Sandbag Training

Since 2005 Ultimate Sandbag Training has grown beyond any expectations I ever could have had. In all honesty, at first I didn’t think Ultimate Sandbag Training would be anything more than a great compliment to other forms of training. However, over the years both my working with more and more people and refining the design of the Ultimate Sandbag itself, I almost think of fitness programs the other way around. Meaning I really do believe Ultimate Sandbag Training should be the core of any good functional fitness program because of all the solutions possible.

Evolving Ultimate Sandbag Training

Re-inforcing this idea of how Ultimate Sandbag Training is becoming a critical tool and training system for fitness professionals around the world, is the fact we have had the pleasure of traveling the world teaching our Dynamic Variable Resistance Ultimate Sandbag Training System. Most recently I had the extreme pleasure to teach at our first university, Missouri State! There I was so excited to spend the day with not only with some great pros from the Missouri State Athletic Staff, but the man, Mitch Hauschildt. Mitch is the Prevention, Rehab and Physical Performance Coordinator as well as Strength & Conditioning Coach for Women’s Basketball and Volleyball. To say Mitch wears a few hats is an understatement, and not only is he a great coach, but has a depth of knowledge that can make anyone think about hitting the books hard again!

Mitch and I got to speak quite a bit about how Ultimate Sandbag Training and its role in sports performance and most intriguing to me corrective exercise as well. Before we get into some of the very cool ideas that we discussed and how we see Ultimate Sandbag Training into a corrective exercise program, I wanted to interview Mitch about his views on just what corrective exercise means and why we, even those just looking to get fit, should really care about corrective exercise strategies.

Q: Mitch can you tell us about your own athletic background and how you developed your philosophy of fitness and performance training?

A: As an athlete, I played collegiate football at the University of South Dakota. I was a 300-pound offensive lineman whose size and activity level eventually took its toll. A total of 6 knee surgeries later, I decided that if I was going to stay in the world of competitive, collegiate athletics, that I needed to find a better way to create great athletes who could stay healthy and not have life-long health concerns. This lead me down the path of becoming at Athletic Trainer and Strength Coach. Because of my athletic background, I describe myself as a strength coach who happens to be an athletic trainer. This mentality has worked well for me, as I have been successful in rehabilitating injured athletes back to very high levels of competition. I believe this is due not only to the fact that athletes are very familiar with the movements and exercises that I prescribe (teaching them variations to work around an injury is easy), but mentally, all athletes prefer to feel as though they are performing work, not just lying on a table hooked up to a machine. One the other side, when I get to work with my division I programs from a performance perspective, I am able to use my medical knowledge to create programming that has been extremely successful in preventing injury while simultaneously increasing performance.

Q: Obviously Mitch you believe in “corrective exercise”, what does this really mean and can and should it be applied to people that want to get just more fit?

A: The term “corrective exercise” is a term that has been growing in recent years and because of that, defining it is a little bit difficult. To me, it refers to any exercise or movement that is specifically designed to fix or improve a pattern which has been deemed “faulty”. How we define “faulty” is another discussion all together. But, for the most part, corrective exercise tends to be very focused on movement quality, rather than quantity. The answer to the second part of the question is, YES everyone should be performing some sort of corrective exercise. It is very rare that I come across anyone in any walk of life that doesn’t have some sort of restriction, whether it is mobility, neurological patterning, strength, or biomechanical in nature. Our lifestyle in general does not lend itself to helping us move well throughout our day. Because of that, everyone has an ache or pain that is nagging them. And, if they don’t, they soon will when their exercise intensity begins to climb to the point where their body breaks down. Some people reach that point much sooner than others, but everyone eventually will. The good thing is, if you are training in a really good, well-rounded program, corrective exercise should be temporary. Once the corrections have been made. The training program should keep you mobile, active and healthy.

Q: What do you think are some of the more common misconceptions about “corrective exercise”?

A: The number one misconception that I hear a lot is that corrective exercise is only for those who are injured or for preventing injury. And, it is true that we almost always prescribe corrective strategies for injured athletes and/or use them to prevent injury, but we are also finding that by making the necessary corrections with our athletes, that we improve performance. I can show you a number of athletes who are average to above average athletically, but have some movement issues and restrictions. Once their restrictions are identified, we will often take 2-4 weeks of doing nothing but correcting those areas. This means no real lifting or movement training. Virtually every time that we retest these athletes, they have greater strength, power output, and speed, even though we have not trained them in a traditional strength and power program. This is because for the first time in a long time, their prime movers are actually performing the work they were designed to do, instead of trying to make up for another part of the body which is restricted or “lazy.” Once that begins to happen, suddenly the body’s nervous systems wakes up and they function at a much higher rate on all levels.

Q: More and more professionals are trying to implement corrective programs, what do you think as an industry we are doing right and wrong?

A: I think we are trying to do the right thing by attempting to implement the programs in general. Identifying the issues and attempting to correct them is a huge first step and I applaud many great professionals in the field for trailblazing this area. I do think that oftentimes we fall short in understanding exactly what is going on with an athlete who doesn’t move well and then how to correct it. This comes down to education. We have wonderful, well-meaning people with a lot of schooling who can’t see through the holes in the traditional ways of looking at the body as individual muscles, bones and joints that by themselves create motion. Conversely, we see a lot of young people trying to break into the fitness field who aren’t skewed by the traditional education system, but they just don’t posses the understanding of the body’s structure to begin the connect the dots. The human body is very complex and we need to do a better job of training the “system,” not the parts. When people come into our training room and see me doing rehab on an athlete, they usually can’t tell which part of the body I am treating, because we are treating the “system” in order to fix the injury. I love what Thomas Myers says in Anatomy Trains when he states “…we must look globally, act locally, and the act globally to integrate our local remedies in the whole person’s structures.” This is why functional training has become so popular in recent years. It places an emphasis on training the “system” instead of the part. Other areas that we need to improve upon are making sure that we don’t rush to add load to movements which aren’t perfectly clean, as well as figuring out better ways to integrate corrective strategies into large group and team settings efficiently.

Q: How does Ultimate Sandbag Training and the DVRT system fit into what you see the future of corrective exercise?

A: What strikes me about the DVRT Ultimate Sandbag Training system is that it allows you to train the body in ways which are unique to other implements. If an athlete or client is willing to focus on the details of the system in every movement, they will feel and find areas of their body which are restricted that they never realized. Those unknown restrictions, no matter how small they may be, have a cumulative effect on the system, leading to large deficiencies in movement. While I think that the term “posterior chain” is a bit over used, lets face it, our backsides in this country suck. The DVRT Ultimate Sandbag Training system is almost always training the backside in some form or capacity. I believe that if we simply make improvements in that area of the body, that we will correct a ton of the movement based issues that plague our society as a whole. Along with that, the varying loads that the sandbag provides makes for a very unique programming tool. And the final, and maybe most important advantage of the system is that it allows me to easily and safely train our athletes in an eccentric nature with rotation. I have found no other implement that can do that, and we have ignored that area of training for years with our programming.

Ultimate Sandbag Training Corrective Exercise

Working with pros like Mitch is helping us to constantly evolve our DVRT Ultimate Sandbag Training system to all new heights. This means for you, better programs, better exercises and experiencing how Ultimate Sandbag Training can be revolutionizing your fitness!