I recently got a Sandbell from Fitter First. The brand is Hyperwear, and they have a website here, http://www.hyperwear.com/discover/sandbell.html/. Does anyone have experience with this brand of sandbag? I love the toughness of it. You can really throw it around and the bag itself shows no wear. My problem is the dust. I like throwing/catching these things, like bag toss situps. The dust gets in my eyes though. Is it that? 1. Fitter first buys the empty bag and fills it with cheap sand. 2. Even good sand breaks down and the design of the bag sucks. Has anyone used one of these? What is your experience? If you filled it yourself, what type of sand did you use? I am thinking playground sand might work well.
Never heard of those. In the good ol days, we cut down burlap and made mini-bags. Instead of sand, which sometimes found a small area to leak, we used bb's
They sell Stealbells as well. Same thing just filled with steel shot. I will get some of those soon, but I am not sure that I want to do the high velocity throwing exercises with them. It might wrap the fingers to easily. A 40lb Sandbell coming at you at fast is bag enough, but hyperwear describes the Steelbells as being much more unstable than the Sandbell. If the 40 lb sandbell comes at you fast with a spin on it, then you have a risk of finger injury. If the Steelbell is more unstable it may be high risk even without the spin.
I am not sure of your exercise-routines. Throwing anything around with high velocity can produce problems
100% BB (steal balls) is not good (you will get arthritis on your finger joint when you get old). You should mix with 40% plastic bean (or Chinese moon bean). The bag should not be over 23 lbs, 18 to 20 lb should be the best weight. You can throw with your partners or by yourself.
I am not sure if anyone is interested but I emptied out the Sandbell and found that it was filled with construction grade sand. It had bits of soft rock in there as well. A huge amount of dust. I got some playground sand from the hardware store. It is dust free now, we'll see how it is after this thing gets slammed on the floor a few hundred times. My advice, if you are considering getting a Sandbell, get it from Hyperwear directly and not from Fitterfirst.
It seems to me there are a lot of factors to consider. For a sandbag, First and formost is the type of catch/toss you are doing. If it is for finger strength then you always need to grab the top of the bag as it is falling otherwise it might wrap the finger. If you are testing core stability then the catch is more like a double palm strike. Less likely to hurt the finger but still possible, particularly if the bag is spinning. We always throw the bag in this case like a two handed basketball pass. This reduces spin. You can also slam the bag on the ground. Great fun and a killer workout, but here if you pull too hard on the top of the throw with the fingers dug in you might get an unpleasent knuckle twist. I try to keep more surface area contact with the top of the bag. I can see how the exercises become more aggressive with the steel ball filling but the only experience I have is with the pinch grip bag from Ironmind. It is ten pounds and the bag is not stretchable. Your finger cannot get caught. I think 10 pounds is good enough for me for explosive grip practice.
The SandBells need to be filled with washed playsand. Lowe's and Home Depot in the US sell quickcrete playsand and that is good. Did you complain to Fitter First? I think they also sell them empty so you can go get your own sand and fill them. Saves a lot on shipping if you can get dry playsand locally.
UT Longhorn football is using the sandbells all the way up to 50lb in part because of the safety for hands and the work for grip, wrist and forearm. They do a lot of partner work like you would do with a dynamax. Not sure there is another way to train for handling impact of a tackle - you have to stabilize your core catching a 50lb object thrown to you. Mad Dog, the strength coach, was interviewed about it and it is on the Muscle and Fitness site.
One way to train this is to have 3 (or 4, 5, 6, ...) persons in a circle. Each with 20 feet apart. Person A uses his right hand to throw toward the left side of the person B. Person B catches it with his left hand, spins his body, switches his bag from his left hand to his right hand (behind his body), and then throw at person C's left side. This will put a lot of pressure on your finger joints and that's why too much weight may not be proper.
It has been about a month of abuse and with the new sand, no dust in the eyes. Yeah! I got a few more sandbells from Hyperwear, and they are holding up fantastically as well. I think I finally need to get a couple of 50's. BTW, Sandbells are great for farmer's walks. They try to rip right out of your fingers. Particullarly good if you do throws or grappling with a uniform.
