New Inferno DVD

It is finally on the way! Our NEW Inferno DVD is one of the best "Get in Shape Fast!" workout programs you can perform. I joined forces with my good friend Nick Radonijic to bring real life fitness to all of you! This is a two DVD set that contains full instructions and four follow along workouts that will test every aspect of your fitness abilities. These are no joke workouts that help you shred fat fast and get into incredible shape in no time!

This week is our presale, you can get Inferno for JUST: $24.99!!!

Ships out Friday!

The Inner Athlete

I’ll admit it, my last video was less than stellar. I guess sitting in a car for five hours and rushing to shoot one of my favorite complexes wasn’t the best ideas. Yet, I love how much feedback one can get from these advanced movements. I could tell you my hips were tight and some serious work needed to be done on my hips.

After a week to get back into the flow of things I wanted to share some new drills that I have been working on that do more to get your inner athlete in top shape. What is the “inner athlete”? Whether you want to compete as a weekend warrior, play with your kids without being in pain, or being able to do things that make you feel your best without being wiped, everyone is an athlete.

The unfortunate part is so many people still get in a rut, it doesn’t matter whether they are using kettelbells, bodyweight movements, or a combination of a whole bunch of great tools. That is why sandbags have become so important to me, because the versatility is virtually endless.

In this weeks video I have four drills that are powerful whether you are a weekend warrior or an elite athlete, movement is king and these drills can do wonders for your movements.

One-arm Rips

This looks very similar to a single arm shouldering movement, however, it is all predicated off of the rotation of the hip. That rotation causes enough power that the sandbag should almost “float” up to the shoulder. An amazing drill for hip, trunk, and arm power. Believe it or not this is a killer upper body drill as well even though you don’t lift with the arms.

Lateral Step Around the Worlds

Around the Worlds are one of my favorite drills as it builds great power through the hips and trunk while providing mobility to the spine and shoulder girdle. Some people have seen these similar drills with other objects, however, the Ultimate Sandbag is unique because their dimensions work better in more complex versions. To add sophistication to the Around the World drill changing the stance can make the body view this as a whole new drill for stability and strength.

Scoop Rows

I believe bent-over rows get a bad name because they are hard! That isometric strength used by the low back is so important in overall back health. Add in a unique gripping option in placing the arms in a “scoop” position really toasts the upper arms and back in a unique way.

Squat Thrusts to Split Chops

Squat thrusts are nothing new, but people cheat them all the time. Taking the time to perform them right makes them not only a great conditioning drill, but powerful for hip flexibility and power. The split chop is another example how the Ultimate Sandbag just puts other sand tools to shame. Our overhead chops sure got a lot of popularity, but again, we need to think outside the box. Making this a split chop make sure that we can build some single leg power and amazing athleticism for anyone!

Try these drills in a circuit manner, either set some reps or simply use the Gymboss to count off intervals. You will find that you hit muscles you didn’t have and doing any extra “cardio” is not necessary. Best of all you will feel like you are regaining your right to being an athlete and enjoying the most important things in your life!

In Strength,
Josh Henkin

http://SandbagFitnessSystems.com

This is like NOTHING else!

I joking call this year my "2009 World Tour", but to be more accurate it is more like "2009 US Tour"! That's right in 12 weeks I am going to have been in 7 different states doing workshops and conferences. It is very exciting even though it is also completely exhausting. Especially because it most cases when Monday hits I am right back in the gym!

I am not one to complain, ok, not TOO much! Mostly because it has been so cool to see the responses people have had to the Sandbag Fitness Systems program. It is great to see people's eyes light up when they see the program in action. This is probably because it is so drastically different than what everyone is doing! I can say that confidently because I have been a witness to what some of the biggest names and programs in the industry are doing, and guess what? These are the same people that are most excited when they see the Sandbag Fitness Program (SFS).

I know, what are you missing out on? I will give you some of the secrets.

One of the biggest benefits is that I am able to show people what true functional training is really all about. The cool thing about the SFS program is that it can accomplish fitness and performance goals. Heck, it can do it by itself if you really wanted. In many situations coaches have to switch apparatuses depending if they are doing strength, speed, power, core, or movement training. It is amazing that you can simply change the weight or size of bag and accomplish everything with this program. Yes, you can train to be stronger, faster, more agile, greater endurance, and be more flexible!

I know Josh, that sounds like more senseless and silly internet marketing! I couldn't agree more, however, don't take my word for it, check out what the Indiana Football State Champs have to say!

"I recently purchased two Ultimate Sandbags for our high school football team's off-season training. The players are use to using free weights and a few specialty machines, a power runner and a power thruster. When I first introduced the sandbags to supplement the work they were accustom to doing with free weights, they thought it was going to be a piece of cake. After all the bags only weight 50 and 70 pounds each. These guys are use to moving 200 to 300 pounds regularly. They were quite surprised at how challenging a sandbag can be. After a few sets there was a lot of huffing and puffing.

Cardinal Ritter High School of Indianapolis is a small private school without a lot of money to spend on equipment. The couple of hundred dollars I spent on the Ultimate Sandbags will pay bigger dividends than machines costing thousands of dollars and when the weather is nice enough for us to move outside the bags will come with us while the machines stay inside.

Thanks for all the ideas and information that you continually share with your customers. It has been a big help for me and the team.

By the way, Cardinal Ritter is the 2008 Indiana State Champs and we do not intent to rest on our laurels."
Larry Timko

Not all movements are equal, if they were it would be great to spend all day doing biceps curls. However, we know that big movements stimulate more muscles and more anabolic hormones (ok, you get more buff when you do them!). When people see that you can do snatches and cleans with the sandbags they get pscyhed! After all, they are far more difficult with a sandbag than any other piece of equipment. Yet, the biggest surprise comes when people see shouldering, half moon snatches, split cleans/snatches, overhead chops, and the far great movements that create a more athletic, incorporate more muscles, and just yield better results.

Results however, can come in many forms. One can be just getting people out of pain!! Pain is often the biggest demotivator and when people get introduced to our pre and post-rehab programs they can't wait to start using these techniques. Yes, sandbags are not neccessarily just for intense strength training, but creating better movement and rehabbing injuries. Backs are especially amazing to heal with the SFS program.

Listen to what personal trainer Tony Tomich noticed implemented SFS program...

"I'm a Personal trainer, I use your Ultimate Sandbag System with all level clients male and female, athletes and stay at home moms, and all levels in between. All quickly realize the difficulty and benefits of incorporating sandbag training into their regular workouts. Its like nothing else ! After just a few workouts back problems are going away, improvement in all other areas of fitness are evident. Your sandbags have a permanent place at Real Life Personal Training. Rock On !"

How can you learn these techniques? Hey, the over 100 FREE videos online are a great place to start (http://www.youtube.com/user/SandbagFitness), but we are at more and more events. I hope you will check out the SFS program and see us at some of our events.

Oh, and don't miss out on seeing our first upcoming certifications coming in September!!!

Now that I am coming home expect more videos, cool new bags and so much more!!!

I am psyched about helping people improve their lives and I hope you will help me achieve this goal!

In Strength,
Josh Henkin, CSCS
http://sandbagfitnesssystems.com

Sandbag 100 Challenge

I hope the holidays have all treated you well, but like most holidays the chances are you endulged a little too much! That's ok, that is why I planned to release my second Sandbag Challenge this week. I figured many of you could use the workout!

The Sandbag 100 is based upon the principles of density training. By having a goal of a set number of repetitions in mind you focus should shift from counting mindless repetitions to how fast you can accomplish this workout. I would advise you use a weight that you could normally perform 10-15 repetitions with for each exercise. The fatigue comes fast because of the awkwardness of the sandbag so don't try to be too tough right at the start.

Alternating between squat cleans and clean and press is a fantastic way to hit every muscle in the body and still work on your strength, endurance, fat loss, and mobility all at the same time. Don't think either that I accidently prescribed cleaning the bag every time for both exercises either! This is a great trick that I learned from Strength Coach, Dan John. This repeated cleaning will strengthen you whole back side and teach you how to be proficient because as you get tired you will find your form wanting to change, don't let it happen! Plus, the cleaning for the squat clean is a little different for the clean and press. You will notice a little more upper body movement with the clean and press and full lower body power for the squat cleans, a really nice compliment.

Oh, and please don't ask where is the Burly Bags, they are planning to be released in June. I love it though as it is nice to have a bag that can load in between the medium and large and the slightly smaller dimensions make it for pressing overhead. It truly completes the set!

And The Winner Is......

This past month was the first month I offered our testimonial contest. My goal was to get some great feedback from the most important people, YOU! I wasn't disappointed as I was flooded with some great responses and ideas. The winner was to get any package of their desire. The feedback was so great that I couldn't help and pick just one winner and two people, Paul Meyer and Steven Morris, gave me some great insights.

Steven Morris:

Sandbags are great for fixing “strength leaks.” When it comes to training football players and athletes, there can be no leaks! Leaks = injuries and lack of peak performance. So many guys are weight-room strong but can’t transfer that power to the field. Sandbags allow you to take your weight room strength, fix all the holes (common problems are weak obliques, and weak shoulders at odd angles), and make huge improvements in athletic ability.

Athletics is not just about doing weight lifting in a perfect bar path…no, you need strength at all kinds of joint angles and body positions. Sandbags, because they are almost alive, force you into all of these positions and angles and make you stronger in them.

"They are used as either a stand-alone conditioning tool, as part of a Strongman workout (along with Farmer’s Walk Bars and sleds), or as a finisher; a high rep exercise done at the end of a training session to push past mental barriers and increase mental toughness.

Most people overlook the fact that a heavy sandbag can even be used for Sub-maximal (repeating a moderately heavy weight for multiple sets of low reps) training. In fact, this will actually help your weight room lifts by eliminating those ever-present weak points.

How would explain the difference between our sandbags versus homemade versions?

Josh’s bags are bomb-proof. I’ve never had one rip, and the inner bags actually keep the sand where it belongs: in the bag! One of the problems with using store-bought duffel bags is that if they get wet, even in the least bit, they will simply rot away. Josh’s bags can withstand all types of weather and keep on tickin’.

Sandbags are probably the best bang for your buck. Because you can use them in so many different ways, plus the huge amount of exercises you can do, they are a tremendous value. I buy most pieces of equipment based on how many uses I can get from it. With sandbags, the number of uses are endless.

Paul Meyer:

Why did you choose to use sandbags in your training?

I had been to a kettlebell seminar of Josh's and was so impressed that I signed up and paid for the second part of it two months down the line. However it turned out I could not attend the second seminar. So I wrote an email to you guys and you offered me a refund but while I was looking around your website for your email address I came across the Ultimate Sandbag. Immediately I was intrigued and read every article and blog Josh had posted about training with a sandbag. So when he offered me a refund for the second seminar I said, "How about if I just put it towards a one on one training session with you to teach me how to use the Ultimate Sandbag." Josh agreed and in that hour showed me so many interesting, amazing, fun, challenging exercises that I became as giddy as a kid on Christmas day. I immediately bought the Strength Sandbag Package the minute the training session ended, came home and started doing the exercises he showed me again because it was so fun.
What results have you noticed since implementing sandbags?

"One of the first things that I had noticed improve after training with a sandbag was my stability on extreme ranges of motion. I mean one of the first things that I realized when I picked up a sandbag was how clumsy I was with it because the weight kept moving. Trying to do a snatch+lunge movement was impossible and I kept losing my balance. But the more I trained with it the more my hips and trunk really had to start stabilizing all my movements not only in one plane of movement but two and three planes as well.


How have you incorporated sandbags into your training?

When I first incorporated sandbags into my routine I was using it to do very explosive, dynamic exercises such as the snatch+squat+press complex or the half moon snatch (which by the way became one of my favorite sandbag exercises). I really fell that these exercises complement kettlebell training very well so I started combining an exercise from each into supersets. For example I would do 30 seconds of half moon snatches immediately followed by 30 seconds of heavy KB swings. As of now I still use them in that way but I have also started to use just the filler bags themselves. For example, if I want to do a set of curls I don’t use dumbells anymore I just pull out a filler bag and do curls with them. I have found that they are just as effective but because I can’t rap my thumb around them like a dumbell, curls with filler bags really smoke my grip.

How would explain the difference between our sandbags versus homemade versions?

When I brought my Ultimate Sandbag home for the first time I had to show my brother. I started to show him the exercises that could be performed with them. I let him try a couple and he was instantly hooked. He asked, “How much did it cost?” I told him and he was a little apprehensive, “You paid that much!? I bet I could make one just like that for cheaper.” So the next day he set out to make his own sandbag to try an imitate the Ultimate Sandbag. In the end what he came up with was what he believed was a good sandbag. However he made the filler bags out of too cheap of material and too porous and the bag itself was just a military duffel bag. So when he filled it with sand and started exercising he quickly got a nice face full of sand. He also found out that the duffel bag had poor handles for grip so he just started grabbing the bag itself for exercise. However the duffel bag was far too coarse because it was designed for the military and his hands started to get torn up. It was at this time that he turned to me and said, “What did you say the price of that sandbag was again?” I couldn’t stop laughing for ten minutes.

How would you compare sandbags to other training implements?

I would love to sit here and tell you how training with the sandbag is. Like, "it feels this way when you use it" or "it feels just as that other training tool feels like when you lift it", but the truth is that it’s like nothing else that I have ever trained with. It’s simple but complex, easy to use but difficult to use at the same time. You simply have to try it to understand what it’s like.

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More Complete Programming

I wrote previously that the current trend of focusing on one or two exercises actually doesn't really help our bodies like many are promoting. How do I know? When I ran my last High Octane Seminar I was shocked, floored, and disappointed. I was working with some great individuals, many had a pretty extensive experience in strength training, yet when we did what I consider fundamental sandbag movements people stumbled and appeared uncoordinated.

Does this mean that these people are not good athletes or coaches? Of course not, but they had fallen into the trap believe one or two exercises could get them well prepared to be athletic and fit.

We often use the former Eastern European system of training in high regards because the athletes and coaches accomplished the most with the least. One of the fundamental principles was committing an extensive phase of a vast array of movements to prepare the body for more specific demands of sport. This guaranteed well rounded fitness in the way of flexibility, strength, endurance, and athleticism.

So, if this has been used some of the world's best athletes why do we continue to ignore it? Part of this is that the idea of performing one exercise for hundreds of repetitions seems simple and allows one to get very good at one thing fast. However, you can see the limitations are great! The second reason is that most people don't know where to spend there time and feel that performing these workouts would be an extensive time of workout that would be unrealistic.

Today's video shows that this is simply not true as I use some of my friend's Anthony Diluglio's equipment to help combine with my Ultimate Sandbag a phenomenal and powerful workout anyone can get benefits.

Big Changes are Coming

It use to be that I would read muscle magazines with the eagerness of the teenager I once was. I couldn't wait for the next "Get Huge Arms" article, little did I know it had been recycled about ten different times. Fortunately, I learned pretty early on that most muscle magazines are good for keeping your table steady and little to do with training. However, in the past few years I have used magazines to reinforce to my clients the "crazy training" we are doing is actually simply ahead of its time.

My clients often thought I was just trying to make them look silly by having them use kettlebells, or push sleds, or hoist sandbags. Then magazines such as Men's Health, Men's Fitness, and even Muscle & Fitness started to do articles on the benefits of these movements. I loved to cut them out for my clients, heck, they felt like they were doing something special as this was cutting edge for most people.

Well, I have very happy to say that this trend keeps going. In this month's Men's Health both the TRX and my friend Anthony Diluglio's "Ropes Gone Wild" program is featured. Oh yes, there is a mention of a sandbag, but my poor Men's Health associates really missed the boat here. I won't get into it right now!



However, I really recommend people stop off and see the new Men's Health this month as it does call the Ropes Gone Wild program "The Best New Cardio Tool of 2009". I have actually been using the ropes quite a bit myself as I recover from a stupid triceps injury. Not being able to do too much with my arm, I have found the Ropes Gone Wild program to be really perfect as I keep some upper body conditioning and movement. In fact, I have combined the sandbag work into a really great fat burning circuit like the one below...

Dropping Fat Fast

It sounds like an ad when you speak about fat loss. I know, I know, you think you have seen most fat loss programs. Yea, there are a lot of them! Usually though they are one type or another. They are intervals, so you don't gain a lot of strength. They are long duration so you don't stimulate your metabolism. They are one exercise focused so you want to die of boredom.

However, we summer peaking its head out, I wanted to show that you could have the best of everything. You can build strength, drop fat, and build muscle within one workout session. The tools we use and promote are the same ones we work hard with our clients to get their great results. Today is showing one of our favorite workouts. It combines repetition work, intervals, mobility, and yes...STRENGTH!!

Take our challenge and see how you do with this workout!

The Overload Myth

Let's face it, there are always going to be fitness myths that are perpetuated by marketing, hype, and unfortunately, bad coaching. Recently I had an opportunity to hear some top level strength coaches speak and was sorely disappointed when I heard some of these myths still being promoted! One in particular that drives me a little nuts is the misunderstanding fot he one of the most fundamental concepts of training...overload.

Progressive overload is crucial because this has everything to do with achieving results from your training. Most people associate load or weight with overload, this would be the most common view of overload, simply make things heavier! Guess what? This does work, making a weight heavier will stimulate more change, in fact, research has shown novice lifters need only 40% of their max and more experienced lifters 60% of their max to stimulate some strength gains. So, there is a minimum amount of weight people need to use to stimulate changes, however, overload isn't just about how much you lift.

Changing Leverage
Another means in utilizing overload is changing the position of the load. By changing where the load is placed in relationship to the body you can make the same weight feel heavier. A classic example can be shown by squatting. If we begin people with a bear hug squat this represents the base level of squatting and the load is more easily dispersed throughout the body. Therefore, this is the position where the greatest amount of weight can be lifted. So, when the lifter is looking for progression, they have several options...

1. Increase the weight of the sandbag
2. Change the position to a zercher squat (which doesn't have as advantageous leverages as bear hug)
3. Alter programming variables.

Now if we use option two and change to a zercher, the same weight will feel heavier. In the same respect, if we then change from the zercher to shoulder, again the same weight will feel heavier. This is definitely a form of overload.

Alter Speed
There times I think people would not have as much confusion about overload if we also looked at force production. The idea of increasing load is to stimulate the body to have to produce more force. This recruits more muscle fibers and motor units leading to better gains in strength and muscle. What most people don't understand is that when you move intentionally slower, the force production drops even though the time under tension increases. While slowing down and increasing time under tension is helpful for adding some muscle mass, it generally doesn't add as much to functional strength gains.

So, if you want to increase overload try lifting the weight faster. In using our squat example, we can work on slowly lowering the weight and then trying to add an explosive squat up. We can also add a pause in the bottom, removing any elastic energy, and then adding an explosive squat and we would again increase overload. This definitely demonstrates how lighter loads can be still very challenging.

Plenty More
There are a lot of options in increasing the overload of an implement. This post was intended to discuss two of the more popular means that give you a large return for your time. In our workshops and clinics we discuss many other training means, but I hope this helps you realize that training can be more than simply adding more weight!