Farmers walks are a great exercise for athletes looking to condition themselves for carrying heavy, unstable loads in Strongman competitions. But what about everyday people? Should they be using farmers walks in their training?

What Are Farmers Walk Handles?

Farmers Walk Handles are plate loadable specialist handles that allow you to load your farmer walks much heavier (up to 250kg per handle) than a typical dumbbell or kettlebell. They are also much longer and wider than a dumbbell or kettlebell, making them less stable, making the exercise even harder.  This more closely replicates a typical farmers walk in a strongman or strongwoman competition.

Benefits of Farmers Walks

• Improved Grip Strength - the farmers walk handles have a 40mm knurled grip, which is a greater diameter than a typical barbell, making it a great way to overload and improve your grip strength training to carry over to other exercises like deadlifts.

• Improved Whole Body Strength - The farmers walk requires much more than just grip strength. The trunk needs to work hard to stabilise during each step while the lower body has to work hard to propel you forward. This makes it a great full-body exercise to add to your training.

Alternative Exercises Using Farmers Walk Handles

The Farmers Walk Handles allow you to load up exercises, that you might usually do with dumbbells or kettlebells by you side, heavier than usual. So why stop at just farmers walks?

Farmers Walk Handle Side Bends

The side bend strengthens your obliques and core during lateral spinal flexion, which is great for making your spine more robust to injury and filling the gaps that other exercises that aim to keep the spine neutral in the frontal plane miss, like squats or deadlifts.

• Stand tall with your shoulders square, feet shoulder width apart and a farmer handle in one hand.

• Push you hips to the side as you bend your spine laterally the other way to lower the farmer handle to the floor, as if you are trying the make a ‘C’ shape with your body.

• Once you feel a stretch in your obliques on the opposite side to the handle, reverse the movement to stand back up.

• Repeat this for the desired reps on both sides.

Farmers Walk Handle Suitcase Carry

This challenges the core to avoid lateral flexion of the spine, which is great for strengthening your ability to carry unevenly loaded objects, making it very functionally applicable to contact sports and daily life, in which loads are rarely evenly distributed.

• Stand tall with your shoulders square and feet shoulder width apart, with a farmer handle in one hand.

• Proceed to walk, keeping your core tight and your shoulders level as far as you can until you fatigue, or you are not able to keep your shoulders level.

• Repeat this on both sides.

Farmers Walk Handle Shrugs

Shrugs a great for strengthening the traps which is useful not only for sports like Olympic Weightlifting, which has a literal shrug phase in the movement, but also sports like boxing that require a lot of neck strength. They are also great for those with neck and shoulder pain, often seen in those with sedentary work environments, because the traps support the neck.

• Stand tall with your shoulders square and feet shoulder width apart, with a farmers handle in each hand.

• Keep your arms long and shrug your shoulders to your ears, hold for a second, then lower back down.

Farmers Walk Handle Deadlifts

Just like a regular deadlift, this variation is great for strengthening the lower back, glutes, and hamstrings. It is a great alternative to a Trap Bar deadlift if you cannot get access to a trap bar. For those competing in strong man events, this may be a great accessory so help you feel stronger as you pick up weights for farmer carries, so that you don’t fall at the first hurdle.

• Stand tall with your shoulders square and feet shoulder width apart, with a farmer handle either side of you.

• Hinge down to the handles, pushing your hips back until you feel a stretch in your hamstrings, before flexing the knees to get your hands to the handles.

• Grasp each handle tightly, take a deep breathe, pick the chin up and drive the floor away to deadlift the weight up.

• Slowly reverse the movement to complete a rep.

So, there you have it, farmer walk handles. Not only are they great for competitive Strongmen, but they are also very versatile. They allow you to load exercises past the point at which they are challenging using just dumbbells or kettlebells, making them a great addition to any training programme in the endless pursuit of more gains!

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Tags: Equipment > Bars and Weight Plates ; Exercise Type > Strength ; Exercise Type > Strongman