ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT LIFTS YOU SHOULD BE DOING!

“Farm strong” or “Farmer Strength” is term that I am sure you have all heard. It refers to the strength that is gained from hard physical work and farming was one of the hardest. You had variety of tools, implements, bags, pails of water and much more which had to be carried around by hand. This is the birthplace of one of the classic strongman events - The Farmers Walk.

Heavy farmers walk will work your back, shoulders, and grip and is also heavily taxing on your whole body. The farmer's walk builds muscle, increases strength and performance in almost all other lifts!

CORE STRENGTH – The TRUE meaning of core strength is the ability to keep a neutral spinal position. Farmers walks provides this challenge and then some. The back and abdomen must work in sync to support your torso and the additional weight carried. Keeping your abs tight during the exercise is necessary to protect the lower back and prevent any shear stress or vertebral buckling.

IMPROVES POSTURE – Farmers walks force you to keep your chest up, shoulders back, chin down and abs tight. Get strong in this position and you’ll fix your poor posture fast.

FIX IMBALANCES – Do them one arm at a time and you’ll fix strength deficits. This is great for overhead athletes like throwers, tennis players who tend to be much weaker on the non-throwing/swinging side.

USES YOUR WHOLE BODY - The forearms get an intense workout, which helps improve grip strength. Biceps and triceps must work to stabilize the elbow and shoulder joints. The muscles in the legs, back, upper back are the main movers in the first phase. The muscles of the upper back and shoulders in particularly the traps muscles must work together in a continuous contraction to keep your shoulder blades together and down, and to keep your shoulder joints stable. During the moving part of the Farmers Walk the quadriceps, hamstrings, gluteus medius, gluteus minimus, and calf muscles are used extensively.

USEFULNESS – The Farmers Walk trains your body in a way that's useful even beyond the gym. You can't underestimate the importance of grip strength and the ability to lift and carry heavy objects for health or in everyday life. The Farmers Walk might be the most "functional" exercise in existence.

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It is the one of the simplest exercise you can do. Pick up some heavy weights and start walking. You can use Dumbbells, Kettlebells, Barbells, Trap Bar, Farmers Walk handles or anything that you can carry in each in hand!

There are many ways in which you can add difficulty to this movement, distance (longer or shorter) or weight (heavier or lighter) or adding a turn in at the end which is way harder than you think. The most import thing is that you do them!