One-A-Day: Farmer's Walk

Hey everyone,

On February 1st, we started our 'One-A-Day' exercise routine with one of our recent favourites, the farmer's walk.  This is a very simple, functional, yet challenging exercise.  In essence, it boils down to walking while carrying weight.

A basic farmer's walk

We did this as a morning workout, which was a 'lovely' shock to our system at 5:30am!  For this workout, we picked five variations of a farmer's walk.  We then did maximum reps (and minimum rest during each set) for five minutes each, followed by a minute rest.  Thus, our five sets and rest periods took a half hour in total.  Here's what we did:

1. Overhead single-kettlebell farmer's walk, up and down stairs
2. Double kettlebell farmer's walk, up and down stairs
3. Double kettlebell farmer's walk (with lifting straps to assist grip), up and down stairs
4. Double kettlebell farmer's walk (with lifting straps), on tip toes, on flat ground
5. Double kettlebell farmer's walk (with lifting straps), on flat ground

Tips on exercise form

As you can see from our sequence of farmer's walks, we put the most difficult moves earlier in the workout, progressing to easier variations as we fatigued.  The overhead farmer's walk (up and down stairs) requires a lot of shoulder and core strength (especially as you only have weight overhead on one side).  It is best to do these when fresh (as well as start with a light weight until you are comfortable with the exercise).

As we progressed through the workout, we started using lifting straps, as our grip strength fatigued.  This was a conscious decision, with pros and cons to it.  Ideally, we would not rely on lifting straps.  Avoiding them will definitely help build your grip strength.  However, our ultimate goal for this workout was overall strength (particularly legs-focused) and metabolic conditioning.  If we had not used straps, we would have had to take more (and longer) rest periods, which would have resulted in less work for our legs, lungs and heart.  To note, even though we used lifting straps, our forearms still got a workout and were definitely tired by the end!

Slightly more hardcore than us!

You will often see the farmer's walk in strongmen competitions (as above).  This is where we borrowed the exercise from, while adapting it to our goals and environment.  For example, we are focusing more on metabolic conditioning than pure strength and thus stick to a constant weight, while aiming to increase distance or time.  As well, since we workout in our basement home gym, we take advantage of the nearby staircase to increase the difficulty, going up and down it repeatedly for the first few sets.  Try it out and you'll definitely feel your heart racing, as your legs scream in protest, leaving you gasping for breath.  This is rapidly becoming a favourite workout where we can really challenge ourselves!

- Alex & Tannys