Overcomer Nation!! On this week’s podcast, we had the opportunity to interview the sandbag guru, Josh Henkin. He has been in the fitness and performance industry for over 25 years, he has written over 1000 articles for various publications and he is the CEO of Ultimate Sandbag Training and the creator of the Ultimate Sandbag and the Dynamic Variable Resistance Training System. Josh will also be presenting at the upcoming Perform Better Summit on “Why You Aren’t Programming Functional Training Correctly”.
Josh has overcome many adversities, including a degenerative spine disease that was diagnosed at the age of 14. He has had numerous surgeries which gave him limited mobility and impacted every aspect of his life. At one point, he lost the ability to use his right arm and had to reteach himself how to walk twice. When you have chronic pain and illness, or lose the ability to use your arms, it impacts functional activities, sleep, mood, etc. and creates many stressors. When things don’t function correctly, how are you going to teach your body to function at a level that allows you to enjoy life? In every instance of his life where these things happened – Josh rehabbed himself.
Sometimes there is a misunderstanding in the fitness industry regarding diseases that impact a person’s orthopedic condition. People tend to think, “you did something to cause that.” That is not the reality of the situation. There is a saying regarding chronic illness: “It’s the invisible illness that’s the toughest for people to appreciate.” If others can’t see it, to them you are not ill.
Josh got involved in the fitness industry when he realized his lack of athleticism was going to allow him to be a professional athlete. He was fortunate to have a coach in high school who was an assistant strength coach for the Chicago White Sox. This man introduced Josh to the idea of strength and conditioning. This early exposure created a hunger to learn more.
Josh found that the sandbag could be used as a feedback mechanism tool – a way to reteach his body to function again. Over time, Josh became known as the Sandbag Guru and offers information from his extensive expertise about how this unique tool can be used to develop functional fitness. A tool such as the sandbag is great, but it only gives you the potential to do good things. You have to have the knowledge of how to optimize the tool to achieve those great things.
You can find out more about Josh, Josh’s wife Jess, the Ultimate Sandbag and the Dynamic Variable Resistance Training System here:
Listen to Josh’s full interview on iTunes and Spotify: