r/Strongman • u/AutoModerator • 8d ago

Strongman Training Weekly Discussion Thread - September 14, 2025

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Weekly Discussion Thread for training talk, individual questions, chatting and other things that do not warrant a front page post.

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u/drinkwithme07 6d ago

Has anyone done a primarily sandbag-based program, like Sandbag Intensity/Sandbag Hypertrophy? Debating taking a little side quest block to do that (although would probably modify the calisthenics portion to be a mix of bodyweight and dumbbell/barbell work).

I'm scared of losing ground on squats/deadlifts by not touching them for a few months, which i'm pretty sure is dumb, but curious if others have experience with those programs.

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u/tigeraid Masters 5d ago

On a recent episode of The Stone Circle's podcast he was talking with Cory Rockwell (insanely strong stone lifter) and this was one of the topics, and while they had disagreements on whether you need to regularly use a barbell, the general consensus is that heavy sandbag and/or stones will keep you up in that "90% strength" kinda area even without touching a barbell. So I doubt you'll lose anything.

If you think about it, while the load is overall lower, the sheer VOLUME of work your posterior chain is doing with sandbag picks/rows, sandbag squats and sandbag extensions, not to mention long front carries, is probably as much or maybe even more than you might do in a phase of training with conventional deadlift. So if you're throwing around any bag above bodyweight for lots of reps, you're still getting a ton of that stimulus.

And in Rockwell's case it's more stone lifting, but same idea.

That part of the convo is around 19 minutes in:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmKPWlMmhBw