Sandbags can be an awesome training tool. When I wanted to add some sandbag work to my repertoire, I didn’t want to shell out money, so I made my own.

When I started training for my first GORUCK event, the training plan I was following called for shoulder-to-shoulder presses with a sandbag. I didn’t own one, so I set about trying to figure out how to create my own. If you are independently wealthy, or just not incredibly cheap, I highly recommend Wreck Bags. We use them in the gym at South Jersey OCR and they hold up really well.  They are filled with shredded rubber instead of sand, so they don’t leak like some sandbags do.

In any case, I fashioned my “sandbag” out of an old duffel bag, bags of rice, and a lot of tape. I opted for rice instead of sand because I was concerned about leaking, and I’ve heard that sandbags can take on water and be impossible to dry out. Plus, the rice was cheap, and coming in smaller five pound bags gave me the flexibility to create the weight I wanted without a bunch of rebagging sand into smaller bags.

The duffel bag I had hanging around the house as a giveaway from work. I wrapped the rice in plastic bags and tape to add some additional seal to it so the bags wouldn’t explode and end up all over the place. Then the whole thing went into the duffel bad, and viola! A sandbag for training for just a few dollars.

Some duct tape just to hold them in position

A couple of plastic bags to hold everything in

A load of packing tape to hold it all snug

Into the free duffel bag. Don’t leave this jawn laying anywhere, because it looks like the kind of thing a bomb squad would have to investigate.

And done! Thank you, Hampton Behavioral Health Center.

And here it is in action!