The Pancake Conditioning Workout to Challenge Your Core
Training at home has never been more important — and it’s never been easier! Sam Stauffer, Spartan’s Director of Training, is taking you through our inventory and explaining how to use each piece of equipment efficiently and effectively. Today’s piece of equipment: Pancakes. To browse our collection in the Spartan store, click here, and make sure to check out our full workout database.
The Spartan Pancake: The Premier Sandbag
The Spartan Pancake is THE premier sandbag. With nowhere solid to grip, every exercise that requires you to hold the Pancake away from your body (not hugging it or letting it sit on your shoulder) improves your pinch and crush grip. Additionally, the Pancake is a safe way to load up any exercise, allowing you to amp up your workout without the higher risk of injury that comes with more traditional strength modalities such as dumbbells and barbells. That's not to discount dumbbells or barbells in any way, but you should work up to them with other modalities such as sandbags, strength bands, or, of course, bodyweight exercises.
Related: A 20-Minute Pancake Workout With Throws and Slams
How to Utilize the Pancake Most Effectively
There are many ways to load up the Spartan Pancake. Considering that it’s a softer modality, it fits comfortably on your shoulder during exercises like squats and lunges. These types of holds also place the weight off-kilter, challenging your core even more. Holding the Pancake with a crush or pinch grip is also incredibly beneficial, especially considering the nature of obstacle course racing. Any opportunity you have to train your grip, take it!
The Pancake Conditioning Workout
This workout is going to leverage the Pancake in a few different ways. We’re looking to challenge the core with unique holds, as well as reinforce your crush and pinch grip endurance.
You can progress Circuit 1 by increasing the starting number of reps, and you can progress Circuit 2 by increasing the amount of rounds. To regress this workout, you can decrease the amount of starting reps for Circuit 1, and for Circuit 2, you can decrease the amount of time under tension for each exercise.
The goal here is a full-body conditioning workout that can be done in less than 20 minutes.
Circuit 1
For each exercise, count down from 10 reps to 1.
Pancake Swings
Offset Squat Jumps (with Pancake on shoulder)
Alternating Reverse Lunge With Twist
Circuit 2
Do each exercise for 60 seconds. Perform three rounds, and rest for 60 seconds between rounds.
Suitcase Carry (30 seconds with each hand)
Bear Crawl (with Pancake on back)
Hollow Hold (with Pancake over chest)
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