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After my article yesterday about how to make a cheap set of farmers’ bars, I thought I write today about how I went about making a sandbag.  I started thinking about sandbag training a while ago and even went so far as to order an army duffle bag online.  But, procrastination got the better of me and the duffle bag lay on my dining room floor until recently, when I dragged it outside on a sunny weekend afternoon and got the job done.

What do I need to make a sandbag?

All you need to make a sandbag is:

• a suitable bag;
• some sand;
• weighing scales; and
• something to keep the sand from spilling out of the bag (like plastic bags or sheets).

What does a suitable bag look like?

A suitable bag looks like this tough army duffle bag:

What sand do I put in the bag?

I used normal builders’ sand from the local DIY store.  It costs less than £1.50 per 20kg bag.

How do I put the sand in the sandbag?

If you put the sand in the sandbag loose, it will all drain out the holes in the end of the duffle bag, right?  So it needs to go into the sandbag inside plastic bags.  The next thing to decide is how heavy you want the sandbag to be.  I decided that 40kg would be good for conditioning work.  However, I thought it might be useful to be able to change the weight of the sandbag quickly and easily.

So I used one of the 20kg plastic bags full of sand from the DIY store (wrapped with extra-strong packing tape to keep it together) for the main weight.  I then added several smaller bags, which I made myself out of a sheet of plastic that we had lying around (I think it had been used to deliver something to us).  I knew the DIY store bags were 20kg because that’s what they were sold as.  I used a weighing scale to measure 4 lots of 5kg of sand into smaller bags made out of the plastic sheeting I had to hand. 

So I ended up with 1 bag weighing 20kg and 4 bags weighing 5kg each.  So if I decide that 40kg is too heavy, then I can drop down to 35kg quite easily.  Similarly, if my girlfriend wants to have a go, she can start with a lighter weight, as she only weighs 50kg wet through…

How do I tie up the sandbag?

My army duffle bag came with four eyelets at the open end.  I tied these together with some twine.  Then I folded the loose material of the sandbag over and wrapped two more lots of twine around it to hold the bag in a sausage shape.  Hopefully, these wrappings won’t come loose too soon.

By the time I had finished, the sun had gone in and I was getting a bit cold.  I took the bag inside to warm up, picked it up a few times to test it and within seconds I was bright red and sweating.  Conclusion: it works.

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Tags:   Cardio · sandbag3 Comments