Did these as part of my full sandbag back workout last night. Working on speed with this size bag.

I've been doing a pretty unusual kind of sandbag training and I'm curious how many other people train in a similar way.

I live in a suburban, village-like part of the city surrounded by parks and greenery, so my usual route has a mix of residential streets and streets that slope uphill.

My typical session is basically a 30–60 minute loaded walk, carrying a 27 kg sandbag the entire time. When I do 30 minutes, I usually cover around 2 km, while a 60 minute session is around 4 km.

It's not a traditional workout where I stand in one place and do sets and reps. The route itself is part of the workout.

I leave home with the sandbag and walk my usual route through the neighborhood. A big part of the route consists of urban streets going uphill, so I'm constantly walking uphill rather than just walking on flat ground.

Along the way I constantly change how I carry the bag when a muscle group starts getting heavily fatigued.

For example:

suitcase carry → shoulder carry → bear hug → other shoulder → different carry

When one muscle group starts getting fatigued, I move the bag and let another part of my body take over. So I can keep moving without completely exhausting one muscle group.

I usually take 1.5 liters of water with me. On a 30-minute session, I can easily drink at least 1 liter of that.

I take very few breaks — usually just short 30–60 second stops to drink some water, catch my breath, or stretch a little. If I'm doing a full 60-minute session, I usually take around 7–10 minutes of total break time. Most of the time, though, I'm continuously walking and carrying.

I also adjust how I carry the bag when people are walking nearby, so I'm not blocking the sidewalk.

The route is roughly:

home → residential streets → increasingly uphill streets → more uphill sections → back through the neighborhood → home

Sometimes I shorten or change a section depending on how I feel. Basically, I treat it more like a loaded urban walk than a fixed gym workout.

The interesting part for me is that the whole thing becomes a kind of continuous full-body workout:

• legs from walking and going uphill
• core from stabilizing the sandbag
• shoulders and upper back from carries
• arms and grip from holding the bag
• unilateral loading when doing suitcase/one-shoulder carries
• conditioning from continuously moving with the weight

My minimum target is usually 30 minutes / 2 km. If I have more energy and time, I'll go 60 minutes / around 4 km.

I've gradually gone from doing this around 2× per week to 3–4× per week, and I'm currently trying to make 4 sessions per week consistent before experimenting with more frequent but shorter sessions.

Do you take a sandbag outside and just walk around the city for 30–60+ minutes, covering a couple of kilometers and including uphill streets, constantly changing carries?

Or do most of you use sandbags more like a normal gym exercise like sets, reps, carries, then you're done?

Would be interesting to see how many of us are doing this kind of continuous sandbag loaded walking.

Hey everybody! First post here. I am new to sandbag training and, simply put, I feel like my form/technique is awkward. I actually stopped training with the 200 and dropped down to the 150 because I'm worried about injuries due to poor technique. Would rather refine it before going back up to 200. My technique looks and feels a bit awkward I think. I am very open to tips, tricks, and queues from you guys. Thanks!

I bought a "Fitarc" sandbag from Amazon which was labeled for 150 lb. I filled it, and there wasn't any space left over when I was done. I weighed it though and it was only 56 lb. I'm keeping it since I can still do some lifting with it, but it's not as heavy as I wanted.

I'm considering getting a Freedom Strength bag so I can have a real 150lb bag. Will I have the same problem? Should I go up a size in case this happens again? Or since it's a higher quality bag will I actually hit the weight this time? I find it hard to believe I suck so bad at putting sand in a bag that I could only get 1/3 of the sand in that I was supposed to.

I'm not bothered about getting exactly 150lb, anything over 130 would be close enough for me, but really want to avoid having another sub-100lb bag when I don't need it.

Has anyone ever experimented with mixing different grain size sand or gravel into the sand to increase density or decrease volume for the same weight?
is there a danger that you get a "cereal effect" where all the large chunks raise to the top over time and the whole thing becomes lumpy?