Six Ways to Use Sandbags in Your Football Strength and Conditioning
Program
By
Steven Morris
Sandbags are an excellent way to transfer what you’ve gained in your strength
program to the field. But many guys just aren’t sure how to use them. Here are
six ways to easily implement sandbags into your football strength and
conditioning program.
1. High rep conditioning work
Running, jogging, or pretending to jog as you shuffle your feet in a lame
attempt to convince your coach that you’re running for distance has no place in
your football conditioning program. Jogging is best left to the cross country
runners and soccer players. You don’t jog on the field ever. So why do it in
training?
Well for the most part, coaches who don’t understand how to train for
football simply have you do the same things that their coaches made them do when
they were young—jog, run laps, “road work,” or whatever lame term they come up
with to describe go nowhere conditioning.
Sprinting is a much better option, but it can take its toll on your joints,
especially pre- and in-season. Also, for most parts of the country, sprinting
outside in the winter isn’t a smart idea. One slip on a patch of ice or packed
snow and pop goes the ACL. Therefore, we have to look outside of the traditional
“sprinting centric” conditioning. This is where sandbags come in—in a big way.
Using sandbag exercises for higher reps with minimal rest periods can build
your base conditioning and, if applied in some of the ways I describe in the
rest of the article, your football specific conditioning. Using sandbags for
high reps gives you several advantages over using weights or sprint style
conditioning for football.
ü They’re safer than weights for high rep work. If you have to dump a
lift, you won’t get hurt.
ü They’re easier on your joints than sprinting. This is especially true
for bigger players like linemen and linebackers.
ü They can give you sport-specific conditioning by simulating a live
opponent (more on that in later).
To get started with high rep sandbag conditioning for football, stick with
the basic moves.
Clean and jerk
Take a loaded bag from the ground to over your head in any way possible. This
isn’t always as clean looking as a barbell clean and jerk, but it will train
your body to work as a unit, even when tired. Try five sets of 20 reps. At
first, don’t restrict your rest periods. Just take note of them. Work your way
down to 45 seconds of rest. Then, when you hit that level, begin to add sets,
reps, or weight.
Bear hug squat
Bear hug a heavy sandbag and squat with it held at chest level. Perform as
many reps as you can in 20 seconds. Rest for 20 seconds and then go for another
round of 20. Do this after your clean and jerks and start with seven sets,
eventually working up to 10. When you can get 10 sets, add weight.
Just adding those two simple movements to your football conditioning program
will produce phenomenal results. You can add them to the end of your leg
training day or use them on their own as a conditioning day. You’ll notice that
the entire session is fairly quick. Don’t let that fool you into thinking it’s
easy. If it’s too easy, you’re kidding yourself. Add weight and get to work.
2. Preventing strength leakage
Using weight is the number one way to build your strength for football.
Barbells, dumbbells, and kettlebells are the foundation of any good football
training program. But they do have some limitations when used alone. Yes, they
build tremendous strength, but they can leave small gaps between weight room
strength and football strength. We call this strength leakage.
We’ve all seen the guy who can bench 400 lbs but can’t block the sun. This
guy might even be a decent athlete, so why can’t he dominate on the field? He
allowed himself to develop gaps in his strength so that he can’t take what he
gained in the weight room to the field. He literally leaks strength from his
joints or at his waist and can’t apply his power to an opponent.
Using sandbags, especially when doing cleans, clean and jerks, or any kind of
squatting, teaches the body to transfer power from the ground up through the
hips and mid-section. You also train the stabilizers, tendons, and ligaments
because the bag changes shape on almost every rep. There’s no way to settle into
a groove when lifting a sandbag. This is how they prevent leakage. They train
you in odd positions and hit those stabilizers in a way that weights alone can’t
do.
To ensure that you transfer your weight room gains to the field, sandbags are
essential. Work those stabilizers in odd positions from varying angles with an
implement that never stays the same shape twice. Sounds like a recipe for
football success right there.
3. “Live opponent” work
Sandbags are alive. They move, change positions, and fight you every step of
the way. Sounds a lot like a live opponent to me. Live opponent work ties in
closely with the concept of strength leakage.
Weights are fixed. They stay balanced, evenly distributed, and constant. This
is good when it comes to building maximum strength, but it can hinder the
transfer of power to taking on a live opponent. Wrestlers, fighters, and martial
artists have used sandbags for centuries because of their effect on strength
when fighting someone. Football is for the most part a three-hour fight. Every
play you line up and fight your opponent. He will not stay in positions that
allow you to block or tackle him. No, he wants to make your job as hard as
possible.
Your football training should reflect this. Sandbags change shape and force
you into positions that would be impossible (and even dangerous) to get into
with a barbell. Think about tackling a big fullback. You have to drop really low
while still maintaining a power position in the hips and legs. Now you have to
spring forward, hit, wrap the arms, and drive your legs to bring the big ox
down.
4. Linemen-specific positions
Linemen and linebackers might benefit the most from using sandbags, at least
in terms of finding football-specific movements. Linemen, both offensive and
defensive, have to be able to keep a low center of gravity and move themselves
and their opponent in the direction they want. The linemen’s ability to control
their opponents is almost always the difference maker in any game. I don’t care
how fast your “skill” guys are. If the line can’t block, they aren’t going
anywhere.
Here are a few linemen-specific sandbag exercises.
Bear hug and duck walk
The sandbag bear hug is definitely old school. It’s also widely practiced
because of the great training effects on the back, legs, pecs, and grip. While
it’s a good exercise, we’re always looking for something more. That’s what this
sport is all about—always striving for more.
I noticed that many linemen, backs, and linebackers could keep a good
football position when in a T-shirt and shorts, but once the pads, helmet, and a
live opponent were thrown in, they began to lean forward, get into a bad
position, and get beat. Seeing a strong, 275-lb linemen thrown to the ground
because he was leaning forward isn’t pretty.
To prevent this, we do a sandbag bear hug and duck walk combination. This is
an excellent football training movement that will strengthen the back, legs, and
entire upper body for many football-specific tasks (tackling, blocking, pre-jump
position). The only difference we make from the standard bear hug is that
instead of wrapping our arms around the bag like Ken Patera would, we grab the
bag by the handles and hold it close.
From this position, you start duck walking. Shoot for three sets of 10 yards
to start and gradually increase the sets to six. Keep your back extremely tight,
sit back, and don’t lean forward. If I catch any of you leaning forward during
this, I’ll personally throw you down.
Clean and push
This is a cool variation of the clean and press that is perfect for football
training because it’s highly specific, especially for linemen. It will require
great let strength, transfer of power from the legs through the hips and to the
upper body, and muscular coordination. And all you need is a sandbag and a
little bit of room.
Load a bag and clean it in any way you see fit. Use the various handles or
mixed grips or just grab the bag itself. Now clean it to chest height. When I
say clean it, I don’t mean end up in one of those “split the legs eight feet
apart” kind of clean positions. No. I mean finish the clean in the good football
position just as you would pre-block, tackle, jump, and sprint.
For the first few reps, hold that position. Then pop the hips hard and push
the bag as far as you can. Think if it like a standing bench press. It’s the
exact motion used when blocking, making it an excellent movement for linemen.
It’s maybe one of the most football-specific training exercises in the world.
After you get the motion down, begin to do the entire movement as one
complete exercise rather than pausing with the bag at chest height before
pushing. This is an ideal time to video the lift or have a coach/teammate watch
you and critique your form. There aren’t many guarantees in football or football
training, but I can damn near guarantee that this exercise will improve your
blocking and tackling.
Use this exercise for conditioning, as a finisher, or as a total body
accessory lift. Vary the sets and reps from high to low with appropriate changes
in the weight of the bag. Both linemen and linebackers can vary either exercise
by moving sideways during the movement. Don’t forget that we need as much, if
not more, lateral strength than we do straight ahead speed.
5. Leg exercises
I don’t want all the talk about high rep conditioning and odd position work
to leave you thinking that sandbags are only good for specialty work. In fact,
quite the opposite is true. You can use sandbags as a great alternative to
barbells for strength work in the lower body.
Zercher Romanian deadlifts with chains or bands added
My athletes are sick of hearing this, but most football training programs
don’t put enough emphasis on working the hamstrings. Sure, the posterior chain
training has gained popularity, but most assume that a few sets of leg curls and
some standard deadlifts are sufficient to make the hamstrings and glutes strong
enough to make you faster. The truth is that the hamstrings have an amazingly
high work capacity. Exercises like deadlift variations, squats, and even leg
curls are needed, as the hamstrings must be worked in both of their functions
(flexion and extension).
Zercher Romanian deadlifts are a great way to hammer the hamstrings. However,
doing these with a bar can be painful, especially when you start using big
weight. Using a sandbag is less painful yet harder. Always a good combination.
The only problem is if you’re a bigger athlete or you’re using heavy sandbags,
it can become difficult to effectively hold the bag in the Zercher position. By
adding chains or bands, you can use a smaller sized bag but work the legs and
back even harder. Plus, any time you use chains and/or bands, you’re using
accommodating resistance, and this is always good for athletes (teaches
acceleration).
You can use this as an in the weight room hamstring training exercise
performed after your main exercise for the day. Go with a 3–5 sets of 4–8 reps.
6. Build huge arms and a powerful grip
Don’t let any of the strict coaches out there fool you. Arm training is
almost as important as working the posterior chain when it comes to training for
football. No, arm work won’t directly increase performance. But—and this is one
huge but—the way a player feels when he puts that uniform on can take a marginal
player and turn him into a stud because of the increased confidence. Football
players spend tons of money every season on duct tape, pins, glues, and elastic
in order to roll their jersey sleeves up as high as possible, thus giving the
fans the added bonus of viewing the gun show. There’s not a player in the world
who doesn’t care if he has big arms. So rather than fight it, let’s use it to
our advantage.
Weights and dumbbells should make up the bulk of your arm training, but if
you want to really go from average to extraordinary, you should seriously
consider adding sandbags to your arm training. Simply grabbing the bag will
activate the biceps and forearms to a much higher degree than weights alone.
Many guys neglect forearm and grip training so they can focus more on the
biceps. However, if your biceps progress much faster than the forearms, your
progress will stall. The body will inhibit your upper arms from going much
farther for fear of injury. Plus, we all know there are times when a strong grip
will pay off in a game (carrying the ball, holding an opponent, etc).
Sandbag curls
These are an excellent way to work the forearms and biceps hard. Load up a
bag and grab it any way you can with palms facing upward or toward each other.
Now curl the bag. It won’t be a pure curl like when using a barbell, but that’s
part of the point. Your hands and forearms will become extremely sore when doing
sandbag curls so don’t go crazy at first. Go with a traditional 3 X 8 to start
and add weight slowly. You can also do sandbag reverse curls by grabbing the bag
with your palms facing down.
Steven Morris is a personal trainer and strength coach in the Philadelphia
and South Jersey areas and the owner of Explosive Football Training. He has been
lifting weights for over 15 years and has been helping people achieve their
fitness and strength goals for over a decade. Learn more about his methods and
services at www.explosivefootballtraining.com.
Elite Fitness Systems strives to be a recognized leader in the strength
training industry by providing the highest quality strength training products
and services while providing the highest level of customer service in the
industry. For the best training equipment, information, and accessories, visit
us at www.EliteFTS.com.
