Wednesday, June 17, 2009

The Hardest Fitness Challenge Ever?!

I still hear it all the time, "sandbags are great for conditioning, but don't do much for your strength." How ridiculous is this? I always know this is someone that has really never spent any serious time sandbag training. Instead of trying to rationalize to people that sandbags can make you strong I wanted to place a challenge to prove my point.

The trouble is, "what is being strong?" Being able to lift a lot is great, but just being able to lift a lot isn't tremendously beneficial. Being able to reproduce feats of strength repeatedly is far more impressive. I took one of the best sandbag drills and created a challenge to see how many people could perform strength and endurance? No, I didn't want this to be easy, I wanted it to be a brutal test of fitness.

What is the test? Initially it was taking our large sandbag, loading it to 150 pounds and performing 10 shoulders (5 each side) within one minute. Many people weren't even able to last through this challenge. Heck at a recent conference I had a former football player who weighed 300 pounds unable to complete this challenge as he thought his heart was going to explode! I wasn't satisfied though.

I wanted to see how people really could recover and do it again! So, the NEW Sandbag Fitness Challenge is the "Three Rounds of Hell" drill. It is shouldering the 150 sandbag 10 times in one minute, resting one minute, and repeating this for two additional rounds. Don't worry, women can do it too with the 70 pound sandbag!

Want to see how hard the 150 pound bag shouldering is? I placed the challenge to an excited trainer at the recent Perform Better Summit. Want to see if he was able to make it? Oh btw, if you make our challenge you have to perform a CLEAN shouldering movement, no stopping at the chest! I was in a good mood here:

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