you don't miss it!

The greatest thing I could ever ask of you would be for you to share Sandbag Fitness with friends, family or anyone else that you think might benefit from it. I'd also love to hear from you if you have any ideas for spreading Sandbag Fitness to a wider audience. I have new books, video, courses and much more planned for 2015 but none of it happens without your support. 

Bonuses

Get 50% off Sandbag Training books (paperbacks and ebooks) until the 11th January with code mastery50 click here

Get 2 free sample Sandbag Training Guides and sign up to the regular email list click here

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