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Often, the simplest exercises are the ones that work you the hardest. Take the farmer’s walk, for example. At its core, it’s as basic as it gets. You hold your weights down by your sides and walk around. Easy, right?
Not so fast! While the idea behind the movement is basic, actually performing the farmer’s walk is as challenging as it gets. Picture this: You start the exercise, and within seconds your forearms fill with blood, your grip starts to fail, and your shoulders and lungs begin to burn. Then it's a battle of wills between you and the weights.
Will you drop the barbell, dumbbells, or kettlebells you're holding? Or, despite your shaking arms and burning back, will you continue on until your set is complete? And, since we're asking a bunch of questions here, does this move still sound easy?
We think not!
If you aren’t already performing the farmer’s carry, we highly recommend you start right away. As it has the ability to work your entire body, this versatile exercise could be the missing link in your routine.
This post will cover:
What is the farmer’s walk?
Farmer’s carry benefits
Muscles worked during farmer’s walks
Correct farmer’s walk form
Common mistakes to avoid
Farmer’s carries variations to add to your training routine
Let’s dive in.
WHAT IS A FARMER'S WALK?
Essentially, a farmer’s walk is a loaded carry that not only hits the entire body but also makes for a great forearm exercise. You walk with weight by your sides, at your front, or overhead. When walking with a load, good posture is key to avoiding injury and reaping the benefits of the carry.
Proper form for this move involves retracting your shoulder blades, keeping your shoulders away from your ears, and keeping your body straight and upright while you gaze ahead. Once you’re set up and have your weights, you simply walk around using the space available to you while focusing on perfect form.
WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS OF FARMER'S WALKS?
An immediate, and obvious, benefit of carries is that it's a grip strength exercise, which is great for everything from lifting heavier weights to carrying all of your grocery bags in at once (winning!). But this move’s benefits don’t end there. The exercise provides several other great benefits as well, including:
1. Better Breathing Patterns:
It’s okay to breathe with your chest when you need air quickly, say for example, when you’re getting chased by a wild animal. But for the most part, you need to breathe much deeper than this, using your diaphragm, particularly when you’re working out. Performing carries with weight in your hands makes breathing through your chest challenging, encouraging you to breathe deep into your belly instead. You'll likely see breathing improvements the next time you perform core work, like when you take on the dead bug exercise, for example.
2. Improved Posture:
How many times has your mother told you to stand up straight and stop slouching? This is the same form needed for the farmer’s carry. Shoulders down and chest up are the main cues for performing the carry, and this alone strengthens the muscles needed for good posture. Trust us, you'll appreciate the ability to stand tall.
3. Better Shoulder Stability:
Whenever you grip something, your rotator cuffs are activated. And when you’re carrying heavy weight for distance or time, you put your rotator cuffs and deltoids under high levels of muscular tension for improved shoulder strength and stability. You'll then feel those gains the next time you tackle a dumbbell shoulder workout.
4. Improved Performance:
Almost all pulling exercises require high amounts of grip strength. If your grip gives out before your back or leg muscles do, you are leaving gains on the table. Strengthening your grip allows you to fully exhaust the targeted muscle group for better muscle-building gains. This is also an excellent functional exercise for improving performance in everyday life, making it great for your health and fitness goals and a must for your workout routine.
5. Better Balance:
Every step of any farmer’s carry variation is basically a single-leg stance. Every time you take a foot off the ground with load, your abdominal muscles and hip stabilizer muscles are working overtime to keep you balanced.
6. Extends Your Life:
If you ever find yourself dangling from a cliff, your grip strength will save your bacon. A study examined the health of 140,000 people over four years with a variety of health outcomes, including looking at grip strength. Interestingly, grip strength was linked to mortality with every 10-pound decrease in grip strength associated with a 17% risk increase in death1.
Need further convincing? Research found that a gradual decrease in grip strength is associated with an uptick in the risk of having a heart attack and stroke. Your grip strength is a better indicator of your risk of developing cardiovascular disease, more than systolic blood pressure is1. Sounds like reason enough to include it in your next upper body dumbbell workout.
7. Improves Your Quality Of Life:
When grip strength decreases, there is an eightfold increase in the risk of developing a muscular disability if you are an older adult. Plus, decreases in grip strength have been associated with adverse weight gain among women and mortality among men2. This is why functional training is so important.
FARMER'S CARRY MUSCLES WORKED
More to the point, what major muscle groups aren't worked in the farmer’s walk? This full body exercise trains almost every muscle in the upper and lower body, but listing them all seems like overkill. Instead, we're listing the major muscles and muscle groups trained by the farmer’s walk exercise. As you can see, it's a great move to include in a full body workout as it works almost every muscle.
Upper body:
Forearms and Wrist
Triceps
Upper and Lower Back
Abdominals
Lower body:
Hips
Glutes
Hamstrings
Calves
HOW TO DO THE FARMER'S WALK CORRECTLY
Before getting into the nitty gritty of performing a farmer’s walk, let’s discuss the various equipment used for this exercise. First, the barbell is a tool that allows you to carry a significant load, and it can be carried on your back, overhead, or Zercher style, in which you'll hold the bar the same way as you would a Zercher squat. More on this later.
Trap bars are a useful tool also. With the weight being more in line with your center of gravity than the barbell, it’s easier on your joints and you can load it heavier than dumbbells and barbells.
Carrying dumbbells is easy on your joints because you can use a neutral wrist, which makes your shoulders happy. Carrying dumbbells is also going to be your strongest grip. And like the barbell, you can carry the dumbbells like a front squat, by your side, or overhead. Plus, this can all be done unilaterally to strengthen imbalances between sides.
Kettlebells are also great for carries. The offset nature of the kettlebell trains the stabilizing muscles of the hips and shoulders more than other weight options. You can hold them similar to dumbbells, or to make things harder, hold the kettlebells bottoms up as it requires even more grip strength to carry the same load.
All of the variations work the same muscle groups, but some may target one muscle more than others. This means including various farmer's walk variations into your routine is great for a well rounded program. For example one (or more) variations would work well in this push-pull workout routine.
How to do the Bilateral Dumbbell Farmer’s Carry:
Choose dumbbells with 25-50% of your body weight in each hand. It's best to grab them from the dumbbell rack for safety.
With your shoulders down, chest upright, shoulder blades retracted, and gripping the dumbbells tightly, make sure your posture is sound before moving. Keep your gaze straight ahead.
Walk forward slowly, with short steps, in a straight line. If you run out of space, turn around and head back the way you came, continuing this pattern until you’ve reached your desired time duration.
Return the dumbbells to the rack; rest and repeat.
3 COMMON MISTAKES TO AVOID
There are a few common mistakes lifters make when performing the farmer’s carry. Avoid the following:
1. Going Too Heavy:
If you cannot walk at least 20 to 40 yards, your grip is failing, and you are not walking with good posture, the weight is too heavy. Again, start with 25-50% of your body weight in one hand or both, and adjust if needed.
2. Allowing Your Shoulders To Go Out Of Position:
Your shoulders need to be down and back for good posture and better carrying form. Raised or rounded forward shoulders will put the shoulder more at risk for injury and negate the upper body benefits of carries.
3. Not Keeping the Core Engaged:
When you’re walking with your weight, you need to engage your core muscles. If not, you are inviting injury and may find yourself on the floor. Keeping this area activated gives you the stability and support necessary to move well while ensuring you remain balanced. Plus, it protects your lower back. Throw in a few back extension exercises, and you'll increase your chances of avoiding a low back injury.
VARIATIONS OF THE FARMER’S WALK
You can switch up the traditional bilateral dumbbell farmer's carry with several different pieces of equipment and form variations.
1. Suitcase Carry (Single Arm Walk):
The suitcase carry, or single-arm farmer's carry, has all the same benefits of farmer’s walks, but this variation will fix muscle imbalances between sides. Here you’ll notice the load pulling you to one side - this is called lateral flexion. This farmer's walk variation trains your internal and external obliques to prevent this. All single-arm walk variations throw your body off balance, which ironically ends up improving your balance.
You can use a dumbbell or kettlebell for this exercise, either carrying it by your side, in a racked position, overhead, or bottoms up.
2. Trap Bar Carry:
Trap bar carries have you use more weight than the kettlebell and dumbbell variations. This is because you're using a neutral grip and the load is in line with your center of gravity. Both of these factors allow you to load more weight to improve your muscle and strength-building capabilities.
You’ll use the trap bar for this move (hence, the name), and you can carry it by your side, overhead, suitcase, or as an offset carry, which is when you place more load on one side compared to the other. In general, trap bar exercises are great for adding weight and increasing your loads carried.
3. Overhead Carries:
Regular carry variations like the ones above are great, but walking with a load overhead takes this to another level because of the increased leverage. What does leverage mean? It means the resistance is further away from the working muscles (legs and core), making it one of the hardest walk variations to do. Use barbells, dumbbells, or trap bars here - whichever option you pick, it’s going to be hard! We love including this in our barbell shoulder exercises routine.
Form tip: You must have good shoulder mobility to press and keep the weight overhead. Walk slowly and carefully as overhead carries have a great risk of injury.
4. Overhead Unilateral Carry:
When you combine the benefits of a single-arm carry with going overhead, you have one of the most challenging carries around. The benefits of offset loading include testing your balance and improving shoulder stability, lateral core strength, and mental toughness. Use dumbbells or kettlebells for this variation.
You can make it even more challenging by turning it into a bottom-up overhead kettlebell carry, which is either performed with an arm overhead or in the waiter serving position. The overhead version is the hardest because the kettlebell is farther from your center of gravity, making it harder to balance. Both bottoms-up carry variations will improve your grip strength, posture, and lateral stability.
5. Zercher Carry:
The Zercher carry might rival the overhead carry as the toughest on this list. Holding a barbell in the crooks of your elbows while walking upright with good posture will test your anterior core, biceps, upper back, deltoids, and even your chest strength. The sheer uncomfortableness of this exercise will take your mental toughness to the next level. Plus, multiple muscle groups worked equals serious muscle hypertrophy.
You can use a barbell or sandbag. If you opt for a barbell, set it up in the squat rack at around hip height for easier pick-up and drop-off. For some variation, we suggest the sandbag. Who doesn't love a good sandbag workout?
FAQS
Still have some lingering questions regarding this exercise? Well, good news! We’ve got answers.
1. Is the Farmer's walk good for weight loss?
Think of farmer’s walks as the cherry on top of an ice cream sundae. If you’re performing main compound lifts, in a calorie deficit, and getting enough protein, farmer’s walks are great for weight loss. This is a full-body move that gets your heart rate up and will have you burning calories long after you’ve finished training.
2. Does the farmer’s Walk REALLY build muscle?
The short answer is yes. The long answer is the farmer’s walk provides a high level of muscular tension in the forearms, upper back, and shoulders, so you can build muscle everywhere. Plus, strengthening your grip will assist you with all exercises grip related, helping you to do more reps with the same weight or lift more load.
Often, your grip gets fried before your targeted muscle does, and strengthening your grip will prevent this from happening. This is a full-body move that will build muscle mass everywhere when incorporated into a hypertrophy program.
3. How long should you do the farmer's walk?
This is entirely dependent on your goals. If your goal is to build absolute strength, then heavier weight, shorter distances, longer rest between sets, and a few more working sets is good. Twenty yards with 90% of your body weight and above for three to four sets will build strength.
If your goal is fat loss, then muscle endurance is what you're targeting. Aim for longer distances, lighter weights, shorter rest periods, and fewer sets. Using a load of 50-80% of your body weight for 40-100 yards for two to three sets will have you gasping for air. Finally, for muscle hypertrophy, using a load between 80-100% of your body weight for 40-60 yards for three sets will set the table for more muscle.
Note: These are general recommendations and can be adjusted to your goals.
BEST HYPERTROPHY PROGRAM
Prepare to maximize your gains with our exclusive 12-week hypertrophy training program. Choose between a 4 or 5 day training split and gain 2-12 pounds of muscle over 90 days...
4. How much weight for farmers walk?
Generally, the shorter you walk, the heavier the weight, and the longer you walk the lighter the weight. But, this all depends on your goals as discussed above. When you’re starting with the bilateral dumbbell carry, you should be able to handle 25-50% of your body weight in each hand and walk between 20-40 yards. If you cannot walk 20 yards, it is too heavy and if you walk more than 40 yards without your grip failing, it is too light.
And if you're training for muscle endurance, you're going to be walking for longer, which means you'll likely need even lighter weights than our 25-50% recommendation. The same goes for if you include this move in a high intensity interval training program - because of the intensity of your routine, you likely won't be able to carry super heavy weights. And that's okay! Select the weight that pushes you while enabling you to complete the program's suggested sets and reps.
The loaded carries variation you use, your goal, experience level, and tool you use will determine load. Here you’ll experiment a little to find a load that will challenge you to reach your specific goals.
5. How often should I do farmers’ walks?
You can do them every day, but this would mean recovery would be an issue. To improve and recover well between training, two to three times a week is a good place to start. And avoid performing the move on back-to-back days.
Farmer’s Walk: The Exercise Move You Should Be Doing
Farmer’s walks look simple, but as we’ve covered, they’re anything but easy. If you are willing to stand the discomfort, performing carries is a functional exercise that has the ability to improve muscle strength, save your life, reduce your risk of heart disease, improve your posture and shoulder stability, and improve your gym performance.
Oh, and as an added bonus, your newfound strong grip will prevent you from ever having to struggle through opening a pickle jar or carrying grocery bags again. So many benefits from such a basic strength training exercise mean this move deserves a spot in your workout split.
Related: Top 9 Exercises to Improve Your Grip Strength
References:
Leong, Darryl P, et al. “Prognostic Value of Grip Strength: Findings from the Prospective Urban Rural Epidemiology (PURE) Study.” The Lancet, vol. 386, no. 9990, July 2015, pp. 266–273, 10.1016/s0140-6736(14)62000-6.
Perna, Frank M., et al. “Muscular Grip Strength Estimates of the U.S. Population from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2011–2012.” Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, vol. 30, no. 3, Mar. 2016, pp. 867–874, 10.1519/jsc.0000000000001104.
Often, the simplest exercises are the ones that work you the hardest. Take the farmer’s walk, for example. At its core, it’s as basic as it gets. You hold your weights down by your sides and walk around. Easy, right?
Not so fast! While the idea behind the movement is basic, actually performing the farmer’s walk is as challenging as it gets. Picture this: You start the exercise, and within seconds your forearms fill with blood, your grip starts to fail, and your shoulders and lungs begin to burn. Then it's a battle of wills between you and the weights.
Will you drop the barbell, dumbbells, or kettlebells you're holding? Or, despite your shaking arms and burning back, will you continue on until your set is complete? And, since we're asking a bunch of questions here, does this move still sound easy?
We think not!
If you aren’t already performing the farmer’s carry, we highly recommend you start right away. As it has the ability to work your entire body, this versatile exercise could be the missing link in your routine.
This post will cover:
Let’s dive in.
WHAT IS A FARMER'S WALK?
Essentially, a farmer’s walk is a loaded carry that not only hits the entire body but also makes for a great forearm exercise. You walk with weight by your sides, at your front, or overhead. When walking with a load, good posture is key to avoiding injury and reaping the benefits of the carry.
Proper form for this move involves retracting your shoulder blades, keeping your shoulders away from your ears, and keeping your body straight and upright while you gaze ahead. Once you’re set up and have your weights, you simply walk around using the space available to you while focusing on perfect form.
WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS OF FARMER'S WALKS?
An immediate, and obvious, benefit of carries is that it's a grip strength exercise, which is great for everything from lifting heavier weights to carrying all of your grocery bags in at once (winning!). But this move’s benefits don’t end there. The exercise provides several other great benefits as well, including:
1. Better Breathing Patterns:
It’s okay to breathe with your chest when you need air quickly, say for example, when you’re getting chased by a wild animal. But for the most part, you need to breathe much deeper than this, using your diaphragm, particularly when you’re working out. Performing carries with weight in your hands makes breathing through your chest challenging, encouraging you to breathe deep into your belly instead. You'll likely see breathing improvements the next time you perform core work, like when you take on the dead bug exercise, for example.
2. Improved Posture:
How many times has your mother told you to stand up straight and stop slouching? This is the same form needed for the farmer’s carry. Shoulders down and chest up are the main cues for performing the carry, and this alone strengthens the muscles needed for good posture. Trust us, you'll appreciate the ability to stand tall.
3. Better Shoulder Stability:
Whenever you grip something, your rotator cuffs are activated. And when you’re carrying heavy weight for distance or time, you put your rotator cuffs and deltoids under high levels of muscular tension for improved shoulder strength and stability. You'll then feel those gains the next time you tackle a dumbbell shoulder workout.
4. Improved Performance:
Almost all pulling exercises require high amounts of grip strength. If your grip gives out before your back or leg muscles do, you are leaving gains on the table. Strengthening your grip allows you to fully exhaust the targeted muscle group for better muscle-building gains. This is also an excellent functional exercise for improving performance in everyday life, making it great for your health and fitness goals and a must for your workout routine.
5. Better Balance:
Every step of any farmer’s carry variation is basically a single-leg stance. Every time you take a foot off the ground with load, your abdominal muscles and hip stabilizer muscles are working overtime to keep you balanced.
6. Extends Your Life:
If you ever find yourself dangling from a cliff, your grip strength will save your bacon. A study examined the health of 140,000 people over four years with a variety of health outcomes, including looking at grip strength. Interestingly, grip strength was linked to mortality with every 10-pound decrease in grip strength associated with a 17% risk increase in death1.
Need further convincing? Research found that a gradual decrease in grip strength is associated with an uptick in the risk of having a heart attack and stroke. Your grip strength is a better indicator of your risk of developing cardiovascular disease, more than systolic blood pressure is1. Sounds like reason enough to include it in your next upper body dumbbell workout.
7. Improves Your Quality Of Life:
When grip strength decreases, there is an eightfold increase in the risk of developing a muscular disability if you are an older adult. Plus, decreases in grip strength have been associated with adverse weight gain among women and mortality among men2. This is why functional training is so important.
FARMER'S CARRY MUSCLES WORKED
More to the point, what major muscle groups aren't worked in the farmer’s walk? This full body exercise trains almost every muscle in the upper and lower body, but listing them all seems like overkill. Instead, we're listing the major muscles and muscle groups trained by the farmer’s walk exercise. As you can see, it's a great move to include in a full body workout as it works almost every muscle.
Upper body:
Lower body:
HOW TO DO THE FARMER'S WALK CORRECTLY
Before getting into the nitty gritty of performing a farmer’s walk, let’s discuss the various equipment used for this exercise. First, the barbell is a tool that allows you to carry a significant load, and it can be carried on your back, overhead, or Zercher style, in which you'll hold the bar the same way as you would a Zercher squat. More on this later.
Trap bars are a useful tool also. With the weight being more in line with your center of gravity than the barbell, it’s easier on your joints and you can load it heavier than dumbbells and barbells.
Carrying dumbbells is easy on your joints because you can use a neutral wrist, which makes your shoulders happy. Carrying dumbbells is also going to be your strongest grip. And like the barbell, you can carry the dumbbells like a front squat, by your side, or overhead. Plus, this can all be done unilaterally to strengthen imbalances between sides.
Kettlebells are also great for carries. The offset nature of the kettlebell trains the stabilizing muscles of the hips and shoulders more than other weight options. You can hold them similar to dumbbells, or to make things harder, hold the kettlebells bottoms up as it requires even more grip strength to carry the same load.
All of the variations work the same muscle groups, but some may target one muscle more than others. This means including various farmer's walk variations into your routine is great for a well rounded program. For example one (or more) variations would work well in this push-pull workout routine.
How to do the Bilateral Dumbbell Farmer’s Carry:
3 COMMON MISTAKES TO AVOID
There are a few common mistakes lifters make when performing the farmer’s carry. Avoid the following:
1. Going Too Heavy:
If you cannot walk at least 20 to 40 yards, your grip is failing, and you are not walking with good posture, the weight is too heavy. Again, start with 25-50% of your body weight in one hand or both, and adjust if needed.
2. Allowing Your Shoulders To Go Out Of Position:
Your shoulders need to be down and back for good posture and better carrying form. Raised or rounded forward shoulders will put the shoulder more at risk for injury and negate the upper body benefits of carries.
3. Not Keeping the Core Engaged:
When you’re walking with your weight, you need to engage your core muscles. If not, you are inviting injury and may find yourself on the floor. Keeping this area activated gives you the stability and support necessary to move well while ensuring you remain balanced. Plus, it protects your lower back. Throw in a few back extension exercises, and you'll increase your chances of avoiding a low back injury.
VARIATIONS OF THE FARMER’S WALK
You can switch up the traditional bilateral dumbbell farmer's carry with several different pieces of equipment and form variations.
1. Suitcase Carry (Single Arm Walk):
The suitcase carry, or single-arm farmer's carry, has all the same benefits of farmer’s walks, but this variation will fix muscle imbalances between sides. Here you’ll notice the load pulling you to one side - this is called lateral flexion. This farmer's walk variation trains your internal and external obliques to prevent this. All single-arm walk variations throw your body off balance, which ironically ends up improving your balance.
You can use a dumbbell or kettlebell for this exercise, either carrying it by your side, in a racked position, overhead, or bottoms up.
2. Trap Bar Carry:
Trap bar carries have you use more weight than the kettlebell and dumbbell variations. This is because you're using a neutral grip and the load is in line with your center of gravity. Both of these factors allow you to load more weight to improve your muscle and strength-building capabilities.
You’ll use the trap bar for this move (hence, the name), and you can carry it by your side, overhead, suitcase, or as an offset carry, which is when you place more load on one side compared to the other. In general, trap bar exercises are great for adding weight and increasing your loads carried.
3. Overhead Carries:
Regular carry variations like the ones above are great, but walking with a load overhead takes this to another level because of the increased leverage. What does leverage mean? It means the resistance is further away from the working muscles (legs and core), making it one of the hardest walk variations to do. Use barbells, dumbbells, or trap bars here - whichever option you pick, it’s going to be hard! We love including this in our barbell shoulder exercises routine.
Form tip: You must have good shoulder mobility to press and keep the weight overhead. Walk slowly and carefully as overhead carries have a great risk of injury.
4. Overhead Unilateral Carry:
When you combine the benefits of a single-arm carry with going overhead, you have one of the most challenging carries around. The benefits of offset loading include testing your balance and improving shoulder stability, lateral core strength, and mental toughness. Use dumbbells or kettlebells for this variation.
You can make it even more challenging by turning it into a bottom-up overhead kettlebell carry, which is either performed with an arm overhead or in the waiter serving position. The overhead version is the hardest because the kettlebell is farther from your center of gravity, making it harder to balance. Both bottoms-up carry variations will improve your grip strength, posture, and lateral stability.
5. Zercher Carry:
The Zercher carry might rival the overhead carry as the toughest on this list. Holding a barbell in the crooks of your elbows while walking upright with good posture will test your anterior core, biceps, upper back, deltoids, and even your chest strength. The sheer uncomfortableness of this exercise will take your mental toughness to the next level. Plus, multiple muscle groups worked equals serious muscle hypertrophy.
You can use a barbell or sandbag. If you opt for a barbell, set it up in the squat rack at around hip height for easier pick-up and drop-off. For some variation, we suggest the sandbag. Who doesn't love a good sandbag workout?
FAQS
Still have some lingering questions regarding this exercise? Well, good news! We’ve got answers.
1. Is the Farmer's walk good for weight loss?
Think of farmer’s walks as the cherry on top of an ice cream sundae. If you’re performing main compound lifts, in a calorie deficit, and getting enough protein, farmer’s walks are great for weight loss. This is a full-body move that gets your heart rate up and will have you burning calories long after you’ve finished training.
2. Does the farmer’s Walk REALLY build muscle?
The short answer is yes. The long answer is the farmer’s walk provides a high level of muscular tension in the forearms, upper back, and shoulders, so you can build muscle everywhere. Plus, strengthening your grip will assist you with all exercises grip related, helping you to do more reps with the same weight or lift more load.
Often, your grip gets fried before your targeted muscle does, and strengthening your grip will prevent this from happening. This is a full-body move that will build muscle mass everywhere when incorporated into a hypertrophy program.
3. How long should you do the farmer's walk?
This is entirely dependent on your goals. If your goal is to build absolute strength, then heavier weight, shorter distances, longer rest between sets, and a few more working sets is good. Twenty yards with 90% of your body weight and above for three to four sets will build strength.
If your goal is fat loss, then muscle endurance is what you're targeting. Aim for longer distances, lighter weights, shorter rest periods, and fewer sets. Using a load of 50-80% of your body weight for 40-100 yards for two to three sets will have you gasping for air. Finally, for muscle hypertrophy, using a load between 80-100% of your body weight for 40-60 yards for three sets will set the table for more muscle.
Note: These are general recommendations and can be adjusted to your goals.
BEST HYPERTROPHY PROGRAM
Prepare to maximize your gains with our exclusive 12-week hypertrophy training program. Choose between a 4 or 5 day training split and gain 2-12 pounds of muscle over 90 days...
4. How much weight for farmers walk?
Generally, the shorter you walk, the heavier the weight, and the longer you walk the lighter the weight. But, this all depends on your goals as discussed above. When you’re starting with the bilateral dumbbell carry, you should be able to handle 25-50% of your body weight in each hand and walk between 20-40 yards. If you cannot walk 20 yards, it is too heavy and if you walk more than 40 yards without your grip failing, it is too light.
And if you're training for muscle endurance, you're going to be walking for longer, which means you'll likely need even lighter weights than our 25-50% recommendation. The same goes for if you include this move in a high intensity interval training program - because of the intensity of your routine, you likely won't be able to carry super heavy weights. And that's okay! Select the weight that pushes you while enabling you to complete the program's suggested sets and reps.
The loaded carries variation you use, your goal, experience level, and tool you use will determine load. Here you’ll experiment a little to find a load that will challenge you to reach your specific goals.
5. How often should I do farmers’ walks?
You can do them every day, but this would mean recovery would be an issue. To improve and recover well between training, two to three times a week is a good place to start. And avoid performing the move on back-to-back days.
Farmer’s Walk: The Exercise Move You Should Be Doing
Farmer’s walks look simple, but as we’ve covered, they’re anything but easy. If you are willing to stand the discomfort, performing carries is a functional exercise that has the ability to improve muscle strength, save your life, reduce your risk of heart disease, improve your posture and shoulder stability, and improve your gym performance.
Oh, and as an added bonus, your newfound strong grip will prevent you from ever having to struggle through opening a pickle jar or carrying grocery bags again. So many benefits from such a basic strength training exercise mean this move deserves a spot in your workout split.
Related: Top 9 Exercises to Improve Your Grip Strength
References:
[*]Leong, Darryl P, et al. “Prognostic Value of Grip Strength: Findings from the Prospective Urban Rural Epidemiology (PURE) Study.” The Lancet, vol. 386, no. 9990, July 2015, pp. 266–273, 10.1016/s0140-6736(14)62000-6.
[*]Perna, Frank M., et al. “Muscular Grip Strength Estimates of the U.S. Population from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2011–2012.” Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, vol. 30, no. 3, Mar. 2016, pp. 867–874, 10.1519/jsc.0000000000001104.
Click here to view the article.
Not so fast! While the idea behind the movement is basic, actually performing the farmer’s walk is as challenging as it gets. Picture this: You start the exercise, and within seconds your forearms fill with blood, your grip starts to fail, and your shoulders and lungs begin to burn. Then it's a battle of wills between you and the weights.
Will you drop the barbell, dumbbells, or kettlebells you're holding? Or, despite your shaking arms and burning back, will you continue on until your set is complete? And, since we're asking a bunch of questions here, does this move still sound easy?
We think not!
If you aren’t already performing the farmer’s carry, we highly recommend you start right away. As it has the ability to work your entire body, this versatile exercise could be the missing link in your routine.
This post will cover:
What is the farmer’s walk?
Farmer’s carry benefits
Muscles worked during farmer’s walks
Correct farmer’s walk form
Common mistakes to avoid
Farmer’s carries variations to add to your training routine
Let’s dive in.
WHAT IS A FARMER'S WALK?
Essentially, a farmer’s walk is a loaded carry that not only hits the entire body but also makes for a great forearm exercise. You walk with weight by your sides, at your front, or overhead. When walking with a load, good posture is key to avoiding injury and reaping the benefits of the carry.
Proper form for this move involves retracting your shoulder blades, keeping your shoulders away from your ears, and keeping your body straight and upright while you gaze ahead. Once you’re set up and have your weights, you simply walk around using the space available to you while focusing on perfect form.
WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS OF FARMER'S WALKS?
An immediate, and obvious, benefit of carries is that it's a grip strength exercise, which is great for everything from lifting heavier weights to carrying all of your grocery bags in at once (winning!). But this move’s benefits don’t end there. The exercise provides several other great benefits as well, including:
1. Better Breathing Patterns:
It’s okay to breathe with your chest when you need air quickly, say for example, when you’re getting chased by a wild animal. But for the most part, you need to breathe much deeper than this, using your diaphragm, particularly when you’re working out. Performing carries with weight in your hands makes breathing through your chest challenging, encouraging you to breathe deep into your belly instead. You'll likely see breathing improvements the next time you perform core work, like when you take on the dead bug exercise, for example.
2. Improved Posture:
How many times has your mother told you to stand up straight and stop slouching? This is the same form needed for the farmer’s carry. Shoulders down and chest up are the main cues for performing the carry, and this alone strengthens the muscles needed for good posture. Trust us, you'll appreciate the ability to stand tall.
3. Better Shoulder Stability:
Whenever you grip something, your rotator cuffs are activated. And when you’re carrying heavy weight for distance or time, you put your rotator cuffs and deltoids under high levels of muscular tension for improved shoulder strength and stability. You'll then feel those gains the next time you tackle a dumbbell shoulder workout.
4. Improved Performance:
Almost all pulling exercises require high amounts of grip strength. If your grip gives out before your back or leg muscles do, you are leaving gains on the table. Strengthening your grip allows you to fully exhaust the targeted muscle group for better muscle-building gains. This is also an excellent functional exercise for improving performance in everyday life, making it great for your health and fitness goals and a must for your workout routine.
5. Better Balance:
Every step of any farmer’s carry variation is basically a single-leg stance. Every time you take a foot off the ground with load, your abdominal muscles and hip stabilizer muscles are working overtime to keep you balanced.
6. Extends Your Life:
If you ever find yourself dangling from a cliff, your grip strength will save your bacon. A study examined the health of 140,000 people over four years with a variety of health outcomes, including looking at grip strength. Interestingly, grip strength was linked to mortality with every 10-pound decrease in grip strength associated with a 17% risk increase in death1.
Need further convincing? Research found that a gradual decrease in grip strength is associated with an uptick in the risk of having a heart attack and stroke. Your grip strength is a better indicator of your risk of developing cardiovascular disease, more than systolic blood pressure is1. Sounds like reason enough to include it in your next upper body dumbbell workout.
7. Improves Your Quality Of Life:
When grip strength decreases, there is an eightfold increase in the risk of developing a muscular disability if you are an older adult. Plus, decreases in grip strength have been associated with adverse weight gain among women and mortality among men2. This is why functional training is so important.
FARMER'S CARRY MUSCLES WORKED
More to the point, what major muscle groups aren't worked in the farmer’s walk? This full body exercise trains almost every muscle in the upper and lower body, but listing them all seems like overkill. Instead, we're listing the major muscles and muscle groups trained by the farmer’s walk exercise. As you can see, it's a great move to include in a full body workout as it works almost every muscle.
Upper body:
Forearms and Wrist
Triceps
Upper and Lower Back
Abdominals
Lower body:
Hips
Glutes
Hamstrings
Calves
HOW TO DO THE FARMER'S WALK CORRECTLY
Before getting into the nitty gritty of performing a farmer’s walk, let’s discuss the various equipment used for this exercise. First, the barbell is a tool that allows you to carry a significant load, and it can be carried on your back, overhead, or Zercher style, in which you'll hold the bar the same way as you would a Zercher squat. More on this later.
Trap bars are a useful tool also. With the weight being more in line with your center of gravity than the barbell, it’s easier on your joints and you can load it heavier than dumbbells and barbells.
Carrying dumbbells is easy on your joints because you can use a neutral wrist, which makes your shoulders happy. Carrying dumbbells is also going to be your strongest grip. And like the barbell, you can carry the dumbbells like a front squat, by your side, or overhead. Plus, this can all be done unilaterally to strengthen imbalances between sides.
Kettlebells are also great for carries. The offset nature of the kettlebell trains the stabilizing muscles of the hips and shoulders more than other weight options. You can hold them similar to dumbbells, or to make things harder, hold the kettlebells bottoms up as it requires even more grip strength to carry the same load.
All of the variations work the same muscle groups, but some may target one muscle more than others. This means including various farmer's walk variations into your routine is great for a well rounded program. For example one (or more) variations would work well in this push-pull workout routine.
How to do the Bilateral Dumbbell Farmer’s Carry:
Choose dumbbells with 25-50% of your body weight in each hand. It's best to grab them from the dumbbell rack for safety.
With your shoulders down, chest upright, shoulder blades retracted, and gripping the dumbbells tightly, make sure your posture is sound before moving. Keep your gaze straight ahead.
Walk forward slowly, with short steps, in a straight line. If you run out of space, turn around and head back the way you came, continuing this pattern until you’ve reached your desired time duration.
Return the dumbbells to the rack; rest and repeat.
3 COMMON MISTAKES TO AVOID
There are a few common mistakes lifters make when performing the farmer’s carry. Avoid the following:
1. Going Too Heavy:
If you cannot walk at least 20 to 40 yards, your grip is failing, and you are not walking with good posture, the weight is too heavy. Again, start with 25-50% of your body weight in one hand or both, and adjust if needed.
2. Allowing Your Shoulders To Go Out Of Position:
Your shoulders need to be down and back for good posture and better carrying form. Raised or rounded forward shoulders will put the shoulder more at risk for injury and negate the upper body benefits of carries.
3. Not Keeping the Core Engaged:
When you’re walking with your weight, you need to engage your core muscles. If not, you are inviting injury and may find yourself on the floor. Keeping this area activated gives you the stability and support necessary to move well while ensuring you remain balanced. Plus, it protects your lower back. Throw in a few back extension exercises, and you'll increase your chances of avoiding a low back injury.
VARIATIONS OF THE FARMER’S WALK
You can switch up the traditional bilateral dumbbell farmer's carry with several different pieces of equipment and form variations.
1. Suitcase Carry (Single Arm Walk):
The suitcase carry, or single-arm farmer's carry, has all the same benefits of farmer’s walks, but this variation will fix muscle imbalances between sides. Here you’ll notice the load pulling you to one side - this is called lateral flexion. This farmer's walk variation trains your internal and external obliques to prevent this. All single-arm walk variations throw your body off balance, which ironically ends up improving your balance.
You can use a dumbbell or kettlebell for this exercise, either carrying it by your side, in a racked position, overhead, or bottoms up.
2. Trap Bar Carry:
Trap bar carries have you use more weight than the kettlebell and dumbbell variations. This is because you're using a neutral grip and the load is in line with your center of gravity. Both of these factors allow you to load more weight to improve your muscle and strength-building capabilities.
You’ll use the trap bar for this move (hence, the name), and you can carry it by your side, overhead, suitcase, or as an offset carry, which is when you place more load on one side compared to the other. In general, trap bar exercises are great for adding weight and increasing your loads carried.
3. Overhead Carries:
Regular carry variations like the ones above are great, but walking with a load overhead takes this to another level because of the increased leverage. What does leverage mean? It means the resistance is further away from the working muscles (legs and core), making it one of the hardest walk variations to do. Use barbells, dumbbells, or trap bars here - whichever option you pick, it’s going to be hard! We love including this in our barbell shoulder exercises routine.
Form tip: You must have good shoulder mobility to press and keep the weight overhead. Walk slowly and carefully as overhead carries have a great risk of injury.
4. Overhead Unilateral Carry:
When you combine the benefits of a single-arm carry with going overhead, you have one of the most challenging carries around. The benefits of offset loading include testing your balance and improving shoulder stability, lateral core strength, and mental toughness. Use dumbbells or kettlebells for this variation.
You can make it even more challenging by turning it into a bottom-up overhead kettlebell carry, which is either performed with an arm overhead or in the waiter serving position. The overhead version is the hardest because the kettlebell is farther from your center of gravity, making it harder to balance. Both bottoms-up carry variations will improve your grip strength, posture, and lateral stability.
5. Zercher Carry:
The Zercher carry might rival the overhead carry as the toughest on this list. Holding a barbell in the crooks of your elbows while walking upright with good posture will test your anterior core, biceps, upper back, deltoids, and even your chest strength. The sheer uncomfortableness of this exercise will take your mental toughness to the next level. Plus, multiple muscle groups worked equals serious muscle hypertrophy.
You can use a barbell or sandbag. If you opt for a barbell, set it up in the squat rack at around hip height for easier pick-up and drop-off. For some variation, we suggest the sandbag. Who doesn't love a good sandbag workout?
FAQS
Still have some lingering questions regarding this exercise? Well, good news! We’ve got answers.
1. Is the Farmer's walk good for weight loss?
Think of farmer’s walks as the cherry on top of an ice cream sundae. If you’re performing main compound lifts, in a calorie deficit, and getting enough protein, farmer’s walks are great for weight loss. This is a full-body move that gets your heart rate up and will have you burning calories long after you’ve finished training.
2. Does the farmer’s Walk REALLY build muscle?
The short answer is yes. The long answer is the farmer’s walk provides a high level of muscular tension in the forearms, upper back, and shoulders, so you can build muscle everywhere. Plus, strengthening your grip will assist you with all exercises grip related, helping you to do more reps with the same weight or lift more load.
Often, your grip gets fried before your targeted muscle does, and strengthening your grip will prevent this from happening. This is a full-body move that will build muscle mass everywhere when incorporated into a hypertrophy program.
3. How long should you do the farmer's walk?
This is entirely dependent on your goals. If your goal is to build absolute strength, then heavier weight, shorter distances, longer rest between sets, and a few more working sets is good. Twenty yards with 90% of your body weight and above for three to four sets will build strength.
If your goal is fat loss, then muscle endurance is what you're targeting. Aim for longer distances, lighter weights, shorter rest periods, and fewer sets. Using a load of 50-80% of your body weight for 40-100 yards for two to three sets will have you gasping for air. Finally, for muscle hypertrophy, using a load between 80-100% of your body weight for 40-60 yards for three sets will set the table for more muscle.
Note: These are general recommendations and can be adjusted to your goals.
BEST HYPERTROPHY PROGRAM
Prepare to maximize your gains with our exclusive 12-week hypertrophy training program. Choose between a 4 or 5 day training split and gain 2-12 pounds of muscle over 90 days...
4. How much weight for farmers walk?
Generally, the shorter you walk, the heavier the weight, and the longer you walk the lighter the weight. But, this all depends on your goals as discussed above. When you’re starting with the bilateral dumbbell carry, you should be able to handle 25-50% of your body weight in each hand and walk between 20-40 yards. If you cannot walk 20 yards, it is too heavy and if you walk more than 40 yards without your grip failing, it is too light.
And if you're training for muscle endurance, you're going to be walking for longer, which means you'll likely need even lighter weights than our 25-50% recommendation. The same goes for if you include this move in a high intensity interval training program - because of the intensity of your routine, you likely won't be able to carry super heavy weights. And that's okay! Select the weight that pushes you while enabling you to complete the program's suggested sets and reps.
The loaded carries variation you use, your goal, experience level, and tool you use will determine load. Here you’ll experiment a little to find a load that will challenge you to reach your specific goals.
5. How often should I do farmers’ walks?
You can do them every day, but this would mean recovery would be an issue. To improve and recover well between training, two to three times a week is a good place to start. And avoid performing the move on back-to-back days.
Farmer’s Walk: The Exercise Move You Should Be Doing
Farmer’s walks look simple, but as we’ve covered, they’re anything but easy. If you are willing to stand the discomfort, performing carries is a functional exercise that has the ability to improve muscle strength, save your life, reduce your risk of heart disease, improve your posture and shoulder stability, and improve your gym performance.
Oh, and as an added bonus, your newfound strong grip will prevent you from ever having to struggle through opening a pickle jar or carrying grocery bags again. So many benefits from such a basic strength training exercise mean this move deserves a spot in your workout split.
Related: Top 9 Exercises to Improve Your Grip Strength
References:
Leong, Darryl P, et al. “Prognostic Value of Grip Strength: Findings from the Prospective Urban Rural Epidemiology (PURE) Study.” The Lancet, vol. 386, no. 9990, July 2015, pp. 266–273, 10.1016/s0140-6736(14)62000-6.
Perna, Frank M., et al. “Muscular Grip Strength Estimates of the U.S. Population from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2011–2012.” Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, vol. 30, no. 3, Mar. 2016, pp. 867–874, 10.1519/jsc.0000000000001104.
Often, the simplest exercises are the ones that work you the hardest. Take the farmer’s walk, for example. At its core, it’s as basic as it gets. You hold your weights down by your sides and walk around. Easy, right?
Not so fast! While the idea behind the movement is basic, actually performing the farmer’s walk is as challenging as it gets. Picture this: You start the exercise, and within seconds your forearms fill with blood, your grip starts to fail, and your shoulders and lungs begin to burn. Then it's a battle of wills between you and the weights.
Will you drop the barbell, dumbbells, or kettlebells you're holding? Or, despite your shaking arms and burning back, will you continue on until your set is complete? And, since we're asking a bunch of questions here, does this move still sound easy?
We think not!
If you aren’t already performing the farmer’s carry, we highly recommend you start right away. As it has the ability to work your entire body, this versatile exercise could be the missing link in your routine.
This post will cover:
- What is the farmer’s walk?
- Farmer’s carry benefits
- Muscles worked during farmer’s walks
- Correct farmer’s walk form
- Common mistakes to avoid
- Farmer’s carries variations to add to your training routine
Let’s dive in.
WHAT IS A FARMER'S WALK?
Essentially, a farmer’s walk is a loaded carry that not only hits the entire body but also makes for a great forearm exercise. You walk with weight by your sides, at your front, or overhead. When walking with a load, good posture is key to avoiding injury and reaping the benefits of the carry.
Proper form for this move involves retracting your shoulder blades, keeping your shoulders away from your ears, and keeping your body straight and upright while you gaze ahead. Once you’re set up and have your weights, you simply walk around using the space available to you while focusing on perfect form.
WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS OF FARMER'S WALKS?
An immediate, and obvious, benefit of carries is that it's a grip strength exercise, which is great for everything from lifting heavier weights to carrying all of your grocery bags in at once (winning!). But this move’s benefits don’t end there. The exercise provides several other great benefits as well, including:
1. Better Breathing Patterns:
It’s okay to breathe with your chest when you need air quickly, say for example, when you’re getting chased by a wild animal. But for the most part, you need to breathe much deeper than this, using your diaphragm, particularly when you’re working out. Performing carries with weight in your hands makes breathing through your chest challenging, encouraging you to breathe deep into your belly instead. You'll likely see breathing improvements the next time you perform core work, like when you take on the dead bug exercise, for example.
2. Improved Posture:
How many times has your mother told you to stand up straight and stop slouching? This is the same form needed for the farmer’s carry. Shoulders down and chest up are the main cues for performing the carry, and this alone strengthens the muscles needed for good posture. Trust us, you'll appreciate the ability to stand tall.
3. Better Shoulder Stability:
Whenever you grip something, your rotator cuffs are activated. And when you’re carrying heavy weight for distance or time, you put your rotator cuffs and deltoids under high levels of muscular tension for improved shoulder strength and stability. You'll then feel those gains the next time you tackle a dumbbell shoulder workout.
4. Improved Performance:
Almost all pulling exercises require high amounts of grip strength. If your grip gives out before your back or leg muscles do, you are leaving gains on the table. Strengthening your grip allows you to fully exhaust the targeted muscle group for better muscle-building gains. This is also an excellent functional exercise for improving performance in everyday life, making it great for your health and fitness goals and a must for your workout routine.
5. Better Balance:
Every step of any farmer’s carry variation is basically a single-leg stance. Every time you take a foot off the ground with load, your abdominal muscles and hip stabilizer muscles are working overtime to keep you balanced.
6. Extends Your Life:
If you ever find yourself dangling from a cliff, your grip strength will save your bacon. A study examined the health of 140,000 people over four years with a variety of health outcomes, including looking at grip strength. Interestingly, grip strength was linked to mortality with every 10-pound decrease in grip strength associated with a 17% risk increase in death1.
Need further convincing? Research found that a gradual decrease in grip strength is associated with an uptick in the risk of having a heart attack and stroke. Your grip strength is a better indicator of your risk of developing cardiovascular disease, more than systolic blood pressure is1. Sounds like reason enough to include it in your next upper body dumbbell workout.
7. Improves Your Quality Of Life:
When grip strength decreases, there is an eightfold increase in the risk of developing a muscular disability if you are an older adult. Plus, decreases in grip strength have been associated with adverse weight gain among women and mortality among men2. This is why functional training is so important.
FARMER'S CARRY MUSCLES WORKED
More to the point, what major muscle groups aren't worked in the farmer’s walk? This full body exercise trains almost every muscle in the upper and lower body, but listing them all seems like overkill. Instead, we're listing the major muscles and muscle groups trained by the farmer’s walk exercise. As you can see, it's a great move to include in a full body workout as it works almost every muscle.
Upper body:
- Forearms and Wrist
- Triceps
- Upper and Lower Back
- Abdominals
Lower body:
- Hips
- Glutes
- Hamstrings
- Calves
HOW TO DO THE FARMER'S WALK CORRECTLY
Before getting into the nitty gritty of performing a farmer’s walk, let’s discuss the various equipment used for this exercise. First, the barbell is a tool that allows you to carry a significant load, and it can be carried on your back, overhead, or Zercher style, in which you'll hold the bar the same way as you would a Zercher squat. More on this later.
Trap bars are a useful tool also. With the weight being more in line with your center of gravity than the barbell, it’s easier on your joints and you can load it heavier than dumbbells and barbells.
Carrying dumbbells is easy on your joints because you can use a neutral wrist, which makes your shoulders happy. Carrying dumbbells is also going to be your strongest grip. And like the barbell, you can carry the dumbbells like a front squat, by your side, or overhead. Plus, this can all be done unilaterally to strengthen imbalances between sides.
Kettlebells are also great for carries. The offset nature of the kettlebell trains the stabilizing muscles of the hips and shoulders more than other weight options. You can hold them similar to dumbbells, or to make things harder, hold the kettlebells bottoms up as it requires even more grip strength to carry the same load.
All of the variations work the same muscle groups, but some may target one muscle more than others. This means including various farmer's walk variations into your routine is great for a well rounded program. For example one (or more) variations would work well in this push-pull workout routine.
How to do the Bilateral Dumbbell Farmer’s Carry:
- Choose dumbbells with 25-50% of your body weight in each hand. It's best to grab them from the dumbbell rack for safety.
- With your shoulders down, chest upright, shoulder blades retracted, and gripping the dumbbells tightly, make sure your posture is sound before moving. Keep your gaze straight ahead.
- Walk forward slowly, with short steps, in a straight line. If you run out of space, turn around and head back the way you came, continuing this pattern until you’ve reached your desired time duration.
- Return the dumbbells to the rack; rest and repeat.
3 COMMON MISTAKES TO AVOID
There are a few common mistakes lifters make when performing the farmer’s carry. Avoid the following:
1. Going Too Heavy:
If you cannot walk at least 20 to 40 yards, your grip is failing, and you are not walking with good posture, the weight is too heavy. Again, start with 25-50% of your body weight in one hand or both, and adjust if needed.
2. Allowing Your Shoulders To Go Out Of Position:
Your shoulders need to be down and back for good posture and better carrying form. Raised or rounded forward shoulders will put the shoulder more at risk for injury and negate the upper body benefits of carries.
3. Not Keeping the Core Engaged:
When you’re walking with your weight, you need to engage your core muscles. If not, you are inviting injury and may find yourself on the floor. Keeping this area activated gives you the stability and support necessary to move well while ensuring you remain balanced. Plus, it protects your lower back. Throw in a few back extension exercises, and you'll increase your chances of avoiding a low back injury.
VARIATIONS OF THE FARMER’S WALK
You can switch up the traditional bilateral dumbbell farmer's carry with several different pieces of equipment and form variations.
1. Suitcase Carry (Single Arm Walk):
The suitcase carry, or single-arm farmer's carry, has all the same benefits of farmer’s walks, but this variation will fix muscle imbalances between sides. Here you’ll notice the load pulling you to one side - this is called lateral flexion. This farmer's walk variation trains your internal and external obliques to prevent this. All single-arm walk variations throw your body off balance, which ironically ends up improving your balance.
You can use a dumbbell or kettlebell for this exercise, either carrying it by your side, in a racked position, overhead, or bottoms up.
2. Trap Bar Carry:
Trap bar carries have you use more weight than the kettlebell and dumbbell variations. This is because you're using a neutral grip and the load is in line with your center of gravity. Both of these factors allow you to load more weight to improve your muscle and strength-building capabilities.
You’ll use the trap bar for this move (hence, the name), and you can carry it by your side, overhead, suitcase, or as an offset carry, which is when you place more load on one side compared to the other. In general, trap bar exercises are great for adding weight and increasing your loads carried.
3. Overhead Carries:
Regular carry variations like the ones above are great, but walking with a load overhead takes this to another level because of the increased leverage. What does leverage mean? It means the resistance is further away from the working muscles (legs and core), making it one of the hardest walk variations to do. Use barbells, dumbbells, or trap bars here - whichever option you pick, it’s going to be hard! We love including this in our barbell shoulder exercises routine.
Form tip: You must have good shoulder mobility to press and keep the weight overhead. Walk slowly and carefully as overhead carries have a great risk of injury.
4. Overhead Unilateral Carry:
When you combine the benefits of a single-arm carry with going overhead, you have one of the most challenging carries around. The benefits of offset loading include testing your balance and improving shoulder stability, lateral core strength, and mental toughness. Use dumbbells or kettlebells for this variation.
You can make it even more challenging by turning it into a bottom-up overhead kettlebell carry, which is either performed with an arm overhead or in the waiter serving position. The overhead version is the hardest because the kettlebell is farther from your center of gravity, making it harder to balance. Both bottoms-up carry variations will improve your grip strength, posture, and lateral stability.
5. Zercher Carry:
The Zercher carry might rival the overhead carry as the toughest on this list. Holding a barbell in the crooks of your elbows while walking upright with good posture will test your anterior core, biceps, upper back, deltoids, and even your chest strength. The sheer uncomfortableness of this exercise will take your mental toughness to the next level. Plus, multiple muscle groups worked equals serious muscle hypertrophy.
You can use a barbell or sandbag. If you opt for a barbell, set it up in the squat rack at around hip height for easier pick-up and drop-off. For some variation, we suggest the sandbag. Who doesn't love a good sandbag workout?
FAQS
Still have some lingering questions regarding this exercise? Well, good news! We’ve got answers.
1. Is the Farmer's walk good for weight loss?
Think of farmer’s walks as the cherry on top of an ice cream sundae. If you’re performing main compound lifts, in a calorie deficit, and getting enough protein, farmer’s walks are great for weight loss. This is a full-body move that gets your heart rate up and will have you burning calories long after you’ve finished training.
2. Does the farmer’s Walk REALLY build muscle?
The short answer is yes. The long answer is the farmer’s walk provides a high level of muscular tension in the forearms, upper back, and shoulders, so you can build muscle everywhere. Plus, strengthening your grip will assist you with all exercises grip related, helping you to do more reps with the same weight or lift more load.
Often, your grip gets fried before your targeted muscle does, and strengthening your grip will prevent this from happening. This is a full-body move that will build muscle mass everywhere when incorporated into a hypertrophy program.
3. How long should you do the farmer's walk?
This is entirely dependent on your goals. If your goal is to build absolute strength, then heavier weight, shorter distances, longer rest between sets, and a few more working sets is good. Twenty yards with 90% of your body weight and above for three to four sets will build strength.
If your goal is fat loss, then muscle endurance is what you're targeting. Aim for longer distances, lighter weights, shorter rest periods, and fewer sets. Using a load of 50-80% of your body weight for 40-100 yards for two to three sets will have you gasping for air. Finally, for muscle hypertrophy, using a load between 80-100% of your body weight for 40-60 yards for three sets will set the table for more muscle.
Note: These are general recommendations and can be adjusted to your goals.
BEST HYPERTROPHY PROGRAM
Prepare to maximize your gains with our exclusive 12-week hypertrophy training program. Choose between a 4 or 5 day training split and gain 2-12 pounds of muscle over 90 days...
4. How much weight for farmers walk?
Generally, the shorter you walk, the heavier the weight, and the longer you walk the lighter the weight. But, this all depends on your goals as discussed above. When you’re starting with the bilateral dumbbell carry, you should be able to handle 25-50% of your body weight in each hand and walk between 20-40 yards. If you cannot walk 20 yards, it is too heavy and if you walk more than 40 yards without your grip failing, it is too light.
And if you're training for muscle endurance, you're going to be walking for longer, which means you'll likely need even lighter weights than our 25-50% recommendation. The same goes for if you include this move in a high intensity interval training program - because of the intensity of your routine, you likely won't be able to carry super heavy weights. And that's okay! Select the weight that pushes you while enabling you to complete the program's suggested sets and reps.
The loaded carries variation you use, your goal, experience level, and tool you use will determine load. Here you’ll experiment a little to find a load that will challenge you to reach your specific goals.
5. How often should I do farmers’ walks?
You can do them every day, but this would mean recovery would be an issue. To improve and recover well between training, two to three times a week is a good place to start. And avoid performing the move on back-to-back days.
Farmer’s Walk: The Exercise Move You Should Be Doing
Farmer’s walks look simple, but as we’ve covered, they’re anything but easy. If you are willing to stand the discomfort, performing carries is a functional exercise that has the ability to improve muscle strength, save your life, reduce your risk of heart disease, improve your posture and shoulder stability, and improve your gym performance.
Oh, and as an added bonus, your newfound strong grip will prevent you from ever having to struggle through opening a pickle jar or carrying grocery bags again. So many benefits from such a basic strength training exercise mean this move deserves a spot in your workout split.
Related: Top 9 Exercises to Improve Your Grip Strength
References:
[*]Leong, Darryl P, et al. “Prognostic Value of Grip Strength: Findings from the Prospective Urban Rural Epidemiology (PURE) Study.” The Lancet, vol. 386, no. 9990, July 2015, pp. 266–273, 10.1016/s0140-6736(14)62000-6.
[*]Perna, Frank M., et al. “Muscular Grip Strength Estimates of the U.S. Population from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2011–2012.” Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, vol. 30, no. 3, Mar. 2016, pp. 867–874, 10.1519/jsc.0000000000001104.
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